Having nearly three months of very few daylight hours in winter, it is no surprise that a Finnish company looks at ways to make our dark days more bright. The Lumi Group Oy from Turku has spotted a profitable niche and developed an excellent product, and is now set to profit handsomely from the changes in EU legislation which make our old street lightning outdated and in need of more energy efficient street lights.
Lumi Group Enlightens Our Streets
Being Self-Sustainable With Tuulivoimala.com
Many cleantech companies are large scale companies who aim to work with the utilities, who require millions in investments for R&D, production facilities, and rolling out their product. Quickly one forgets about the smaller players, and one of those smaller players is Tuulivoimala, who develops and markets wind and solar power solutions to private customers, and who are quite successful with their venture.
Battery Recycler Akkuser Acts On An Expanding Market
You must have wondered what happens to the gazillions of batteries (or 200 000 tons in the EU to be more exact, to quote the Finnish environment minister) that are increasingly used in the things we play around with. Finnish expansion company Akksuer knows. We talked to CEO Jarmo Pudas about the expanding battery recycling market.
What kind of batteries do you handle and why is the way you do it unique?
Basically everything… We handle laptop and mobile phone batteries (polymer), Li-ion, Ni-Mh. We do it without chemicals, without heat and without water. We have our own factory. We have an online sorting system and use dry technology (crushing and gas treatment) to recycle the materials.
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Startups, BigCo And Politics, A Virtuous Cycle?
According to the EU’s climate and energy package, Finland is expected to increase its share of renewable sources from the present 28 per cent to 38 per cent of energy production by 2020. Fulfilling this obligation require a significant increase in Finland’s use of wood-based energy, waste fuels, heat pumps, biogas and wind energy during next years.
This is no easy feat, especially given the rather modest Finnish feed in tariffs in the sector (premium tariffs and investment subsidies amont annually to roughly € 30 million). Nevertheless, the market can be potentially really really big and the need is dire. We’ve already seen some groundbreaking news surface this week in cleantech sector from the US. But make no mistake, Silicon Valley is not the only place where cleantech blossoms. Far from it. This week Wärtsilä came out with news that the world’s first solid oxide fuel cell unit, running on landfill gas, has successfully concluded the first phase of its validation programme.
Suntrica Chargers Now Apple Approved
While much of the attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is on new handsets and software, Suntrica from Finland silently announced that they got their Solar Strap approved by Apple. Their new Solar Strap, which comes now in four nice colours and got even lighter, is working with the iPhone 3G and 3 GS, as well as the iPod Touch, Classic and Nano. This is a great opportunity for all the Apple fans to charge their iPhones and iPods while away from an outlet, be it in the city or hiking.
For those who don’t have an iPhone or iPod but are looking for an environmentally friendly way to load their phones and gadgets, Suntrica still has the normal SolarStrap which is compatible with a range of phones, and also can be loaded up via USB for those rainy days and carried as a backup. Finally, the company is also helping out the people in Haiti, as relief workers are powering their mobile phones with Suntrica chargers – a great sign that they are not only interested in profits, but also in the well being of other people.
Metallkraft Attracts € 17 Million As Climate Change Capital Enters Nordic Cleantech
Norwegian company Metallkraft has a new part owner in Climate Change Capital, the UK based cleantech fund now making their first (but I imagine not last…) entry into the Nordic cleantech space. The € 200 million cleantech fund led the investment round and subscribed to € 10.3 million of the total € 17 million in convertible bonds that where issued. Current owners also took part.
EV Technology In The North: Taking Off?
A week after we reported on the THINK City the Norwegians announce that the top US cities in which they are going to roll out the THINK City are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. To top things off they are working with AeroVironment, Inc. to develop a fast charging system which loads the car in 15 minutes, and these fifteen minutes give you a 80% charge. That makes long distance travel with the THINK City possible, given that the charging stations are many and placed at the right locations.
In other news, Better Place, the company which is working on creating the infrastructure for your EV with switchable batteries, announced that they secured USD 350m in a series B round, and have now HSBC, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Lazard Asset Management among their investors. That gives Better Place a value of USD 1,25 billion, which should give them the funds to develop and roll out their technology. They aim to have their solution ready for 2011 in Denmark, so we can be sure to see some of that money flow to the country on the Jutland peninsula.
Don’t Go To Sleep Yet Policy Makers, Cleantech Innovation Needs You
COP 15 was a disappointment to many and there is now certainly a risk that policymakers leave the building, metaphorically speaking, leaving markets to take over and solve the environmental problems the best they can. Can they and should they?
Cleantech Scandinavia recently attempted to analyze Nordic cleantech patent application levels. The European Patent Office and OECD’s environmental directorate did a similar attempt analyzing cleantech patent application levels worldwide.
OECD carried out statistical analysis for basically all energy generation technologies showing a marked increase in wind, solar and hydro after the Kyoto agreement was signed. Their analysis also found that cleantech patent activity was dominated by Japan, US, Germany, Korea, Great Britain and France. (87% of solar photovoltaic patents were for instance handed in by Japan, US, Germany, Korea and France).
THINK Has Your EV Car Ready. Now.
THINK is not a start-up anymore, though it was one in the beginning of the 1990s when the world experienced a similar recession. Their history is fascinating, with USD 150m invested by US car giant Ford during the companies ownership of the Norwegians, struggling after Ford sold them out in 2003, until in 2006 Norwegian Investinor and other investors bought the company. Under new management and with new strategic goals the company is ready to become a major player in the growing electric vehicle market.
Their vision is to provide a better way of moving, which is carbon and carefree. The result of their vision is an electric city car with a Scandinavian design and modern technology under the hood. The THINK City is manufactured in Finland by Valmet Automotive, who is also a shareholder and strategic partner. It seems the Finns are establishing themselves slowly but surely as a major player in the EV manufacturing segment, a very smart decision. But back to THINK.
Sweden Puts Its Cleantech Into One Building
During the second half of 2009 Sweden held the EU Presidency, and the cleantech businesses of the country asked themselves: “How can we increase Swedish exports of Green Business?” Their solution was to collect companies in one building in downtown Stockholm, close to government offices and city hall, to allow Ministers, MPs, businesses and other interested people to have a look at what Sweden has to offer in cleantech.
Combining Research And Business Into An Innovative Start-Up
Absolicon Solar Concentrator Ab from Sweden is a company which was born out of research conducted by the Royal Institute of Technology and various other universities and grew into a well funded business. The Nordic countries are well known for investing heavily into education and university research; but research alone is not enough if it’s not transformed into a commercial product. Good that Absolicon was able to make that jump and pursue a largely untapped niche.
A Couple Of Big Norwegians Close 2009 In Nordic Cleantech
Norwegian Investinor is already into the cleantech industry through investments in electric car-maker Think and Metallkraft (which is another cleantech fast-grower doing recycling in the solar industry). They opened their bank account before the holidays, investing 6.3 million euro in Innotech Solar, making it one of the bigger cleantech investments during the year. Innotech Solar was founded by people from within the solar industry, who saw a market opportunity in the solar cells that where not used due to low efficiency. Innotech Solar buys these cells and has the technology and production capacity to upgrade them, making them profitable. It is recycling and reuse in an industry where access to raw material has been crucial. The company was established in spring 2008, has grown to 42 employees, and already has sales offices in Germany and China. The company has previously managed to attract VC money from two of the most active cleantech investors in the Nordics – Northzone Ventures and Sustainable Technologies Fund.
Canatu: The Next Finnish Technology Breakthrough?
My guess is that one of the Finnish technology breakthrough companies for 2010 will be Canatu’s team, lead by CEO David Brown. Canatu produces and sells a new class of versatile carbon-based components to OEMs and brand names. These components are based on carbon nanotubes and a novel NanoBud nanomaterial. The key competitive advantages of Canatu’s components include low cost, high performance and a diminished environmental footprint for optical and electrical devices. For instance, Canatu’s components are 25 times stronger than steel, 1000 times more conductive than copper and heat twice as well as diamond. The environmentally friendly aspect covers both the production and recycling process. And finally, the production of these components can be industrially scaled. Continue reading »
Suntrica Keeps Your Gadgets Charged
Suntrica Oy was one of the companies we visited during the Finnfacts Cleantech Blogger Tour 09, and who handed us out an actual product for testing, the SolarStrap. The tech savvy person has usually a few gadgets on him – cellphone, smart phone, PDA, MP3 Player, GPS, etc. – and at some point might run into the problem of an empty battery. That’s no problem if an outlet & charger are at hand, but what if on the go and none of these are available?
Lars Aikala Of Valoya
Back in November we visited the Lahti Cleantech Venture Day where we had a chance to see a lot of different companies and people. One of the most interesting was Valoya. Valoya is a company working in an industry that most people wouldn’t consider especially sexy. They are developing professional lights for greenhouses with LED technologies. While this may sound boring to the average man on the street, take a minute to think about how your vegetables are grown these days. The business is huge and about one third of the costs of producing vegetables go into electricity.
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Arch Red Oy
Lumi Group Oy
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