January 1st marked the end of some attractive tax breaks for homeowners who sought to make their homes more energy efficient.

While there certainly were perks for taxpayers, the $858 billion tax bill signed by President Barack Obama in December extended but dramatically cut the dollar amount of tax credits available for energy-efficient home retrofits.

Instead of the maximum tax credit of 30 percent of a project, or up to $1,500, the 2011 credit is 10 percent of a project, or no more than $500. Other restrictions apply, too, like a flat $200 limit for new windows and a $300 limit for the installation of a new water heater. There’s an additional piece of bad news for consumers who were making energy improvements to their homes in phases: Homeowners who already took advantage of the program aren’t eligible for another tax credit.

“The $1,500 was really something that piqued people’s interest,” said Jamie Peters, program manager of the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. “If I was a homeowner and really got into this in 2010, it’d be disappointing that I couldn’t do anything else in 2011.”

A 30 percent tax credit for major projects like the purchase and installation of solar or wind energy systems or geothermal heat pumps continues until 2016, so that segment of the green building market is still on solid ground. In fact, 5,000 to 6,000 solar energy systems are being installed nationally each month, and that momentum is expected to build as the cost decreases, said Mark Burger, president of the Illinois Solar Energy Association.

Others say they think momentum for smaller projects will continue to build as well, despite the smaller tax perks, because the media attention and product manufacturers’ marketing of the tax credit did much to introduce more consumers to the idea of making their homes more energy efficient and less costly to operate.

New York City’s iconic Empire State Building, once the world’s tallest building, has been undergoing a multi-million dollar green renovation that will now extend to the power that’s used by the 102-story Art deco landmark’s tenants.

Malkin Holdings, which operates and maintains the 2.85 million square-foot office building has announced it will buy 100 percent of its power from a wind farm owned by Green Mountain Energy Company.

“It was a natural fit for us to combine 100 percent clean energy with our nearly completed, groundbreaking energy efficiency retrofit work,” said Anthony E. Malkin, President of Malkin Holdings, which runs the building, said in the announcement.

“Clean energy and our nearly 40% reduced consumption of watts and BTUs gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents,” he said.

The two-year contract for 55 million kWh of renewable energy annually will prevent nearly 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions each year, the firm said.

Officials at Green Mountain Energy said that number is equal to the reduction that would be achieved if the lights were turned off in every house in New York State for a week or planting 150,000 trees.

The purchase is also more than double the amount of renewable power that any other commercial customer in New York City is currently buying

“We are extremely pleased that an icon like the world-famous Empire State Building made this important commitment to support renewable energy,” said Paul Thomas, CEO of Green Mountain Energy Company.
“This announcement is historic for many reasons. In addition to being the largest commercial consumer of green power in New York City, the Empire State Building’s renewable power purchase is now the largest purchase in our company’s 13-year history,” he said. “This demonstrates that Green Mountain can serve all sizes of commercial customers with renewable energy at a price they can afford, and that going green doesn’t have to be a trade-off.”

As part of its green retrofit of the Empire State Building, Malkin Holdings has hired Serious Materials to remove, retrofit and replace each of its 6,514 double-hung, dual-pane windows. It’s also adding insulation and other upgrades.

By: Steve Cowell

As our economy continues to sputter, one little-noticed industry has been booming for a while now: energy efficiency. The sector is hiring like crazy — a fact that speaks volumes about the close relationship between clean energy and the economic recovery that we’re all waiting for. Energy efficiency could save us all.

My firm works with utilities, government agencies, housing authorities, and other groups to help increase energy efficiency. We started in 1984 with three employees and one office. Today, we have nearly two dozen offices nationwide and employ 700 staffers from coast to coast. Most strikingly, we’ve added more than 250 people and 12 offices in just the last two years. The reason is crystal clear: Energy-efficiency services are in great demand. We are continuing to expand rapidly as more groups turn to us for help.

But energy-services firms are not the only ones that can benefit from the demand for energy-efficiency services. With the right programs in place, reducing power consumption can improve the bottom line for many other types of companies. Case in point: The building infrastructure in this country is old and inefficient. Retrofitting these buildings requires an army of workers. These include heating/air conditioning installers, insulators, and building inspectors. Many of these tradespeople are out of work and these retrofitting jobs can get them back on their feet. Products like insulation, caulk, triple-paned windows and doors, and high-efficiency heating and cooling systems will also get a boost. And that’s not all. The goods need to be made, inspected, shipped, and sold, widening the circle of employment opportunities for manufacturers, retailers, and distributors. This expanded workforce means people will have more money to spend.

Now that’s what I call a “trickle down economy”!

Most importantly, jobs created to support energy efficiency are America’s jobs. More than 90 percent of products and 100 percent of the labor used in residential energy work are American. If Home Star becomes law, weatherization products and equipment will fly off store shelves faster than you can say “retrofit.” Most of these supplies are made domestically, so our factories will need to step up production. Home Star is expected to increase demand for retrofitting by a factor of 15, benefiting those hardest hit by this recession — manufacturing and construction workers. An estimated 168,000 jobs would be generated to carry out the program. Consumers who take advantage of Home Star would save our country an estimated $10 billion in energy costs by 2020. The program would jolt our economy by pumping in $6 billion over two years and cut down on carbon emissions. Supported by Republicans and Democrats, environmentalists and businesses, the bill was introduced exactly one year ago. Home Star has been stalled in the U.S. Senate for months after having passed the House last May. We hope the new Congress will put Home Star on the front burner.

New economic analysis shows that clean energy legislation will create up to 1.9 million new jobs, increase annual household income by up to $1,175, and boost the GDP by up to $111 billion. Over the years, study after study, from groups like the Center for American Progress and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, have supported the direct correlation between green industry growth and jobs. Eighteen months ago, findings from a study by the Pew Charitable Trust found that green jobs are growing at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs are growing by only 3.7 percent.

As someone who’s been working in the industry for more than 30 years, I’m not surprised at all. Clean energy is job creation, hands down. Our time has come!

So what are we waiting for?

QUINCY, MA The state declined to grant a variance for a heating-system replacement project for Quincy public housing because the new heating units do not comply with a new energy code that took effect July 1.

The state Board of Building Regulations and Standards rejected the Quincy Housing Authority’s variance appeal after a hearing last month, the authority’s director and Quincy’s inspectional services director said.

The appeal was filed after Jay Duca, the city’s inspectional services head, denied a contractor permits to install more than 400 heating units because they cannot be programmed to turn on and off at preset times. That programmability is a requirement of the latest International Energy Conservation Code, which took effect July 1 in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, some residents of public housing in Quincy have been without heat for nearly a year.

The units that were to be installed – gas-powered, direct-vent wall furnaces similar to ones found in hotel rooms – are made by Rinnai America Corp. of Georgia.

Quincy Housing Authority officials want to use them to replace old, leaky and mold-prone steam radiators. The radiators often malfunction, leaving residents of Snug Harbor in Germantown and West Acres in West Quincy without heat.

Andrea Lindo, a Snug Harbor resident, told The Patriot Ledger that her heater has been broken since February and that the housing authority placed three standalone space heaters in her apartment. Lindo’s neighbor said she hasn’t had heat since 2009.

Housing Authority Director Jay MacRitchie declined to comment on specific tenants’ circumstances. He said eight of the authority’s 436 apartments are currently without heat, and that the authority spends about $50,000 annually to replace boilers.

MacRitchie said if the stimulus money does not come through, the authority will replace boilers as it customarily does – a short-term fix.

“It will be like saying, ‘We know you’re going to get a new car, but we’re going to replace the transmission,’” he said.

The $2.5 million for Quincy is a portion of $25 million in federal stimulus money that the state doled out for public-housing heating upgrades.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development, which approved the Rinnai system, “is still continuing to work with all parties to replace those old heating systems,” spokesman Phil Hailer said.

Hailer said if appeals of Duca’s denial are exhausted, the agency “will consider the feasibility of an alternative, comparable, conforming heating system.”

Asked about the standstill, Christopher Walker, spokesman for Mayor Thomas Koch, said the mayor “doesn’t overrule his inspectors.”

Duca and Quincy’s fire chief have criticized the proposed system as inadequate to heat multi-room apartments. The system requires wall fans and gaps in doorways to circulate hot air. Duca said no system of its type has been approved for use in Massachusetts.

The Board of Building Regulations and Standards voted on May 5 to grant the Quincy Housing Authority a variance to use the heating system under the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code.

Shortly thereafter, the city granted permits to install 10 of the heating units, a test run called for in the housing authority’s contract with Rinnai. When the company returned in September for the rest of the needed city permits, it was turned down because the new code had taken effect.

The Board of Building Regulations and Standards agreed, declining to grant the authority a second variance after an Oct. 19 hearing.

“You’ve got to meet today’s codes,” Duca said.

By: Todd Woody

The United States is on the verge of a solar boom that could provide 4.3 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2020, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

There’s just a 12-figure catch: Investors need to put $100 billion into the solar industry to keep the generation of solar electricity growing by 42 percent a year for the next decade to expand capacity from the current 1.4 gigawatts to 44 gigawatts.

“Policy measures such as tax credits, capital expenditure grants, generation incentives and renewable electricity credits will remain a key driver of solar uptake in the U.S. for at least the next three years,” according to the report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research and consulting firm. “The current drop in solar costs is taking place just as such policies are being implemented by the federal and various state governments, which is expected to lead to rapid growth in commercial, utility and residential solar power.”

Over the past two years, solar module prices have plunged by 50 percent as low-cost Chinese manufacturers expanded production and entered the U.S. market.

“Policy, rather than sunshine, will remain the U.S.’s greatest solar resource for the next few years,” Milo Sjardin, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s head of U.S. research, said in a statement. “By the middle of this decade, however, the U.S. retail solar market will be driven by fundamental, unsubsidized competition, which should transform the U.S. into one of the world’s most dynamic solar markets.”

Exhibit A for such a phenomenon is Germany. With about as much sunshine as Maine, the European nation became the world’s solar stronghold through policies that rewarded homeowners, businesses, and farmers for generating their own electricity.

Such policies are needed in the U.S., according to the report, given that solar electricity remains four times as expensive to generate than coal-fired power.

Of course, the failure of Congress to pass national climate change legislation and the current attempt to kill California’s global warming law shows that progress on green energy issues is not guaranteed in the U.S. And Congress’ habit of offering short-lived tax incentives for renewable energy and then dithering about extending them when they expire has played havoc with the industry and investors.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts photovoltaic panels will account for 30 gigawatts of the 44 gigawatts of solar electricity generation by 2020, with 14 gigawatts coming from solar thermal power plants. Solar thermal farms deploy huge arrays of mirrors to heat liquids to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines.

That might be a conservative estimate, if the California and federal officials’ rush to green light big solar projects in recent weeks is any indication. On Monday, for instance, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved a 1,000-megawatt solar thermal power plant to be built in the Southern California desert.

By year’s end, nearly four gigawatts of solar thermal projects are expected to be licensed. Just 10 gigawatts to go until 2020.

Solar City is a California-based startup company that offers its solar-related services to homeowners, businesses and government. “Install solar. Save money from day one. No upfront investment. And you have a predictable forecast of what your power costs will be for the next 20 years” is their selling proposition. The company’s customer base includes 10,000 homeowners, companies such as Intel and eBay, over 75 schools and universities, and government agencies. Solar City provides solar system financing, design, installation and monitoring.

Lyndon Rive is the CEO of Solar City, and his brother Peter Rive is its chief operating officer. They founded the company in 2006.

Solar City is one of many companies that allow lease of solar equipment; the others include SunRun and Sungevity. All are CA-based companies, and for good reason. According to Lyndon, over half of the estimated 80,000 US homes with rooftop solar are situated in the area covered by PG&E Corp., a solar-friendly utility company which has invested in both Solar City and SunRun.

Solar City does not see SunRun or Sungevity as big competition says Lydon. If anything, increase in solar on roofs, regardless of who installs it, should move the category forward. “Our primary competitor is the homeowner doing nothing,” he stated. “The market is not saturated.”

Very few homes have solar panels on their roofs due to many reasons. The average startup costs are around $30,000. Majority of people don’t know how to shop for panels at all. Who would they hire for installing these panels? What happens when the sun gets blocked? Or when the panels break?

Lydon and Peter focused on those adoption barriers when they started the company. According to Lydon, “Solar is a market that can really scale.” The focus of other companies was on manufacturing and researching new technologies, but none, in those days, was focusing on the mechanism for delivering the product on a big scale. Their vision was to develop the first national consumer-focused solar brand.

According to Lyndon, there were not really any models for brand that offers services for the home. Undeterred, they took the first steps in making rooftop solar as easy as possible.

So far, the company is operating in California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Oregon. They chose these five states because they have generous state subsidies, or ample sunlight, or high utility bills–ideally all of the three. Under the right circumstances, leasing of panels costs little or nothing upfront and the panels immediately help save 10% to 15% on utility bills.

Two announcements made recently by the company put a spotlight on it. Last month, Solar City announced that it got the contract for supplying thin-film solar panels to 20 to 30 Walmart stores in California and Arizona. Last week, the company said that homeowners will be able to lease energy efficiency products and services along with solar.

Bosch Thermotechnology North America, a leading provider of high quality water heating and comfort heating systems for homes and businesses, announced today that it has launched a new consumer education website at http://bosch-climate.us.

The website features links to product information covering Bosch’s portfolio of residential and commercial solar thermal tankless water heaters, gas tankless water heaters, electric tankless water heaters and electric mini-tank water heaters.

Visitors to the site can explore an interactive Energy Efficient Home, learn about available tax credits and rebates and discover how Bosch’s patented tankless water heating condensing technology works to heat water up to 50 percent more efficiently than a traditional gas storage tank water heater while reducing NOx and CO2 emissions, making for a more sustainable world. Additionally, visitors can take advantage of the site’s Dynamic Sizing Calculator to determine the appropriate model tankless water heater for their needs. An insightful intellectual challenge awaits those ready to put their energy efficiency knowledge to the test by taking the site’s Energy Quiz.

“We wanted to create a site that really drove home the idea of becoming more energy efficient because for most consumers, the home is where it starts. Bosch offers a large variety of products and solutions that can improve the quality of life of consumers while becoming more energy efficient. This new website presents information on energy efficient Bosch products in a professional, entertaining and engaging way, proving that becoming more energy efficient doesn’t have to be hard work, and the return is not only great on your pocketbook, it’s great for the environment too,” says Nuno Fernandes, customer engagement and demand creation director, Bosch Thermotechnology. “Bosch tankless water heaters and Bosch solar thermal systems are among the highest quality and most reliable products in the industry and are backed by the strongest service organization in the industry. Our goal with this project was to design an industry-leading website to appropriately showcase our industry-leading products and services. ”

The site’s Support Center tab features a comprehensive suite of customer service materials ranging from product manuals, warranty information and technical support to a sophisticated new “Where to Buy” contractor look-up to quickly connect to a local installation professional.

Database and calculation portions of this new site where designed and are maintained by the MyPointNow.com network.

Bosch Thermotechnology Corporation of Londonderry, NH and MyPointNow have launched a series of online systems on August 20 for the Buderus Boiler Line. This program, coined as the Compass system, is a comprehensive online array of interactive resources including:

• Online product registration and feedback systems for both product owners and installing contractors
• Comprehensive contractor search functions including a ranking system that allows consumers to identify the top Buderus installers in their community
• A lead management system whereby potential customers can contact contractors online combined with a responsive contact management system that will allow participating companies to improve their Buderus sales.
• The Compass contractor intranet site. Every Buderus contractor can log into their own intranet site to manage leads, register installations, review consumer feedback, access technical information, and participate in training.
• A Compass Flex-Content system that can customize intranet site content to meet the needs of other trade partners such as builders, engineers, institutional users, and utility or regulatory personnel.
• Full sales management integration with Buderus wholesalers, independent sales representatives, and Buderus personnel.
• Full integration with MyPointNow contractor website systems and the MyPointNow network.

Compass is the most comprehensive online system in the HVAC industry today. It empowers trade participants and allows them to efficiently improve their sales and market share by better serving the hydronic heating and domestic hot water markets.

By: Todd Woody

The anemic economic recovery may have hit the dog days of summer with consumer spending and factory orders slowing, but the new energy economy continues to surge, according to a report released Tuesday by Ernst & Young.

Venture capital (VC) investment in renewable energy, electric cars, energy efficiency, and other green technology jumped to $1.5 billion in the United States in the second quarter of 2010, a nearly 64 percent spike over the second quarter of last year. Green tech investment now has returned to the record levels of the third quarter of 2008, before the global economic collapse shut down the VC’s ATM.

So where’s the money going? Between March and June, at least, investors hitched a ride with startups developing electric cars and the infrastructure to support them. Better Place, the Palo Alto company building electric vehicle charging networks around the world, snagged $350 million. Fisker Automotive, a Southern California startup building a sexy and pricy plug-in hybrid sports sedan called the Karma, scored $35 million, according to the report.

Solar remains a hot opportunity for venture capitalists, with nearly $439 million invested in the second quarter, a 183 percent increase from the year-ago quarter.

It’s no coincidence that the beneficiaries of investors’ largesse are also those startups that received federal loan guarantees to build big solar power plants. (Raising additional capital usually is a requirement for obtaining such federal loan guarantees.)

BrightSource Energy, for instance, secured a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to build its first solar power plant, now undergoing licensing in California. It then quickly raised $180 million from investors.

VCs also continue to pour cash — nearly $200 million in the second quarter — into energy efficiency startups, which tend to be far less capital-intensive than renewable energy companies.

So it’s a good time to go pitch that great green tech idea you’ve been kicking around, right?

Not necessarily. Ernst & Young notes that nearly 59 percent of investment in the second quarter went to so-called later-stage startups that are well on their way to rolling out products.

In other words, venture capitalists seem to be more interested in priming the pipeline for an initial public offering or acquisition that will produce a big pay day than in financing what green tech investor Vinod Khosla calls “science experiments.”

According to business intelligence provider, IntertechPira, the total value of clean technologies by end-use category globally is expected to rise by over 250% to a sizeable $525 billion in 2019. This represents average annual growth of 13.5% for the ten year period from 2009.

Clean technologies include products and technologies designed to be economically competitive by using less material and energy to reduce their environmental impact compared with incumbent technologies. “The Future of Clean Technologies” report published by IntertechPira takes an in-depth look at the future of clean technologies with quantitative market forecasts to 2019 broken down by product, technology and end-use sector. It details prospects for raw material and technology suppliers and identifies the key materials, products, technologies and end-use sectors most likely to undergo significant growth over the next ten years.

The report covers the global market for clean technology devices and materials. Global is defined as including western Europe, eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, principally South Africa. The report finds that growth rates in clean technologies “greatly outperform those aimed at the traditional power generation industry”. According to IntertechPira, the pace of growth, and the promise it may hold, has a lot to do with the high-profile involvement of governments and private investors in many of the sectors.

Clean-tech still seen as expensive

Clean technology investments are still seen as astronomically costly by many venture capital firms, who tend to become nervous when faced with capital-intensive industrial segments. As such, most are making smaller sums available for small R&D teams to work with, rather than releasing larger sums, more appropriate for project finance-type capital investments. The emphasis seems to be very much upon supporting ventures headed by people with operational experience and technical expertise.

Biofuels market to triple, wind to quadruple

Despite this reticence by investors, by 2019 the global biofuels market, for example, is expected to more than triple from estimated 2009 bases of 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 3 billion gallons of biodiesel production.

Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2008 – something IntertechPira expects to happen again by 2019 – but it will remain a small part of total energy use.

Solar photovoltaics installations are anticipated to reach 8 GW globally by 2019. Solar power is not yet as widely used as hydro power, though this may change over the medium term, for hydro-based power is limited by the finite nature of suitable dam sites, as well as political restrictions on available supplies of water.

Fuel cell and hydrogen expected to increase 10 fold

The fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market are anticipated these to grow from an estimated $2 billion industry in 2009 (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) to more than $20 billion by 2019.

Plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, currently part of the 5% of alternative vehicles registered in North America, could capture up to 20% of the automotive market by 2030. The speed of adoption will depend on cost and customer experience – particularly how close the experience is to driving a petrol-powered vehicle

IntertechPira expects the wind-based segment to show the fastest growth the forecast period. In large part, this is due to robust expansion in China and the gathering view that wind is on course, with prices becoming more competitive as the sector greatly expands in size, to be perhaps the most viable alternative energy sector.

The four categories measured in the lighting segment (solid state, LED-based, energy efficient and daylighting) are each forecast to show impressive growth – each above the industry average – led by the daylighting and solid-state lighting (15%) sectors. Growth in the latter, along with LED-based lighting, would be even faster were it not for the still high costs associated with the technology and the continued struggle to develop a sufficiently soft, ‘comfortable’ light for the residential market to rival that achieved by traditional incandescent light bulbs.

The study forecasts the value of selected opportunities for raw material and technology suppliers in the clean technology industry to 2019. In sales-value terms, the biggest opportunities are expected in water filtration materials, power grid transmission lines, controls and sensors for smart grids, and wind turbine systems, annual demand for each should be in the order of $16–18 billion by 2019.