A recovery in home improvement spending will soon be underway according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) released today by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Remodeling spending is expected to increase on an annual basis by the end of the year, and the LIRA points to growth accelerating to the double-digit range in the first quarter of 2011.

“Absent a reversal of recent economic progress, there should be a healthy upturn in home improvement activity by year-end and into next year,” says Eric S. Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Homeowner optimism is bolstering a trend toward investing in the home again. “The recovery in home improvement activity appears to be moving beyond simple replacement projects and energy retrofits to broader remodels and upgrades,” says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “A wider activity base would help generate the expected growth in the quarters ahead.”

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Never thought you’d see the day when a Texas oilman turns sunny-side up? Oh wait, T. Boone Pickens has been there, funded that.

OK, how about a fictional oil tycoon?

Larry Hagman, who slicked himself up as exactly that in the hit TV soap opera Dallas — Wikipedia tells me it was a hit; it was before my time — has now reprised his role as the famous oilman in a commercial for the German photovoltaic manufacturer, SolarWorld.

It was apparently the BP oil disaster that spurred this actor and solar advocate to produce the TV spot. However, in return for doing the ad, SolarWorld agreed to donate panels to support work in Haiti done by the Solar Electric Light Fund. Hagman serves on the board of this nonprofit.

Still, the way he cackles at the solar panels in the commercial makes me wish he were actually starring in a television show about a solar energy baron striking it rich after finding sun spilling all over his property. Or maybe he could go the reality-TV route and call it “Real Solar Pimps of Texas.” What do you think?

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.

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By: Nathan Stubbs

When Corey Saft looked at the first utility bill for his newly built rent house on Whittington Drive, it was with more than the usual sense of apprehension. The UL architecture professor had spent the past two years dreaming, planning, designing and ultimately building the narrow home, with a footprint under 800 square feet, on the lot adjacent to his residential home, with much of that time devoted to ensuring the house maximized energy efficiencies.

Holding up the bill, Saft now had total vindication. Not only did it read “no amount due” but as it turned out, Lafayette Utilities System actually owed him 62 cents for the month. It was no anomaly. When the next bill came, for the month of April, Saft hardly batted an eye when he saw that utilities for the house had skyrocketed more than 500 percent, up to a whopping $5.

“There was a sense of relief, really,” Saft says of his reaction to the first two months’ bills. “You don’t want to be too optimistic. I mean everything you read says one thing, but usually it never comes out that good. So I was definitely pretty surprised. It was hoped for; I wouldn’t say anticipated. It’s the first time this was done in a hot, humid climate where everything kind of worked out the way it was supposed to.”

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac claimed the first casualty in their attack on a promising clean-energy financing tool when Boulder County, Colo., canceled the latest round of its popular ClimateSmart Loan Program on Tuesday.

“We are extremely disappointed by the lack of flexibility and vision we’ve encountered with the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency], and with Fannie and Freddie,” the county Board of Commissioners wrote in cancelling the program.

To date the program has helped more than 600 homeowners invest more than $10 million on rooftop solar panels, home wind systems, and retrofits that cut energy waste — work performed by local businesses. The current funding round had attracted another 173 applicants.

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