Clean Tech Overview (Opinion)
Graphs on Clean Tech
Clean Tech is ambiguous because a balance between customer needs and environmental needs must be made. For example, solar companies were made in the vain that they would help make the world a more environmentally friendly place, BUT without economic incentives it would never take off. The only reason solar technology companies took off was because of government subsidy.
The thing is, the above anecdote tends to happen with most Clean Tech companies. The balance one has to make for customers versus environmental concerns differs and makes it difficult to balance.
Nonetheless, Clean Tech companies do aim to solve fundamental issues which become pressing each passing day. Therefore, below I outline the direction these startups have begun taking in hopes of better understanding what lies in wait for our future.
Generally speaking, it seems that Clean Tech companies are focused in one of four divisions. Water purification, for countries like Saudi Arabia. Energy generation, to effectively create “free energy.” Recycling, because mining costs will increase the cost of raw materials. Storing energy, because of grid security and the cost of building a power plant is high.
Particularly in the field of water purification, there seems to be two direction startups are taking. Monitoring of the water quality, and the purification of water. And as one would expect, more companies are involved in the purification of water. Thats probably because its easier to quantify and specify what problem you are trying to solve.
Energy generation on the other hand is split into three modes of generation. Wind, solar and wave. I think these are self explanatory and don’t need much explanation. Solar makes energy using sunlight and photovoltaic semiconductors, wind uses the kinetic energy of wind to turn a magnetic turbine, and wave uses the bobbing motion of the ocean to generate AC current — they move a magnet inside of a metal to generate a current.
Luckily for energy generation, the technological limits of each method can complement each other, so there really is no “big competition” between the players. But thats debateable.
Companies involved in the recycling industry separate into either metal or plastic recycling. With metal being easily mineable from ores, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of focus there…yet. But with the advent of electric vehicles, metals such as Cobalt and Manganese might become easier to obtain from battery recycling startups.
Plastic recycling is a lot trickier, and to be honest, I am not sure why there are so many companies in this area. I mean, isn’t plastic really cheap to make? This probably means that government subsidies is driving this industry. And to be honest, im not sure if that is a sustainable business model because the government is up to change from a lobby perspective which isn’t something easy to predict from a companies perspective.
Energy storage companies split between mainly 4 areas: batteries, thermal, kinetic, and compressed air. Compressed air has the problem of being location dependent, but some companies are trying to change that by compressing air in tanks. But of course, I wonder how efficient such a system would be with the pressure these tanks have to be kept at.
Kinetic and thermal storage also do not seem like the correct direction to go in because of efficiency issues. Kinetic attempts to differentiate itself by touting itself as being “unlimited lifecycle” but how real can that be? I mean their spinning a metal cylinder at really high speeds. No matter how small the friction may be, there is some, and thats going to result in wear and tear.
Batteries, I like. Their modular, energy dense, and can potentially have long cycle life. Of course developing such a battery is difficult, but it may be possible. To put the number into perspective, the goal is to make the cost of electricity storage to be around 5cents/kWh. Thats really cheap, fyi.
Anyways, thats an overall review of what the Clean Tech sector is. Any comments? Questions? Disagreements? Tell me below.
