Research is vital to Sacramento region's green-tech growth

Research is vital to region's green-tech growth

Brainpower at universities could fuel product development, industry

Sacramento Business Journal - August 24, 2007

by Melanie Turner

Staff Writer

Dennis McCoy | Sacramento Business Journal
Ingrid Rosten is executive director of CleanStart, an incubator for renewable energy businesses.

Any attempt to turn Greater Sacramento into a green-technology hub would require a solid foundation of research into new approaches to reducing waste and conserving energy.

Local universities are working on it, from pure research on raw materials to practical applications for new technology. Most notably, the University of California Davis is recognized as a top research institution in the green-tech sector, exploring aspects of energy efficiency, advanced transportation technology and policy, wind energy and many other areas. California State University Sacramento is newer to the field, but pushing ahead, and other players, from major corporations to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, also are active.

Andy Hargadon, director of UC Davis' centers for entrepreneurship and energy efficiency, said research is a necessary ingredient for any community striving to breed a particular industry. Cutting-edge technology clusters, such as Silicon Valley and a computer technology hub in Boston, all had major universities nearby, he said.

Even more important than the research itself, he said, is the "intellectual capital" that research universities generate -- well-informed people who create products and work in the industry.

"You've got to start with the research before you can make product, so it's vital," said Ingrid Rosten, executive director of CleanStart, a renewable-energy business incubator that's an initiative of McClellan Technology Incubator and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance.

Most of the funding for local green-tech research comes from federal and state agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission. Funding also comes from nonprofits, industry groups and private industry, such as $5 million from the energy commission to study consumer attitudes about plug-in hybrid electric vehicles at UC Davis.

In September, Chevron Corp. pledged up to $25 million over five years for UC Davis research on developing transportation fuels from "cellulosic biomass," such as rice straw or other crop residues. The company hopes the research will lead to a small production plant demonstrating a commercially viable method of making biofuels, said Chevron spokesman Alex Yelland.

Chevron expects to spend $2.5 billion over the next couple of years on renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects, and has similar biofuel projects with other schools, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and forest products company Weyerhaeuser Co. (NYSE: WY).

Concentrated knowledge

Chevron selected UC Davis because of its expertise in alternative transportation research, Yelland said. "UC Davis has a top research and teaching program on hydrogen and biofuels."

The Davis school is home to a variety of other "clean-tech" research:

• The university received a $1 million grant from the California Clean Energy Fund and $500,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. last year to establish an Energy Efficiency Center, which studies methods for cutting energy use in buildings, agriculture, food processing and transportation. "They're trying to revolutionize the way we cool our large retail centers, like Wal-Mart or Target," said Sylvia Wright of UC Davis News Service.
• UC Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies is an internationally recognized program with more than 60 affiliated faculty and researchers, 80 graduate students and a $6 million annual budget. The institute examines topics from studying ways to make tires more efficient to drafting California's new low-carbon fuel standard.
• The Biogas Energy Project, launched last year, is the country's first large-scale demonstration of a technology developed by a UC Davis professor that diverts food waste and yard clippings away from landfills and into the energy grid. The technology has been licensed from the university by Davis firm Onsite Power Systems Inc. and adapted for commercial use.
• UC Davis is one of few universities in the country where researchers are studying ways to make wind turbines more cost-effective. Companies across the country and the U.S. Department of Energy are taking notice, but UC Davis is still a "very small player" when compared to research in the field taking place in Denmark and the Netherlands, said C.P. "Case" van Dam, director of the university's five-year-old California Wind Energy Collaborative.

Between 70 percent and 90 percent of the program's roughly $400,000-a-year in funding comes from the state and federal government. Funding also comes from individual companies, such as Clipper Windpower Inc. near Santa Barbara and General Electric Co. Private research dollars are the toughest to get in all clean-tech fields, he said. "You run into patent and intellectual property rights."

• The California Lighting Technology Center works on ways to turn laboratory discoveries into energy-saving products, such as night lights with motion sensors. The center is working with a Bay Area lighting manufacturer to develop research into commercial production of more energy-efficient office lights.

Companies have emerged as result of research at the university. UC Davis has licensed several alternative-energy technologies to small companies often started by university researchers who created the inventions.

Those include:

• West Sacramento-based Q1 Nanosystems Corp., working on tiny "nanotubes" to increase the efficiency of solar power cells.
• HyPhase Energy of Davis, which is trying to raise money to commercialize a polymer material for fuel cells.
• SynapSense Corp., a Folsom startup developing technologies that could cut energy use in data centers. The company is in a pilot project with International Business Machines Corp., has raised $2 million in venture capital and is expected to close a third round of financing soon.
• High Merit Thermoelectrics Inc. of Sacramento, which is raising money to develop a material that helps convert heat to electricity. "We believe with energy costs increasing there will be more applications for our new devices," said Geoff Jennings, co-founder of the startup.

Jennings said the device could tap heat from the exhaust in catalytic converters on large trucks. "We believe we can increase truck fuel efficiency by about 15 percent," he said.

Other research

While UC Davis has been conducting environmental research for decades, for the past year Sacramento State has been working to develop courses in biofuels, solar and wind power, said Emir Macari, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The university is tapping into resources at UC Davis, and is united with SARTA and the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce in efforts to create a thriving clean-tech sector here, he said.

Research in solar, biofuels and wind energy is taking place at Sacramento State's Center for Clean Energy, launched early this year. The university also hopes to land a $5 million federal grant next year, to be split between SARTA, the university and Los Rios Community College District. The money would help develop an educational system focused on clean-tech. Plans include an associate degree in clean energy at Los Rios, he said.

The Center for Clean Energy, which so far is funded with seed money from the university, also aims to work with green-tech startups to help them get established here.

The center is working with one local startup so far -- venture-capital backed Marquiss Wind Power Inc. of Folsom, which is developing a new type of wind turbine. Students and faculty are studying the efficiency and viability of the technology. "That's the idea, for us to be able to provide such services to small startups that don't have huge R&D departments," Macari said.

While municipal utility SMUD does not conduct long-term exploratory research on basic materials or chemicals -- the kind seen on university campuses -- the utility is examining green-tech advances in more than 10 commercial projects in various stages of development, working with private industry.

SMUD worked with two manufacturers on a research and development project to create solar modules that work on concrete tile roofs, for example.

"We couldn't penetrate that market," said Mike DeAngelis, manager of SMUD's Advanced Renewables and Distributed Generation Technologies Program. "The technology didn't work well for new residential roofing."

Today, the interlocking modules that resemble roof tiles are being used throughout California. General Electric owns the technology for the modules.

Among its many current projects, SMUD has a CEC-funded contract with Clipper Windpower, a Carpinteria-based company that's publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, to test its idea for a new turbine that would use four generators per turbine, instead of one. The hope is that fewer wind turbines would sit idle and maintenance costs would go down.

Staff writer Celia Lamb contributed to this report. melanieturner@bizjournals.com | 916-558-7859