The Abrams Clean Tech Report

 

News, News & More News…

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Either I have too little time most days or I’m not very effective in trying to do everything I want to do. There’s just so much that’s been popping up lately which has piqued my interest, so here goes — lots of news, and I still have more in my pile to report on…

-One of the first things I wanted to highlight first, which I actually find quite extraordinary (though it probably didn’t cause much of a blip across your screens) was this: last week I had the opportunity to sit in on a briefing by Spansion and Virident, and I was pretty fascinated by the whole thing. Spansion Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSN), a pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, on June 24th unveiled plans for a new class of memory, called Spansion(R) EcoRAM. Yup. Time to upgrade already. The nice thing is we’re talking about a technology that can significantly reduce energy consumption in the data center, i.e. otherwise known as the growing energy consumption crisis in data centers.

From what I gather, when Spansion’s EcoRAM is combined with Virident Systems, Inc.’s new GreenGateway technology, the combined technologies can help slash energy consumption by up to 75 percent in Internet data center servers, and offer four times the memory capacity of traditional DRAM-only servers for the same energy consumption. This is possible because DRAM in data center servers sort of has a replacement (read “next generation”) in terms of memory. So, as I said, you might not think that’s too big a deal, but think about it: it was only about 10 years ago that search engine technology was introduced. And here we are ten years later, talking about the need to upgrade the generation of technology that currently powers our web searches and data storage. That’s a lot of power that’s being consumed.

Phrases like “energy proportional processing”, “intelligent power management”, “service level flexibility” and “cluster & system management” were being used throughout the briefing. Not only can flash memory improve storage per square foot (in data centers) by requiring fewer pizza racks, but companies can achieve a higher density per square foot, too, and be more cost effective than DRAM over the long term. So if current server utilization is slower than it needs to be, and data growth is faster than Moore’s Law, due to current server architecture in part, then I’m quite appreciative of what was presented in that briefing. And if you consider that Google might need an extra 300-400,000 servers more a year going forward, and you factor in all the other organizations that continuously need to expand their server farms…well, this becomes a pretty interesting picture indeed. I’ll leave you with the press release here.

In other news…

2) From the WSJ on 6/26: “Oil Shock: Analyst Predicts $7 Gas, “Mass Exodus” of U.S. Cars: Over the next four years, we are likely to witness the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America’s highways in history. By 2012, there should be some 10 million fewer vehicles on American roadways than there are today—a decline that dwarfs all previous adjustments including those during the two OPEC oil shocks.” That reminds me: telepresence technologies are going to be a very, very hot investment opportunity, if they aren’t already. I haven’t checked, but I should. (I mean, who’s going to be driving/flying to meetings anymore?)

3) I thought these deals were interesting from last week (per David Ehrlich’s note for the Clean Tech Group here):

- Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.’s Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) announced it would acquire Phoenix-based Allied Waste (NYSE: AW) for over $6 billion in stock, merging the country’s No. 2 and No. 3 waste and environmental services providers. The merger would bring together a portfolio of 86 recycling operations, as well as a growing list of waste to energy sites.

- Lehigh Technologies, a Naples, Fla.-based rubber recycling company, confirmed that it raised a second round of funding, announcing that it pulled in $34 million in financing. Investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures, NGP Energy Technology Partners and Florida Gulfshore Capital.

4) CleanLoop launches in beta. Am kind of scratching my head as to why it took so long for this one to pop up, but hey…we’re happy they’re here.

5) Biosphere Industries’ [http://www.biosphereindustries.com/] CEO Elie Helou gave me an update on the company’s progress the other day. I had the good fortune to connect with Elie way back when, when he was trying to push the needle forward…we spent many an evening talking shop.

Biosphere just completed the first full production line for their PPM100 which is now going to be marketed under the trade name Renew-a-Pak in Carpinteria. Their initial product offerings are being targeted toward the bakeware replacement field, and the company is very competitive in both price and function in replacing disposable aluminum and CPET dual ovenable products. Some of the items Biosphere is now offering are dual ovenable trays, pie pans, muffin pans, and microwavable pizza trays. Renew-a-Pak applications can be manufactured in various color offerings and can also be applied to scented product offerings. Several large customers are testing Biosphere’s products and Helou expects PO’s once testing is complete. “It’s been a long road but so far, well worth it,” says Helou.

6) This looked interesting – FirstLook sells detailed reports to new-energy entrepreneurs and consumers who are serious about generating their own power. Those reports show just how much wind or sunshine an area is likely to receive, based on years’ worth of meteorological data, plus plenty of other important ‘have-to-knows’. The company advertises its reports via a free interactive map. Preliminary information from the map helps entrepreneurs determine whether a windmill or solar-panel installation at a chosen location would make good financial sense. For now FirstLook’s data appears limited to US locations. But the company has plans to expand to other nations, a move it hopes to help finance with country-based sponsorships.

7) Sweden’s Husqvarna has introduced the world’s first solar/electric hybrid robot lawnmower, which has no exhaust emissions and uses approximately the same amount of energy as a standard light bulb. From an ECO-ICONIC point of view, we obviously love its very visible solar panel, earning owners respect from neighbors, visitors and passers-by. Noted by Springwise.

8) And finally – because this is just conceptually all really cool to look at.

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