Energy generation - other

Wind

ChapDrive
Trondheim, Norway.
Founded 2006
Employees: 20
Product description: Wind power

ChapDrive aims to produce more efficient wind turbines for offshore use. It has patented a system of hydraulic transmission that could significantly cut running costs by reducing the much higher failure rate of traditional turbines running on mechanical gearboxes. Potential problems are also minimised by transferring more of the weight of the individual turbines to the lower part of their structures. This system could reduce installation costs. The world market has been dominated by large, international suppliers that have tended to produce a standard product. The ChapDrive technology, currently being field-tested, would enable smaller players to participate.

IQWind
Bazra, Israel.
Founded 2007
Employees: 20
Product description: Wind power

IQWind believes it has solved one of the main problems restricting the growth of the wind turbine sector. Its flagship product, a new gear system, allows rotors to move faster than they currently do. Traditionally, the blades have had to turn at a constant speed and have been unable to take advantage of periods of the fastest wind flow. The company has applied for a patent for the system, which can be fixed to existing as well as new wind farms, and could also have sea tide energy applications.

Nordic Windpower
Berkeley, California, US, and Bristol, UK.
Founded 2005
Employees: 20
Product description: Wind turbines

Wind turbines weighing less and cheaper to transport, install and maintain are behind the offering of Nordic Windpower – a merger of Swedish, US and UK firms in 2005. Due to their lightweight materials and innovative ability to flex in the face of the wind, Nordic’s turbines are less prone to component fatigue or damage in high winds, the firm claims. It says over a 10-year span turbines used in the field have performed at 98% reliability, with no major component failures, for more than 100,000 hours of operation.

Marine

Marine Current Turbines
Bristol, UK.
Founded 1989
Employees: 15
Product description: Tidal power turbines for energy generation

Harnessing the vast yet completely predictable power of ocean tides using devices that act like underwater windmills is the specialty of Marine Current Turbines. Its SeaGen turbine, operating off the Irish coast, generates enough power to meet the energy needs of 1,000 homes, the highest anywhere in the world for such a system. Twin 15-metre rotors are spun by the force of the sea and can be raised above water for maintenance. Almost entirely submerged, silent and immovable, the system has numerous environmental benefits, alongside its clean energy generation.

Pelamis Wave Power
Edinburgh, Scotland.
Founded 1998
Employees: 70
Product description: Wave power generation

A giant, near-200-metre long plastic snake, the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter is a semi-submerged, articulated structure composed of cylindrical sections. The wave-induced motion of these joints is resisted by hydraulic rams, which pump high-pressure fluid through hydraulic motors to electrical generators that produce electricity. With a number able to be linked together, and the power conducted back to land by wires attached to the sea bed, each snake can provide sufficient power to meet the annual electricity demand of about 500 homes.

Biofuels

Amyris Biotechnologies
California, US.
Founded 2003
Employees: 200
Product description: Biofuels

This biotech company first became famous for producing the anti-malarial drug, Artemisinin, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley. Turning its focus to the wider uses of
synthetic biology, Amyris is now using genetic engineering to produce yeasts that can create highly efficient biofuels. It opened a pilot plant last November and plans to produce 900m litres a year of biofuel for commercial sale by 2011. It is using sugarcane, a far more efficient base than corn, as a base for producing a diesel fuel with performance properties that equal or exceed petrol-based fuels and other existing biofuels.

BioGasol
Ballerup, Denmark.
Founded 2006
Employees: 25
Product description: Biofuels

If BioGasol is correct in its scientific assumptions and predictions, it could be making bioethanol as a fuel for about half the current price (after taxes) of petrol in the US. It has developed proprietary technologies for biogas pretreatment and production, including a unique fermentation process that maximises ethanol output. There is more than 90% use of the energy potential in the biomass it treats. The production of other biofuels, such as methane hydrogen and solid fuels, adds value to the overall process benefit. It is working on a demonstration plant on the island of Bornholm and hopes to go into industrial production in 2011.

Chemrec
Stockholm, Sweden.
Founded 1991
Employees: 30
Product description: Biofuels

Chemrec AB is a Swedish-based biomass-to-energy technology firm with a US subsidiary near Chicago. It has developed a proprietary gasification technology that converts black liquor, a waste stream in pulp and paper mills, into high-quality synthesis gas which can then be processed into a variety of advanced biofuels or green chemicals or used to drive turbines to make electricity. The technology is fully proven and can transform a pulp mill into an integrated biorefinery, bringing with it cashflow and profits. Its main investors are leading venture capital cleantech firms.

Cobalt Biofuels
California, US.
Founded 2005
Employees: 25
Product description: Biofuels

Developing a superior alternative to gasoline is the aim of this north California-based company, which is concentrating on the next-generation biofuel – biobutanol, produced from corn and a range of “non-food feedstocks”. It has an energy density similar to gasoline, leaving a carbon footprint one-third smaller, and it can be transported in gasoline pipelines. Cobalt is applying advances in strain improvement, reaction management and separation technology to make biobutanol production a sustainable commercial enterprise. These advances are said to lower the production costs of biobutanol.

Coskata
Illinois, US. Founded 2006
Employees: 50+
Product description: Feedstock-flexible,
syngas-to-ethanol platform

Located just outside Chicago, Coskata is a biology-based renewable energy company. It is working on low-cost ways of developing ethanol by using a wide variety of input material such as biomass and agricultural and municipal wastes (including wood chips and old tyres). Using proprietary micro-organisms and patented bioreactor designs, Coskata will produce feedstock-flexible ethanol when, if all goes to plan, it begins commercial production in 2012. It is proud of its output ratios that can exceed 100 gallons of ethanol per dry ton of feedstock. The company has several patents in operation.

Gevo
Colorado, US.
Founded 2005
Employees: 40
Product description: Biofuels

To develop a new generation of biofuels to replace petrochemicals such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is the reason the Gevo team is working to make isobutanol and other advanced biofuels ready for a range of commercial uses. Isobutanol is more effective than other first-generation biofuels (such as ethanol) because, says Gevo, it has a higher energy content per gallon, could be transported through existing oil and gas pipes and could be used in gas-powered vehicles without modification or blending. A proprietary process has been developed at Gevo to convert agricultural waste products into different types of renewable, alcohol-based, liquid fuels.

LS9
San Francisco, California, US.
Founded 2005
Employees : 60+
Product description: Biofuels

Starting from low-carbon, natural sources of sugar such as sugar cane and cellulosic biomass, LS9’s DesignerMicrobes – an engineered group of new enzymes – are used in a one-step fermentation process to produce biofuels that have higher energetic content than ethanol or butanol and have fuel properties essentially indistinguishable from those of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The firm believes its products have the ability to change the transportation fuels landscape, turning the global fuel industry into an agricultural rather than industrial economy.

Mascoma
Lebanon, New Hampshire, US.
Founded 2005
Employees: 80
Product description: Bioprocessing of biomass into cellulosic ethanol

Producing biofuel from biomass – wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants – rather than wide expanses of corn or cane sugar is the holy grail of sustainable transport fuel. But, it is expensive, complex and slow, and this is where Mascoma’s new generation of microbes, yeasts and bacteria step in: they rapidly break down the components of biomass, convert a range of sugars and polymers to ethanol and thrive in a manufacturing environment, making large-scale production of low-cost biofuels a reality in the near future.

Sapphire Energy
San Diego, California, US.
Founded 2007
Employees: 100+
Product description: Algae-based biofuel

Pond scum – the fuel of the future? Sapphire Energy is producing gasoline from algae that meets industry standards and, by 2011, expects to produce 1m gallons of biodiesel and jet fuel per year. The obvious main benefit from its algae-based oil, which is chemically identical to molecules in crude oil, is considerably lower carbon emissions and sustainability. And it works: Sapphire Energy has successfully tested its fuel with two commercial airlines. Using photosynthetic micro-organisms, it requires only sunlight, CO2 and non-potable water – and can be produced on a massive scale on non-arable land.

Solazyme
San Francisco, California, US.
Founded 2003
Employees: 60
Product description: Algae-based biofuel for air and road transport

Solazyme creates its biofuel products by placing algae and other discarded plant matter into kettles for brewing into algal blooms (rapid growths of algae in an aquatic system), which is then harvested as an oil, using a variety of algae strains. This oil is produced with a significant lower amount of effort, water and land mass than the corn grain used in ethanol. In September 2008 the company claimed it produced the world’s first jet fuel derived from an algal source, while also powering cars with a version of its fuel.

ZeaChem
Lakewood, Colorado, US.
Founded 2002
Employees: 25
Product description: Ethanol from biomass

Using a hybrid biochemical and thermochemical process, ZeaChem has developed a biorefinery capable of producing ethanol fuel from cellulosic biomass. As it is using biomass – effectively plant leftovers – ZeaChem claims it leapfrogs the yield and CO2 problems associated with traditional and cellulosic-based ethanol processes (which use crops and large areas of land), thereby offering the highest yield, at the lowest cost, with the lowest fossil carbon footprint of any known biorefining method.

Ze-gen
Boston, Massachusetts, US.
Founded 2004
Employees: 30
Product description: Synthetic gas made from waste

Boston-based renewable energy company Ze Gen is emerging as a leader in the development of advanced gasification technology for converting wood debris and other solid waste into a synthesis gas of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This can then be used as a renewable fuel in conventional power and industrial facilities, replacing natural gas or residual oil for industrial burner use and boilers. It can also be used to generate renewable electricity or be processed into liquid fuels.

Geothermal

AltaRock Energy
California, US.
Founded 2007
Employees: 14
Product description: Engineered geothermal systems

AltaRock Energy is a renewable energy development company focused on the research and development of engineered geothermal systems (EGS). Partly funded by the US Department of Energy, it is developing a demonstration project in which it will engineer fractures at an existing well and power plant, and flow water through the fractures into a new well and up into existing power plants above. The water will heat up along this route and also produce steam that will then be used to generate electric power. AltaRock has filed patent applications for a portfolio of patents in the EGS area and holds exclusive licenses for related intellectual property (late breaking development: AltaRock has hit a snag. See AltaRock suspends drilling at DOE-backed project).