A hat tip to Earth2Tech for laying out the components in the $410 omnibus bill that represent clean energy and climate change. The “imperfect omnibus bill” was signed into law by Obama today behind closed doors. Here’s to more government waste but at least there are some clean energy bucks in there..
* EPA gets $7.6 billion (increase of $174 million over last year). $224 million for grants to states to implement the Clean Air … Read the rest
T Boone Pickens has to be thrilled this morning that AT&T has announced a plan to spend $500 million over the next 10 years to begin moving its fleet of vehicles to the natural gas, hybrid and electric variety. $350 million will go to 8000 compressed natural gas vehicles and another $215 million will go to 7000 electric-hybrid vehicles, saving the company 50 million gallons of gas over the next decade. It would be … Read the rest
Hoku Materials, Inc just announced that it has signed a new 10-year polysilicon supply agreement with Shanghai Alex New Energy Company, Ltd. Under the contract, Hoku will resell a portion of the polysilicon production capacity it recaptured after amending a contract with Jiangxi Jinko Solar Company. Alex New Energy had been planning to buy Hoku polysilcon indirectly from Jinko, but will now buy directly from Hoku instead.
Hoku has amended the contract with Jinko as … Read the rest
Ascent Solar has begun producing monolithically integrated flexible CIGS modules at its Littleton, Colorado production line. This makes Ascent the first solar company to use a plastic substrate to produce fully integrated lightweight thin-film CIGS modules.
In a company press release, members of the leadership team commented on the significance of this achievement:
… Read the restDr. Mohan Misra, CEO of Ascent Solar stated, “This is a remarkable step for the advancement of thin film CIGS on
LDK Solar (LDK) is trading down about 10% in pre-market trading this morning after reporting a large 4Q loss and issuing disappointing guidance for next quarter. The company reported a loss of $1.25/share which was much steeper than what analysts had expected (.84 loss) on revenues that actually beat estimates and represented a 121% increase over the year ago quarter. The company ended the year with $255 million in cash and cash equivalents and $83 … Read the rest
After its solar installing rival Akeena Solar (AKNS) reported awful results several days ago, you couldn’t expect much out of Real Goods Solar (RSOL) after the bell today and they didn’t disappoint. Taking out the big costs of acquisition in the quarter, they still reported a .10/share loss. Analysts had expected the company to be flat in the quarter with no losses after one time costs. On the bright side, this is a … Read the rest
Comverge (COMV), a demand response provider, released mixed results after the bell today. On the EPS side they reported .28/share (beating estimates by .04) and revenues of $33 million was right in line with expectations. With a revenue growth decrease of 22% over the year ago quarter, that stops a streak of 4 consecutive quarters of accelerating revenue growth. The future looks bright for COMV but this is a company that appears to be … Read the rest
Echelon (ELON), a significant, but unprofitable player in the smart metering industry, surged 13% today with decent volume following a BUY initiation and price target of $9.50 from Cantor Fitzgerald. According to the StreetInsider.com, Cantor had this to say:
“The shares are trading close to their 52-week low in a challenging equity market. We believe the company has strong growth prospects in 2010 and beyond as the world moves to upgrade its electric grids … Read the rest
Exelon (EXC) is announcing a program that allows its customers to be certified, emission free energy users. The new product, called an Emission-Free Energy Certificate (EFEC) will initially be limited to select commercial and industrial customers who already have an existing relationship with Exelon. Emission free energy is defined as energy that does not directly produce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide or carbon dioxide and includes solar, wind, hydro, wave energy as well as nuclear. With … Read the rest
American Superconductor Corporation just announced that it has received an order from Southern California Edison for its its pad-mounted Distribution Static VAR Compensator (“dSVC”) solution. Southern California Edison will use this product as part of its "Circuit of the Future" project.
Timothy Poor, AMSC’s Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development, commented on the order in a company press release:
“A spin-off from our larger-scale transmission SVC, our dSVC solution allows electric utilities … Read the rest