Exploring the World Of Cleantech Venture Capitalists

While googling EPRIDA, I found a great blog that covers the "Cleantech" world. For all of you who don't know diddly about venture capital (as I don't) the term Cleantech is a buzzword used by venture capitalists -- you know, those folks who fund new technologies, and who created Google and Apple and damn near every other high-tech company of the past 20 year.

Here is their post from a few months back, talking about carbon credit investing as the next big thing (which translates into carbon sequestration investing as the next big thing).

More on Char-Soil-Sequestration

In an earlier post we discussed the concept of making "char" out of agricultural waste, then tilling it into the soil. This sequesters carbon permanently.

This is not just about carbon sequestration, but soil quality and fertilization. The name in the soil geology field is Terra Preta, which refers to the dark quality of the earth where this method was practiced.

A company that is pushing this concept directly is EPRIDA. Very interesting stuff.

Here is another article on the subject and another and another great PPT from EPRIDA.

DOE Carbon Sequestration Newsletter -- Dec 2006

(ed note: for those of you who have never read this newsletter, I highly recommend it. It's much better looking in the .PDF form than you would think, reading this blog. Check it out.)

Link here

Contents:


DOE Techline, “DOE Project Injects
700 Tons of Carbon Dioxide Into
Texas Sandstone Formation;
Researchers to Determine the Ability
of Brine Formations to Sequester
Greenhouse Gas,” and United Press
International, “US Tests CO2 Underground
Storage Options.”

China Daily, “Nation Ready To Join US Future-
Gen Power Project.”

E&E News, “Idaho Considers Carbon Sequestering
Projects.”

Reuters, “Norway To Build World's Biggest CO2
Capture Facility.”

Energy Central, “ALSTOM, EPRI and We Energies To
Build Pilot Plant In the US To Demonstrate Its
Unique CO2 Capture Process,”

Central Valley Business Times (California), “Central
Valley May Be Site for ‘Carbon Repository’ In Global
Warming Battle,” and San Mateo County Times,
“Delta Explored As Place To Stash Carbon Dioxide:
Global Warming Solution Could Be To Put Gases In
Underground Caverns.”

NASA Announces Drop in Ocean Plankton

One of the key parts of my interest in Iron Fertilization is the fact that, in addition to sequestering CO2, this technique increases the amount of plankton growing in the ocean, which helps restore fish and marine mammal populations. As one a correspondent from Planktos said: "actually we consider the plankton and sea life restoration to be the most important part of the mission...removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere provides the funds via carbon credits. It's a win-win for everybody." (Note, Planktos is a private firm developing iron fertilization techniques...listed in Ocean Conservancy article highlighted in my past few posts.)

So here's a bombshell yesterday from NASA (quoted from the UK Independant)

Climate change is killing the oceans' microscopic 'lungs'

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Global warming has begun to change the way microscopic plant life in the oceans absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - a trend that could lead to a dramatic increase in the heating power of the greenhouse effect.

Satellite data gathered over the past 10 years has shown for the first time that the growth of marine phytoplankton - the basis of the entire ocean food chain - is being adversely affected by rising sea temperatures.

Scientists have found that as the oceans become warmer, they are less able to support the phytoplankton that have been an important influence on moderating climate change

More on this topic:

Boston Globe

SF Chronicle

ABC News


Planktos press release on this topic