Green Energy Reporter

1 December '09
1:22 PM EST
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Cleantech
Top Ten Players in Green Energy

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.) Read More »

Tagged: China, Department of Energy, Exxon Mobil, Matt Rogers, Rex Tillerson, University of East Anglia, Warren Buffet

17 November '09
1:57 PM EST
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Funding

Policy

Warren Buffet: Going Long on CO2

Yesterday, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway increased its stake in Exxon Mobil, buying some 1.28 million shares in the Texas oil and gas company. The stake was valued at about $87.6 million at the end of the third quarter.

Albeit much smaller, the investment followed Buffet’s $44 billion acquisition of railroad giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). On BNSF he said the acquisition was a bet on America’s future. It was also a bet on CO2 as BNSF is the country’s biggest coal hauler.

We posed the question before and in light of yesterday’s news, we will ask it again: Is Warren Buffet going long on CO2? Read More »

Tagged: Berkshire Hathaway, BP, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Exxon Mobil, MidAmerican Energy, Rex Tillerson, Tony Hayward, Warren Buffet

4 November '09
8:32 AM EST
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Policy

Warren Buffett Goes Long Coal With BNSF… No, Wait…

Is Billionaire Warren Buffett’s $34 billion investment in BNSF railroad actually an investment in coal as the energy of the future?

Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad carries 1/5th of the nation’s coal, principally from the Rocky Mountain West, which contains the Powder River Basin’s low sulfur coal, to the Midwest.

Moving coal accounted for ¼ of BNSF’s revenue through Q3 of 2009.

The Vine’s Bradford Plumer argues that Buffett, knowing the importance of coal for the railroad’s revenue, is thus betting that “coal’s going to remain a major part of the U.S. energy mix for quite some time…”

Reuters’ John Kemp says much the same.

The Economist plays both sides, arguing that Buffett is “doubling down on the carbon-intensive economy.” Wait, no, maybe he’s planning on “weaning BNSF off coal and moving into other freight areas…”

You can see can see how quickly this discussion devolves into incoherence without any guidance from the Oracle of Omaha himself.

And the problem with oracles, as Julius Caesar discovered, is that they’re awfully vague.

Let’s look at the evidence. Read More »

Tagged: Carbon capture and storage, clean coal, Kerry-Boxer, Power River Basin, Warren Buffet

19 May '09
2:22 PM EDT
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Cleantech

Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy slams cap-and-trade provision in Waxman-Markey bill

U.S. power Utilities have mostly come out in favor of the Waxman – Markey climate change bill, however one dissenting voice came from Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which specifically criticized the bill’s cap-and-trade provision, saying it would lead to higher electricity bills for consumers.

In a written statement MidAmerican’s Chairman David Sokol said: “Cap and trade will have a profoundly negative impact on people who are struggling to make ends meet in an economy still in distress.” The legislation, he warned, would force customers to first, pay the cost of emissions allowances and “second… pay the cost of replacing our existing fossil-fuel generation facilities with low-carbon alternatives.”

Sokol said MidAmerican supports carbon emission reductions and believes the electric sector can achieve the 83% reduction in emissions by 2050 called for in the Waxman-Markey bill by avoiding cap-and-trade altogether. The company does not say how it intends to do that.

At a press event held Friday in Washington, John Rowe, CEO of Chicago-based Excelon, said that with the bill set to be considered for a full vote by the House of Representative, Washington “may be on the brink of something astounding.”

Lew Hay, CEO of FPL Group in Florida said it was “vital” for climate change legislation to pass this year and as such FPL supported “moving [the bill] it through the committee process and onto the House floor.”

FPL owns NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest generator of sun and wind power. Also voicing support for the bill was the Edison Electric Institute, the power industry’s lobbying group in Washington.