May 2007

Threshold News

Patent Search: Is it Greek to you?

If you regularly uses patent information – whether it be for understanding the state of the art, for questioning the validity of a competitor’s patent, or for determining your company’s freedom to operate – you are probably aware that despite their online availability and your best efforts, it is hard to know when you have identified all the patents and applications relevant to your interests. Not only are there often hundreds or thousands of patents to consider on any given topic, but patents are drafted without standardized terminology. And there are tricks to capturing all relevant patents that only professional researchers are likely to know.

Take Greek letters for example. Only a patent search specialist would know to include Greek letters and other technical notations to capture all relevant patents. For instance, alpha-tocopherol is one of the preferred forms of Vitamin E for use in foods and supplements. In 1999 the number of food-related alpha-tocopherol patents and patent applications climbed steeply and has since continued to grow at a brisk pace.

However, if one does not know to use α-tocopherol – and how to input the character string in the search interface – the search will fail to return almost half of the relevant patents.

For world-class patent results, only an expert on patents and patent databases will get you the right information to make the right decisions. Don’t take a chance. Call Threshold Information or e-mail infopros@threshinfo.com.

Opportunities In Business

Carbon Credits: Forgive me for I have S.U.V.’d

Carbon credits – also known as carbon offsets, emission credits, greenhouse gas credits – are based on a worldwide system of tradable emission credits as well as domestic programs to encourage green power markets. Countries, or companies, with greater emissions of polluting carbon dioxide – the greenhouse gas – can “offset” them by buying credits from countries, or companies, with lesser emissions. In recent months, U.S. firms have begun to step up their green activities in a mix of financial good sense, opportunistic marketing strategy (a.k.a. green washing), and corporate good citizenship.

Here’s how some companies are involving consumers:

Not all environmentalists agree that carbon credits are a good idea. A Sierra Club officer, for instance, compares carbon credits to “papal indulgences” that ease consumer guilt for making environmentally bad decisions.

Others say that carbon credits allow consumers to at least demonstrate serious concern about environmental change, even if they are not ready to, or don’t know how to, make serious lifestyle changes. And if consumers spend enough on carbon credits it will encourage the market for green energy sources.

How carbon credits work for consumers: to make up for driving the car or leaving the lights on, people can pay into a system that funds carbon-reducing business ventures. Consumers can do this directly through some of the many carbon offset suppliers, or through a partner like Travelocity or Dell.

Following is a sampling of some of these “offset suppliers”:

There are many more carbon offset providers. See A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers (Clean Air-Cool Planet, December 2006). Appendix A is a Retail Offset Providers Summary Chart.

And then there are Green Tags: Renewable Energy Credits or RECs. At the end of April, 2007 PepsiCo made news by becoming the largest purchaser of Renewable Energy Certificates in the U.S. Pepsi will purchase Green-e RECs in an amount equal to the electricity it purchases in all of its U.S. facilities over a three year period – more than 1 billion kilowatts a year.

Although not directly involving consumers, companies that purchase RECs – the EPA calls them “Green Power Partners” – are clearly trying to make a statement to their customers in addition to supporting renewable energy sources. The Top 25 Green Power Partners include Whole Foods, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson, Staples, Safeway, and Kohl’s among several government organizations and universities and other types of companies.

This list of Green Tag retail products from the Department of Energy is almost a year old already, but it’s a good starting point.

For additional background:

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Green Power Network has much more information on RECs and renewable energy markets.

Pew Center on Global Climate Change -- See particularly Climate Change 101.

The 4th Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) titled “Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers.”

Union of Concerned Scientists Global Warming site.

Europe is ahead of us in mandating a carbon trading system. See the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. (See also Wikipedia.)

Opportunities in Technology

Opportunities in Air Conditioning: ROI almost guaranteed

In this time of increased global warming awareness, the voluntary measures cited above provide an opportunity for companies to “talk the talk” – that is to show a green side to the public. But to their credit, companies in every industry are looking for ways to “walk the walk” – to adopt business and operational methods that make a real difference in resource use and carbon output. One focus of these activities is to adopt measures to reduce energy use – and improve return on investment – in long-lived assets, such as office buildings and factories.

Of the myriad of energy sinks and carbon waste producers in the operations of almost any business, air conditioning offers one of the larger opportunities for conservation. In 2004, 11% of total energy consumption for commercial buildings was used for cooling, while 13% was used for space heating. That relative proportion is expected to even out and eventually reverse with global warming. The expected relentless march of global warming will mean more air conditioning days for offices and factories in the continental US.

The double-whammy of rising energy costs and the increased need for air-conditioning will place a premium on efficient cooling strategies for office buildings and plants, both new and rehabbed. The cost of electricity that runs air conditioners is nearly three times the cost of natural gas used for heating per million BTU. That means that, since it costs more to air condition a building than to heat it, investments in cooling efficiencies will have a greater return on investment for long-lived facilities in the future.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) notes these developments in air conditioning technologies:

The design of buildings to make the best use of natural ventilation and lighting could have a large impact on the total cost of operations. Building configuration and placement, building envelope, passive solar, active solar, photovoltaics, appliances and equipment, lighting, and materials are discussed at the Department of Energy’s whole building design center. Cost analysis and other design tools are also reported on this site.

The EPA Energy Star site provides a plethora of energy efficient building design links that include the “Whole Building Design Guide” from the National Institute of Building Sciences.

For most businesses, achieving maximum energy efficiency by starting from scratch with a new facility is not an option. For existing buildings, a systematic analysis of each building’s total energy systems – HVAC, lighting, fenestration, insulation, etc. – is used to identify opportunities for improvement.

A building systems quality assurance process known as “commissioning” is gaining credibility as an aid for benchmarking and improving energy use efficiency in commercial buildings. A version of this called retrocommissioning (RCx) uses a systematic process for improving an existing building's performance.

The U.S. Green Building Council, promulgator of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Building certifications, offers LEED for Existing Buildings. LEED-EB is a road map for delivering economically profitable, environmentally responsible, healthy, productive places to live and work.

Stepping back to the big picture, trends in energy costs are seasonally cyclical and impacted by world events. But the year-to-year averages are unmistakably up. With the economic rise of China and India, long-term unrest in the oil-producing countries of the world, and no quick-fix to the dependence on oil in the developed world, energy costs will inevitably continue to increase. It’s a good bet that energy saving investments for long-lived installations such as plants and buildings will have a positive return.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies: Life and death technology?

Fossil fuel carbon emissions are a massive waste of resources in our energy intensive world. Carbon capture complements the two other major approaches for greenhouse gas reduction, namely improving energy efficiency and increasing use of non-carbon energy sources.

Carbon capture and sequestration technologies represent potentially huge R&D and business opportunities. If we could harness, reuse or recycle even a portion of the carbon dioxide and other polluting gases that currently belch out of our power plants, cars, trucks and industrial plants each year, global warming would be slowed and future power generation would be cleaner and more cost-effective.

Australian Environmental Minister Ian Campbell described CO2 sequestration as a “life and death technology we must develop.” His remarks came in an announcement of a plan for a massive carbon storage system at a major gas project off the coast of Australia. We haven’t had any dramatic statements quite like that coming from U.S. officials, but there is a lot of industry and government-led activity aimed at finding ways for energy companies to capture CO2. Here are a few examples:

MIT’s Carbon Sequestration Initiative builds on a program started in 1989 to research technologies to capture, utilize and store CO2 from large stationary sources. The CSI is an industrial consortium formed to assess and share information on carbon capture and storage technologies emanating from MIT. Formed in July 2000, there are currently 17 sponsors, mostly energy-oriented companies like ExxonMobil and Schlumberger, but also Ford, GM and others. The consortium builds on the Carbon Capture & Sequestration Technologies research program started in 1989 at MIT.

One example of the applications coming out of MIT is the operation in Norway’s North Sea called Sleipner Project. It captures 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Links to other projects are at http://sequestration.mit.edu/links/index.html.

The U.S. Department of Energy maintains a web-site on carbon sequestration. The site itself seems not quite up to date nor fully committed to the idea (“if it is determined that carbon sequestration must be implemented in the U.S. on a broad scale…”).However, the news items link on the left side of the screen leads to several programs of interest, including a May 2007 announcement of a study of the impact on groundwater resources of carbon sequestration. The site also lists several national and international forums for the exchange of research.

Another example of how the conversation is heating up is the Conference on Carbon Capture and Sequestration 2007. At this annual meeting 450 energy industry, academic and government researchers gather to share information and project experience, primarily with large scale geological sequestration projects. http://www.carbonsq.com/

The Climate Action Network is a European focused network of over 365 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to promote government, private sector and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. A list of sequestration projects is included on their Web site: http://www.climnet.org/CTAP/seqresources.htm

The patent literature is another indicator of activity in this area. A simple search of U.S. and international patent files on MicroPatent turned up 637 that directly referred to carbon sequestration from the last five years. There will be hundreds more with less obvious connection. Here’s a sampling of the results of the simplest type of search:

US7172030 B2 E21B -- 20070206 -- BEAVERT GAS SERVICES LTD
Applications of waste gas injection into natural gas reservoirs

US7067456 B2 B01J -- 20060627 -- UNIV OHIO
Sorbent for separation of carbon dioxide (CO)

US7055325 B2 F01K -- 20060606
Process and apparatus for generating power, producing fertilizer, and sequestering, carbon dioxide using renewable biomass

US7033547 B1 B01D -- 20060425
Exhaust gas treating apparatus and vehicle equipped with the apparatus

US6945029 B2 F02C -- 20050920 -- CLEAN ENERGY SYSTEMS INC
Low pollution power generation system with ion transfer membrane air separation

US6908497 B1 B01D -- 20050621 -- US ENERGY
Solid sorbents for removal of carbon dioxide from gas streams at low temperatures

US6911057 B2 C10J -- 20050628 -- GEN ELECTRIC
Apparatus for converting coal into fuel cell quality hydrogen and sequestration-ready carbon dioxide

US6440367 B2 A01G -- 20020827 -- GREENSEA VENTURE INC
Method of sequestering carbon dioxide with a fertilizer comprising chelated iron

US6200530 B1 A01G -- 20010313
Method of sequestering carbon dioxide with spiral fertilization

US20050271914 A1 H01M -- 20051208
Integrated high efficiency fossil fuel power plant/fuel cell system with CO2 emissions abatement

To follow developments in carbon capture, we recommend Wikipedia’s article in addition to those cited above. It is being continuously updated and provides an excellent jumping off point for understanding this complex topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage