Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 03/25/11

Indian Point Nuclear Plant on Hudson

We've been gearing up for the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic's 3rd Annual Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum, which takes place at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences on Thursday, March 31st. A few tickets are still available, so don't delay: Register for Cleantech Investment Forum.

Here are this week's Green Skeptic links:

The news is not great out of Japan this morning as Reuters reports workers at the Fukushima nuclear reactor were exposed to 10,000 times more radiation than previously thought: Fukushima. 

While in the US, concern about older nuclear facilities is leading to increased scrutiny as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has pledged to move New York's Indian Point to the top of its list of 27 nuclear plants being reviewed for risk from earthquakes: Indian Point and the New York Times reported that Nuclear Power Loses Support in New Poll

Ideas on Energy asks "Why are the world's most energy rich countries in the Middle East investing so heavily in renewable energy?" 

Meanwhile, in California, a landmark climate bill is being stalled by...a bunch of environmentalists?  China Dialogue editor Linden Ellis has the story: Greens Getting in the Way.

Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital and Terry Cooke, a 2010 Public Policy Scholar on U.S.-China Clean Energy at the Woodrow Wilson Center, list the  "Top Ten U.S. and China Collaborations in Cleantech."

Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech reports that power gear company Schneider Electric has made one of the larger acquisitions in the industrial and commercial energy management sector, buying energy procurement and management company Summit Energy for $268 million.

Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in National Geographic, says the carbon dioxide we pump into the air is seeping into the oceans and slowly acidifying them. Kolbert asks, "One hundred years from now, will oysters, mussels, and coral reefs survive?"The Acid Sea

While Nature Conservancy president and CEO Mark Tercek suggests that Keeping More Fish in the Ocean is Good for People & Nature.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Video: Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic Spring Event

A video of the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic Spring Networking Event, featuring Terry Cooke's talk on Cleantech and China is now available. (The editors were too generous with my introductory remarks, but you'll get a sense of the event from the opening sequence.)



Here is a link in case you can't see the player: http://youtu.be/yeTBSSjJeQk

A more comprehensive account of Terry's remarks can be found here: http://bit.ly/aa3Vb9

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• Coverage for Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum (thegreenskeptic.com)
• Terry Cooke on China, Cleantech and US Readiness (thegreenskeptic.com)
• Clean-Tech Investments Hit a High, With Solar Shining Brightest (dailyfinance.com)
• Cleantech Investment World Asia 2010 (greeneventconnection.com)
• Boosting the Booming Cleantech Market in China (prnewswire.com)

Terry Cooke on China, Cleantech and US Readiness

Terry Cooke spoke to the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic last week. I'm hoping to do a more extensive piece or interview with Terry at some point, but for now I wanted to share one of his points from the talk:

"Any CEO working on anything related to cleantech has to be thinking about China. China is the world’s largest market for needed application and deployment and that will not change next month, next year or next decade.

On the investment side, China is investing in absolute terms $2 for every dollar of U.S. private and public investment in cleantech. (Adjusting for the relative size of our economies, this mean China is currently out-investing the U.S. by a six-fold factor).

Technologically, the innovation and trade-flows are increasingly becoming a two-way street (as witnessed by the U.S. federal government’s commitment to a $150 million joint research center with China for jointly-developed and jointly–owned cleantech intellectual property).

As these facts sink in, we will all need to get prepared – at the company level, the regional level, and the national level – to sell our cleantech products and ideas to Chinese organizations."

Terry Cooke is currently a 2010 Public Policy Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington D.C., researching policy implications of U.S.-China clean energy cooperation/competition. He is the founder of GC3 Strategy, which works with U.S. companies seeking to partner in Greater China. Terry was a Director of the World Economic Forum from 2006-08, responsible for Asian Corporate Partnerships, and a career-member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Commercial Service from 1988-2002.