Seeker Blog

Commenting on the post Energy policy: relative costs of fuel sources, Brian H. wrote:

Keep your eye on that expensive PV row. It’s the only one with something like Moore’s Law deflation going for it.

Yes — and biotech, especially synthetic biology, may turn out to have an exponential deflation as well. That’s speculation, as nobody is anywhere close to a competitive, industrial scale goo-vat to fuel process. Venter’s Synthetic Genomics is working on that track, and has hired Ari Patrinos from DOE as president.

Amyris Biotechnologies is also investing in fuel via synthetic biology — starting from fundamentals: what molecules would make an ideal fuel [per application], and then attempting to synthesize microorganisms that will produce the desired target molecule. I confess that their concept of identifying desirable hydrocarbon molecules is exiting. Another bleeding edge synthetic biology effort is LS9.

Back to photovoltaic solar — do you know what are the negative environmental costs of commercial PV? Some of the comparative studies of energy sources I’ve seen found PV solar to be even worse than coal when all environmental “costs” were considered over the full life cycle.

Google’s cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have invested in Nanosolar, whose “printing” process sounds like it might scale to competitive levels. I understand that Nanosolar is investing its recent $100 million round in a new manufacturing plant, with a production capacity equivalent to one-quarter of the current total worldwide PV production [!!]. Look at the list of new investors in that $100 million round - lots of PV industry insiders:

In addition to strong participation by the company’s existing investors including venture firms MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Firelake Capital, Onpoint as well as Japanese trading leader Mitsui, new investors include:
- SAC Capital and GLG Partners, two world-class investment funds with substantial PV industry investment experience;
- Swiss Re, the insurance sector leader of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index;
- Grazia Equity, the original backer of Conergy AG, the world’s largest PV system integrator;
- Christian Reitberger, the original backer of Q-Cells, the world’s largest independent silicon cell PV manufacturer;
- Capricorn Management, the investment arm of Jeff Skoll, known for its support of clean energy causes;
- the investment arms of SAP founders Klaus Tschira (via FirstVentury) and Dietmar Hopp, and
- Beck, a leading PV power plant system integrator.

Strictly on the basis of “investors who should know what they are doing” Nanosolar looks very interesting.

Lastly, Ray Kurzweil keeps talking about “nanotech” leading to solar power so cheap that it becomes the dominant class of new electrical generation by 2020 or so. I’ve not discovered what Ray has in mind. Possibly Nanosolar’s nanocomponents are an example?