February 2008

Quick hits: Mr. Morris goes to Washington

Some quick hits before I hit the road....

• It's been a very busy week as I prep for a trip to WIREC in Washington D.C. The Washington International Renewable Energy Conference is a gathering of renewable and cleantech companies of all types. It just so happens that WIREC is taking place just as the wind lobby gets together in Washington for a major push.
• WIREC also coincides with the House's passing of renewable energy legislation that would increase oil company taxes and extend renewable energy credits (via Earth2Tech). Not everyone is convinced that the legislation will get signed.
• Everyone has seen solar and wind really take off over the past two years. What's next? Well, if you follow the money it could be biofuels. Mascoma got $50 million in funding. It will be interesting to see if 2008 is the year new fuels really start coming to market ... maybe 2009 will be the year we see the changes in infrastructure to support those fuels. In any event, the market is about to get noisy for you biofuels marketers.
• But let's be honest ... the markets of all renewables will explode in the next year as we have the perfect storm of increasing demand, huge rounds of financing and an anticipated change in the political climate for renewables.

I'll be sure to report some of the interestings things I see and learn at WIREC. For those attending the event, safe travels.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 29, 2008 at 10:46 AM
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The Green Marketer: Weekly Round Up

This past week was interesting, highlighted by a study, a survey and a political plea.

• First, an interesting survey was released this week that said that green features are finally delivering in terms of home sales by adding a $9,000 premium to the sale price. This gives consumers yet another way to recoup the up-front costs of installing a solar, wind or other renewable system. This is undoubtedly great news for green marketers. This type of data can help overcome some of the concerns about ROI, especially in a market where home values are dropping. Now we just need the home appraisers and banks to catch on.
• Second, a controversial study released from UC Berkeley that basically lables solar a waste of money from a residential perspective. It says that the cost of installing a solar system makes is too expensive when compared to its benefits. There are some things, however, that the study seems to have overlooked. Not all states allow consumers to sell energy back to the grid (net metering) or go negative on their energy bill. If that happened, it would certainly help in terms of offsetting the cost of the system. It also ignored the survey that showed the impact of green on the price of a home. For green marketers, this is not the type of study you want to see when it seems the market is taking off. The research did take a very narrow view, but we will likely see more of this and not less in 2008 and beyond.
• Finally, a plea from the governors of coal-producing states that clean coal not be forgotten as part of the renewable-energy agenda. This is critical to states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other large, coal-producing states. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Many have called "clean coal" a farce, based on technology that hasn't even been developed yet. There are also serious concerns about the way in which coal is harvested, including strip mining and other environmentally unfriendly means. Is clean coal real or a dream? We'll see in the years to come, but we should see a lot more noise about it given the number of state economies that depend on it.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 26, 2008 at 7:59 PM
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The Green Marketer: Weekly Round-Up

There were a number of developments worth watching this past week from a green marketing perspective:

-Earth2Tech had a great round-up of carbon-related legislation (complete with Schoolhouse Rock picture). These bills will  be important in determining what types of carbon caps and/or trading systems are implemented.

-Also on E2T, PG&E said that their latest geothermal contract will allow them to meet the 20 percent threshhold set by the state for electricity from renewables. This is important because one of the stock objections from utilities has been that cleantech hasn't advanced to the point where it is economically possible to generate large percentages from renewable sources. Green marketers now have an example to give when that objection is made by legislators and other key audiences.

-And finally, as I posted about earlier last week, the House is finally pushing a bill that would extend the renewable tax credits and rebates that are so critical to consumer and business adoption. This would help sustain the market has seen over the past several years.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 20, 2008 at 5:55 PM
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Tax Credits to Become Evergreen?

According to Craig Rubens at Earth2Tech and other reports, the House this week unveiled a bill that will renew the renewable energy tax breaks for consumers and businesses. This was necessitated when Congress could not get the credits into the fuel economy measure passed in Q4 2007. Senate Democrats at the time had too narrow a margin to get both measures passed in the same bill and alluded to the possibility that the tax credits could be revisited in early 2008.

This is huge news as the credits help offset the cost of implementing solar, wind and other renewable technologies. The more quickly economic incentives increase, the quicker we will be out of early adopter phase in the market. This will help cleantechs grow more quickly and result in better education of the marketplace. It also will help encourage continued investment in renewables by VCs and Wall Street, which will help preserve the marketing budgets of cleantech companies.

As mentioned in previous posts, federal incentives make the most sense because they encourage nationwide adoption. The states and municipalities can still add on top, but the move to cleantech should be a national effort. There are some holes in the legislation as pointed out by Rubens, but overall it is a great step in supporting continued market growth.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 14, 2008 at 6:00 PM
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Federal Incentives Make Most Sense

There has been a lot written about the failure of the federal government to renew or increase the renewable energy incentives and tax credits that are set to expire. In the meantime, cities and states have picked up the slack, developing initiatives that tie funding of solar installations to property taxes and city bonds. San Francisco, Berkeley and other cities around the country are creating these types of initiatives while they wait for a political climate change in Washington.

These regions are right to do what they can to advance the use of renewable technologies, but long term something needs to be done nationally. People who do their part to reduce their carbon emissions and reduce the strain on the power grid should get some sort of universal credit or break. You could have one neighbor receive thousands in incentives and tax breaks, while the other gets little incentive to install a renewable energy system. This is wrong.

It is analogous to two households with an adjusted gross income of $60,000 getting dramatically different tax rebates as part of the economic stimulus plan just passed. Cities and states should continue to do what they can to advance the use of renewables while the federal government sits in gridlock. But long term, Washington needs to do something aggressive that improves upon and superscedes local incentives.

It is unlikely that the political environment will change until January of 2009. In the meantime, marketers will have to continue to target areas where tax breaks and incentives make adoption more likely. National campaigns certainly don't hurt in terms of education and awareness, or in priming the pump if the federal climate does change, but direct lead generation is more likely to happen in localities. Some may even invest most of their marketing dollars in Europe where Germany, Spain, the UK and others continue to adopt renewable plans at a furious pace.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 11, 2008 at 11:59 AM
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Practicing What We Preach; A Greener Shade of Schwartz

You may seen the news this week that Schwartz has officially announced a Renewable Energy and Green Practice. Some folks will be shocked that this is something that we are just announcing since we---like some other firms---have been talking about it and executing on it for more than a year.

We were tempted to put our stake in the ground in early 2007, announcing to the world that we were making a concerted effort to build out the practice and that we were ready to help cleantech companies achieve their PR goals. We were even more tempted as we executed Green campaigns for clients like Rackable Systems, McNamee Lawrence, Shawmut Design and Construction, and CheckFree. It was tough to resist making noise when we began working on pro-bono projects, like the San Francisco Waldorf School and the Business Council on Climate Change (BC3), and commercial projects, such as AgileWaves.

So why did we wait? Well, clients always ask us when they should announce a new product or service offering. Our response is usually, "If PR is the only driver of the announcement date, we should wait until you have a compelling story around the product or service, including customers that support the fact that what you are bringing to market is truly differentiated."

The news is not that we are entering the Green PR world. It is that we have a differentiated services offering, including aggressive media and government relations, that is already helping our cleantech clients achieve their business goals. The news is that we are taking what is our single biggest core competency--helping emerging growth companies facing heavily entrenched, better-funded competition level the playing field through PR--and applying it to a market that needs it more than perhaps any other technology market in history.

Renewable energy companies face significant challenges, many of which I have blogged about the past. They face one of the largest and most entrenched industries in the world in the form of traditional energy (oil, gas, coal, etc), as well as the marketing and lobbying arms of numerous industries that don't like being regulated (auto, utility, manufacturing).

They also face very steep, well-funded competition within their own markets now that VCs around the world are sinking eight and nine-figure rounds into companies in solar, wind, fuel cells and biofuels. They also face large corporations in other markets who have begun developing and acquiring their way into renewable energy.

Bottom line: This is the ultimate David versus Goliath story and a story in which we are relishing the opportunity to play a part. We now have officially been cast in a role and are packing a pretty big slingshot.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 5, 2008 at 11:45 AM
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NYT: Solar Gets Going in California; Applied Materials

Great story today in the NY Times by John Markoff and Matt Richtel about how California is leading the solar charge, with massive amounts of investment, subsidies and jobs being created as a result. There was also news today of Applied Materials making a large acquisition of an Italian solar company for $334 million dollars.

These two stories are both great news for emerging-growth solar companies. They both support the position that solar technology is not an energy-crisis fad, but a long-term viable market. The Applied Materials deal will continue to send the message to investors that there are lucrative equity events waiting for them in renewable energy. It also may signal to Applied competitors that they need to be more active in investigating the market. As I've mentioned before, the market needs some big fish to bring their marketing budgets, lobbying arms and workforces to market to educate key audiences renewables and move the industry forward.

This is a trend that is not going away anytime soon.

Posted by Jason Morris on February 1, 2008 at 11:17 AM
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