November Top Ten Players in Green Energy: Nos. 1-5
GER’s ranking of the top ten players in green energy for the month of November are out! There are some new entries in our monthly ranking (Wilbur Ross, former BP exec. Vivienne Cox, Warren Buffet…) and some holdovers from the October ranking, (Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson and U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry) that were kept on because of their continued influence on the clean energy and climate change debate.
5: Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive officer Exxon Mobil Corp.
When we included Rex Tillerson in our inaugural ranking last month (fourth place) we said:
“The head of the world’s most powerful company will always be a force to be reckoned with.”
Our assessment has not changed. Despite Tillerson’s ongoing effort to attempt to delay cap-and-trade (his ploy on that – advocate an outright carbon tax). And despite the fact that his company continues to plow tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas E&P, Exxon Mobil, because of its enormous balance sheet wields a lot of clout in the energy space and as a cleantech investor. Cleantech investments out of the Arlington, Texas oil and gas giant may not be frequent, but they sure pack the punch – take the $600 million the company invested this summer in algae-biofuel maker Synthetic Genomics.
4: The Department of Energy’s venture capitalists
Of all the government agencies now overseen by the Obama administration, the Department of Energy is probably the one experiencing the most drastic change as it morphs from a dusty nuclear administrator into a leading clean energy investor.
To oversee this transformation and in particular the dispersal of nearly $37 billion in stimulus money, over the past year the DOE has turned to a group of private sector veterans, which in a short time have turned the DOE into a leading cleantech investor.
Leading this crew of benchmark-driven professionals is Matt Rogers, who joined the DOE from consulting power house McKinsey & Company. Just this month the DOE released a much awaited $620 million in funding to support the next generation’s smart grid and energy storage projects.
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Silver, a Washington-based venture capitalist, joined the DOE from Core Capital Partners, to administer the DOE’s loan program office. Overseeing the department’s investments in cutting edge energy technologies (the ARPA-E program) is David Danielson. He joined this summer from Cambridge, Mass.-based General Catalyst Partners.
(It can be noted that the VC influence is also felt outside of the DOE. Nick Sinai was appointed energy and environmental director at the Federal Communications Commission this summer. He joined the FCC from Tenaya Capital, the former venture unit of Lehman Brothers.)
3: Warren Buffet
Is the Oracle from Omaha a “billionaire green?” That’s the question we’ve been asking since Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway acquired a majority stake in rail road company Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). The deal was largely portrayed as a green investment because BNSF is a railroad company that transports more merchandise using less carbon than, say, truck transportation. At the time, GER pointed out that the train operator depended on coal to feed much of its revenues and, as such, with the acquisition, Buffet was actually going long on carbon. Also, in a development not widely reported, a few weeks after his BNSF acquisition Buffet increased his stake in Exxon Mobil. The investment was modest but was yet another indication of Buffet’s belief in the long-term prospects of a carbon-based economy.
Nonetheless, the perception out there is that Buffet is going green and in this media driven age, perception matters. For many, Buffet’s BNSF investment (and his $232 million stake in Chinese battery maker BYD), demonstrate that the oracle from Omaha believes there’s value in cleantech. That perception alone could help open a floodgate of new green energy investments, and that’s something only Buffet could do.
2: University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit
This scandal has become global warming’s biggest “crossover” issue in years, even making the front page of The New York Times. What remains to be seen is whether one single person’s beliefs about global warming have changed as a result of it.
To recap: Two weeks ago, some hackers got ahold of and disseminated thousands of emails from the august research center, which has conducted influential research into climate change. Some emails apparently showed scientists fiddling with data to correspond to their beliefs about climate change. The Telegraph’s James Delingpole called it the “final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming.”
It isn’t that. But it could stiffen the spines of those who would block progress, either in the United States senate or at the United Nations’ climate summit in Copenhagen, on curbs to emissions. And, for that reason alone, “Climategate” is a big deal.
1: Chinese Green Energy Companies
If anyone questioned China’s commitment to winning the cleantech race, the deals announced by A-Power Energy Generation Systems and Suntech Power Holdings should wipe those doubts away.
First, China’s A-Power was tapped to provide the windmills for a $1.5 billion, 600 MW wind farm in Texas. The deal inspired Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, to pen a letter to the Obama administration trying to block stimulus funds for the project because it was creating jobs in China but not America.
Two weeks later, Suntech announced that it would build a plant in Arizona with a capacity of 30 MW of PV solar panels by Q3 of 2010. The next day, A-Power rolled out plans to build a plant in the United States capable of producing 1,100 MW of turbines annually. The companies may be providing jobs for Americans but it’s clear China intends to lead the industry.
