When I decided to leave Tesla last October, I didn’t know what I was going to do next, and I had very little time to figure it out. I had committed to myself to make my exit as smooth as possible for the benefit of the company and there was a lot of work to be done, leaving no time for planning next steps. I did know a few things though: For starters, I was quitting a good job in perhaps the worst job market since I graduated college. But such is life. You can’t always pick the circumstances that you find yourself in, but you always have the choice of how to handle them and ultimately one’s character is defined by the decisions they make when confronted with tough choices. It is this philosophy that led to my leaving Tesla, but more interesting is how this philosophy led to what I am doing now. When I left my previous job as CMO at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company to join Tesla, I knew that the risk associated with such a move would be hedged by the fact that the experience alone would be extremely valuable, regardless of the outcome. I felt this way for two reasons: First, it was clear that cleantech was going to be the next important sector for innovation and industrial growth. I had missed out on the last “big thing� in Silicon Valley (for better or for worse) and felt that living in the Bay Area but working at a large financial services company was somehow incongruous. I felt the tug toward participating in what makes Silicon Valley extraordinary. Second, I believe that one’s growth, both personal and professional, is maximized when you pursue orthogonal vectors. There are incremental gains to be had by continuing to try to advance in the same direction. The gains are exponential when you strike out in an entirely new direction. Which brings me back to what I am doing now. I’ve been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Aside from starting a short-lived record label (don’t ask), I’ve never been an entrepreneur. While I have always done well working within someone else’s system, I have a strong predisposition to independence and originality. The idea of having a much more direct path between my effort and the outcome is very compelling. Once again, my timing is impeccable. As a first time entrepreneur, it isn’t the most opportune time to raise funds to start a new venture. This is why I concluded that I would need to try an innovative approach to starting this company. It was a tough choice to pursue this route rather than the comfort or safety of taking another job at an established company, but I believe it is the right choice. The announcement that went over the wire yesterday that I am joining Peppercom as their senior analyst in cleantech is a part of the story. I am going to do my best to help build Peppercom into a leading player in cleantech communications and at the same time will be launching my startup, with Peppercom’s support, while working out of their offices in downtown San Francisco. Peppercom is a great partner for several reasons. My startup is a software service aimed at journalists, media relations professionals and CEOs, so working closely with a leading communications firm will help me build a better company. My background in cleantech communications and branding will be a great addition to Peppercom’s already strong capabilities in that area. Also, Peppercom believes that the best way to provide value in the business of communications is to have a deep understanding of the clients’ business. I believe this is especially true in the cleantech business, and Peppercom definitely lives up to this promise. In fact, when I concocted the idea of developing my startup company out of a communications firm, the first and only firm I spoke to seriously was Peppercom. I think this certainly qualifies as an orthogonal vector, no? I’m looking forward to the next few years of growth. May they be as valuable as the last few have been! Daryl Siry is the former chief marketing officer for Tesla Motors. He now consults on marketing and the automotive industry. You can read more here: http://darrylsiry.blogspot.com.

China’s amazing surge as an economic power started with the creation of special economic zones (SEZs) nearly 30 years ago, as did my “it’s complicated� love affair with the country. The zones provided a blueprint for the rest of the country toward accelerated wealth creation. They also marked the beginning of a catastrophic decline in environmental capital. Now the country may be dusting off the SEZ concept and considering the creation of Low Carbon Zones (LCZs). My involvement in the U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum and JUCCCE has put China front of mind, as has my front-row seat in the international race to see who becomes the superpower of cleantech. In the resource-constrained world of the future, the economies that are most efficient (i.e., best at innovating and adopting clean technologies) will win. First proposed in 2007, the idea of Low Carbon Zones was an outcome of interaction between E.U. and Chinese think tanks, with the support of the U.K. Foreign Ministry and China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The concept, thumbnailed here and here with even greater detail here, states:

LCZs would aim to stimulate transformational regional political leadership, endorsed at the national level, to create an enabling environment for large-scale innovative low carbon private and public investment. Just as SEZs provided China with a laboratory to shape its participation in the global market economy, the LCZs could pioneer approaches to decarbonisation compatible with Chinese institutions and development approaches.

It appears an initial pilot of the LCZ concept is planned for China’s heavy industrial province of Jilin. I hope the idea flies, as it’s clearly in the global long-term interest. But no doubt questions of IP, tech transfer and ultimately money could create concerns within the industrialized democracies that the West is once again funding China’s development, only to be left holding the bag. Another seemingly similar initiative in China has recently emerged from the Climate Group, outlined in a new report, which also focuses on developing low carbon cities. According to the Climate Group, the program aims to recruit, motivate, and engage 20 Chinese cities in a five-year campaign to transform and accelerate the local market for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. MOUs have already been signed with the cities of Guiyang and Dezhou. It’s unclear from the materials I’ve read what the specific funding mechanism for either of these concepts will be, although with the backing of groups like the NDRC at the central government level, it’s certainly within the realm of the possible. As I’ve written about before, China’s scale offers the greatest potential for any country (except for maybe India) to drive down costs of cleantech and make clean solutions truly commercially viable. But that doesn’t mean other countries aren’t trying to compete. Less developed ideas seem to be emerging in the U.S. and Europe. Cities like Seattle and Boston have been floating the idea of cleantech innovation hubs. Various states are also vying to attract cleantech investment and economic stimulus money, including Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Michigan. In Europe, efforts are also under way to create the region’s first cleantech incubator, which if successful, might be followed by others. And of course, there is the Oz-like effort in Masdar in Abu Dhabi (“pay no attention to that man behind the curtain�), where the Wizard is oil money. It’s great to see a growing understanding that low carbon leadership will mean future political and economic leadership in the world. I just hope that those in the emerging Cleantech Great Game keep in mind the lessons of the original Great Game – that the fight for supremacy over a largely unmapped, strategic territory often leads to unnecessary pain and suffering at the expense of the common good. Let’s hope that the newly announced International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) can play a role in fostering the needed collaboration and help us put aside the myopia often caused by financial gain. A former foreign correspondent, William Brent is a public relations exec at Weber Shandwick. He started the firm’s cleantech practice. More can be found at http://www.mrcleantech.com.

President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week have been enjoying each other's company. The two have discussed tar sands, the goopy, sandy and dirty source of fossil fuels up there in the Great White North. But how valuable are tar sands and can they be extracted? Hyperion Power Generation, the nuclear-in-a-box people, say yes. The company's sealed reactor can produce 70 megawatts of thermal energy, which can be used for separating the sand from the oil. The reactor, as the company has emphasized, is also not made to power condominium complexes and subdivisions. It is made to provide energy to remote, secure, and somewhat off-grid facilities like military bases and oil fields. The company expects to start delivering its reactors, developed at Los Alamos National Labs, in 2014. Using nuclear -- which does not generate fossil fuels -- could play a important role in improving the greenhouse gas balance with tar sands. Canada's tar sands contain 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to proponents. (Critics put the figure much lower.) The world consumed 84.3 million barrels of oil a day in 2005. At that rate, tar sands could provide enough oil for 2035 days, or 5.58 years. (Oil consumption is expected to rise to 112.5 million barrels a day by 2030.). If you count the tar sands that can't be recovered by existing means, the estimate of the reserves jumps to 1.7 trillion barrels. That's quite a bit. U.S. manufacturers are expected to only produce 250 gallons (gallons, not barrels) of cellulosic ethanol a year by 2011 and that is if everything works as planned. So far, cellulosic ethanol providers are behind schedule. Total ethanol production in 2007 worldwide from all feedstocks comes to 13 billion gallons. Divide by 42 to get barrels and factor in a discount because ethanol doesn't provide the same energy per gallon that gas does and the figures for ethanol begin to look really small. Finding ways to produce tar sands cleanly would still, however, leave the problem that you are burning fossil fuel. True, but liquid fossil fuels still aren't our biggest problem. Transportation, where most liquid fuels go, account for only 26 percent of the total energy budget in the U.S. In other words, it might make more sense to tackle the coal problem first and use clean tar sand extraction as an interim step in what will be a decades-long quest for cleaner car fuels. And Canada is more democracy friendly than Kazakhstan. Just a thought.

A post on the Green Light blog led me to an interesting Green Inc. story about a new cottage industry -- refurbishing and reselling used wind turbines. As wind turbines have become larger and more efficient, 1980s era wind-farm owners have discarded their old turbines in favor of newer models. A bunch of companies that overhaul and sell used wind turbines have emerged, including Halus Power Systems (Halus), Energy Maintenance Service (EMS), Aeronautica Windpower and Nexion DG.

The first thing I thought of as a patent attorney was the potential infringement liability.  If indeed the turbines at issue are from the 1980s, to the extent they were patented, the patents have expired by now.

But if these companies are servicing turbines made more recently, infringement could be an issue.  Under U.S. patent law, once a patented article is sold, repair of the article is permissible, but reconstruction (making an essentially new article on the template of the original) constitutes infringement. The line between repair and reconstruction is not always clear and depends on the facts of each case.  The types of refurbishment that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held to be permissible repair include re-applying a non-stick coating to a cooking device, replacing an inner container for medical waste, and replacing disks in a tomato harvester head. By contrast, when an entirely new cutting tip was created for a patented drill bit after the existing cutting tip could no longer be sharpened and reused, the Federal Circuit found the overhaul to be reconstruction. Two key issues run through the case law on repair and reconstruction.  The first is whether the entire patented article as a whole can be viewed as having completed its useful life.  In these cases, refurbishment typically is deemed infringing reconstruction. The second is whether the whole patented article consists of a combination of unpatented parts.  In those cases, even where refurbishment is extensive and includes disassembly, modification or replacement of many of the unpatented components, the process is likely to be viewed as permissible repair. So, assuming the possibility of overhauling patented wind turbines, if the used or broken turbines still have useful life in them and consist of unpatented blades, generator, gearbox, etc., these resellers are likely to be in the clear.  On the other hand, if the turbines are spent or have anything like the patent protection of Clipper Windpower’s Liberty wind turbine, an overhaul could rise to the level of patent infringement. Another factor, of course, is authorization from the patent holder.  Halus’s website says the company specializes in remanufacturing wind turbines originally produced by Vestas, but it’s unclear whether there is some type of partnering arrangement between the two companies. Eric Lane is a patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, where he is in the Intellectual Property and Climate Change & Clean Technology practices.  Eric is the founder and author of Green Patent Blog, which provides discussion and analysis of intellectual property law issues in clean technology.

Microsoft, Oracle and Intel all agree — data centers can run hotter than most people think they can.

And that means using outside air to cool them isn’t as crazy an idea as it used to seem, representatives from the three IT giants said Thursday at the Teledata Technology Convergence Conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Temperature is a hot topic for data center operators, since cooling systems can make up a large share of capital and operating costs. More and more data centers are trying to cut energy costs in the face of what’s expected to be overwhelming growth in their thirst for power (see Data Centers Could Hit 'Resource Crisis').

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) did raise its temperature guidelines for data center equipment last year, giving servers a temperature range of up to 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit, rather than the 77 degrees it had set in 2004.

But Microsoft, for one, is demanding in its procurements that servers run at temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s what Christian Belady, Microsoft’s Principal Power and Cooling Architect, told an audience of data center aficionados.

“You may have a slightly higher failure rate� at those higher temperature, he said. “But I challenge any vendor to tell us what that failure rate will be.�

Raising the acceptable temperatures inside data centers opens up the possibility of “air economization� — in other words, using outside air without air conditioning.

Bradley Ellison, IT Infrastructure Manager for Intel, said the company recently finished a nine-month test of a New Mexico data center that used an "air economizer" system — one that drew in outside air as hot as 90 degrees Fahrenheit and shifted to air conditioning only when the air exceeded that temperature.

"This will not work everywhere," he said. "But we did not experience any equipment failures by going to outside air."

But try telling that to data center customers, said Mukesh Khattar, global director of energy efficiency for Oracle.

“We have users who balk at the idea that you’re trying to run those systems beyond� ASHRAE specifications, he said. “The very first failure that happens, they’ll come right after you.�

Not only that, but some data center designers will refuse to leave out cooling systems, he said.

“So we said, you install a $5 million chiller plant that will not be operated, and because we have a chiller plant we have to exercise it form time to time — all kinds of issues are coming up,� he said.

Borrego Solar Systems has agreed to sell its residential installation business to groSolar for an undisclosed sum.

The El Cajon, Calif.-based Borrego said Thursday it will focus on designing and building solar energy systems for businesses and government agencies because that’s where the big money can be made. The company, which recently raised $14 million, is expanding into the mid-Atlantic region, beginning with New York and New Jersey. Borrego has been doing business in California and Massachusetts.

Borrego, founded in 1980, has reasoned that demand in the commercial and government markets will grow faster than the residential one. Sales from these two segments accounted for more 75 percent of the company’s revenue in 2008, it said. Borrego said it generated $60 million in revenue in 2008, and ended the year with more than $90 million in contracts.

Commercial and government projects tend to be larger and, until recently, more incentives were available for commercial installations, according to a study released today by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

A change in the federal investment tax credit this year will sweeten the deal for homeowners who want solar. On the other hand, the $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama this week contained a $5.5 billion provision for making federal buildings more energy efficient, and that could include adding solar energy systems.

Obviously, groSolar, founded in 1998, thinks it’s getting a pretty good deal with the acquisition. The company, based in White River Junction, Vt., serves 12 states and Canada. It does both residential and commercial projects.

Midday events at Stanford University attract a crowd of students, professors, George Schultz in a red jacket and a bunch of retirees.  I mean, who else can attend a speech by the CEO of ExxonMobil in the middle of the day? Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil recited a speech on Tuesday afternoon in an event sponsored by the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). GCEP's purpose is to conduct pre-commercial research that will lead to technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  ExxonMobil is GCEP's largest sponsor and plans to invest up to $100 million in the program over 10 years. In 1968, there would be have been howls of protest in the face of an oil company underwriting an environmental program. These days, Stanford students just hope for employment after their studies. Mr. Tillerson, a civil engineer by training, joined Exxon in 1975.  He became CEO and Chairman of Exxon in 2006.  According to Wikipedia, The Rockefeller family sponsored a non-binding resolution to separate the CEO and chairman positions that Tillerson holds in order to maintain a system of checks and balances. The Rockefeller family also wanted Exxon Mobil to invest more in alternative energy. The resolution did not obtain the necessary majority, and Tillerson held on to both job titles.  According to Forbes' CEO compensation data, he made about $6.86 million in compensation in 2007. Here are some quotes from Mr. Tillerson:

• "The world economy will recover and when the world economy recovers -- so will energy demand."
• "'Hydrocarbon energy is available and abundant and will account for the majority of the world's energy demand at least until 2030"
• "No single energy source will meet all needs or reduce emissions, there is no one perfect solution on the shelf or on the drawing board."
• "Solar needs to drop an order of magnitude to about $0.30/W from $3.00/W."
• "With much further R&D, algae could play a role in transportation fuel supplies and reducing GHGs."
• "We believe that a carbon tax would be a more effective policy than a cap-and-trade system."
• "It is rare that a business person like myself would support a new tax but it is my judgment that a carbon tax would be the best solution."
• "We need a 30-year energy policy, 10 years won't do it."

On peak oil:

• "We endorse the assessment of the USGS -- the current conventional oil resource base is three trillion barrels and there are another one to two trillion barrels in heavy oil and one trillion barrels of shale oil.  We have consumed one trillion barrels since we started using oil.  There is a large endowment out there.  USGS updates have always gone up -- it is a technology phenomenon.  With technology advancements like 3D seismic imaging to a whole host of other technologies.  We have gone from 600 feet to 10,000 feet ocean drilling.  It's ongoing technical advances that open up and identify that resource endowment -- imaging in sub salt basins in West Africa and below basalt imaging.  The technology keeps moving and the resource base keeps growing,  We are confident that we can access much more. We have sufficient hydrocarbon resources to meet the world's needs for the next century."

On climate change:

• "Climate science is one of the most complex sciences out there today.  We don't believe in scientific consensus.  That's an oxymoronic statement.  We support scientific investigation.  We have to submit to the continuation of scientific study.  Its too important to fail.  C02 concentration is going up and temperature is going up but what is the relationship?   We have an issue about how people use the models.  First and foremost we need to support good unencumbered scientific investigation.  As far as policy -- it is a risk management issue -- probabilities of outcome.  We need to actively manage that risk.  Our position hasn't changed.  The science has been so contaminated by the political process."

Why not drill in the U.S.?

• "The U.S. has a rich resource endowment that has not been fully explored or tapped.  It is withheld from our beneficial use -- our government water and our government lands.  We've been set in the mindset of the 1960s  It is purely and simply an environmental issue.  If you live by the precautionatry principle -- get out your tent and your matches and your horse.  We have to help the public understand."

We can't drill our way to energy independence. The  Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that offshore drilling will have little effect on oil and gas production or on prices before 2030. Meanwhile, Big Oil swims in record profits and the U.S. is the top global warming polluter in the world. We need a new vision for our future.  We should focus on reducing our need for oil -- which is where real national energy security lies.