Good stuff at MIT E Center: Clean tech in New England list and CEO reception

I recently stumbled upon a great list of many, if not all, of the clean tech companies in New England, put together by the great people at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/Energy/companies.php

The E Center also put on a reception for entrepreneurs, exec's, VC's, etc in the community a few weeks ago ("CEO Networking Reception") which was a great opportunity to talk with some of the more interesting folks in the area. I went to it as part of my excellent 15.396 Energy Ventures class with Bill Aulet and Tod Hynes. The reception happens every semester, so keep an eye out next time!

http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/events.php

The quotable MIT Sloan professor....

"Selling to engineers is like being nibbled to death by ducks" - Prof. Ken Morse in 15.387 Technology Sales and Sales Management

Comparing Gore's talk to Presidential-surrogate Energy debate at MIT

I am glad that the Presidential-surrogate Energy debate at MIT a couple weeks ago (another fun event to attend, but this one put on by the MIT Energy Club) was done by Woolsey and Grumet (representing McCain and Obama, respectively). They both have a really good handle on what needs to be done to move things in the right direction energy-wise, within the realm of the possible and politically feasible, which Gore didn't seem to embrace as strongly. I am looking forward to having one of them be advisors to the white house. Too bad McCain would probably ignore most of the good ideas that Woolsey puts forward, based on his voting record. Obama seems to buy into what Grument had to say though. Here's hoping this works out for the good.

If you'd like to see the debate yourself, it's posted on TechTV:

http://techtv.mit.edu/file/1423

Al Gore's talk at Harvard

Yesterday, I took the opportunity to go over to Harvard with an HBS friend to hear Al Gore speak to kick off Harvard's sustainability initiative. It was a very well attended, easily a few thousand people at Tercentenary Theater. We were probably only about a 1/3 of the way back and my camera phone could hardly see him (though my eyes are much better).



The president of Harvard started things off with a quite eloquent speech. Gore talked afterward and here are a few highlights that stuck in my head:

• Some random person came up to him and told him he'd look like Al Gore if he dyed his hair. (Doh! That must make you feel old. He's a 40 yr alum of Harvard though.)
• True to form, he used a good deal of scientific words and detail in his talk, such as the parts per million count of CO2 in the atmosphere being commonly in the 200's and max'ing out at 300PPM throughout Earth's history except recently when it has jumped up to 387PPM. MIT students called him out on this a number of years ago at a commencement speech at MIT:
  http://hacks.mit.edu/by_year/1996/gore/
  Nonetheless, good to see he's making some effort to use data to back up his claims.
• That brings up another interesting point, which was his discussion of the difference between a "question of fact and a question of power", referring to the development of the 3rd Reich in Germany. As the movement developed, questions were less answered by fact than by political power. He drew a thread between that and the predetermined-results-for-pay research and other tactics that oil companies and other political factions use to argue against environmental causes, like global warming (though clearly was trying to avoid calling oil companies Nazi's).
• He applauded Harvard's plan to reduce their carbon emissions to 70% of their 2006 levels by 2016. He proposed that the States go 100% renewable by 2016 - I didn't hear any talk of how that might actually happen besides him stating that we have the technology available. While the likelihood of this happening is questionable at best and the ability to offset base load electrical use with renewables is still developing, it is a nice stretch goal.
• He also had a enjoyable passage on the telescope, in the sense that changing your viewpoint reveals new truths. On a celestially similar note, he also talked about Venus being not that different from Earth except its carbon levels in the atmosphere however, it is 800 degrees F instead of 59 degrees like Earth. While that seems a bit oversimplified (where is the sun in all this? close to Venus?), it is a graphic way to get people to listen to his point. I hope it doesn't turn people off with the mild disregard for logic though.

All in all, a fun experience and a great way to get tasty locally grown pumpkin bisque and apple crisp they were handing out.

Visit to One Laptop Per Child office

Today I visited the OLPC office in Kendall Square with an SDM classmate and teammate of mine in project management, Jeremy Katz. He works at Red Hat Linux and is involved with the OLPC project so was able to link us up with people there. We had a very interesting conversation with Kim Quirk, who is Vp of Support and Development there.

The office itself was just what I was hoping for them - pleasant space with big windows overlooking Cambridge with open layout workstations and a few offices, but many, many OLPC's all over - on the desks, racks of them on bookshelves, hanging mounted in the ceiling, taken apart in many pieces. Fun to see!

We were looking for information on how they managed the project and how the constraints of a very conplex open source project affected the options available to them. Clearly, you can't put the same deadlines on people who aren't on the payroll, and many of the contributors are volunteers, so hitting deadlines can be challenging.

One interesting point is the number of new technologies which were originally pitched to be in it, and how tough that turned out to deliver. They were able to deliver on the shock proof case and the day light readable screen, but many of the tricks they proposed were not able to be fully implemented in the first version (for instance, mesh networking and special security measures). If expectations were managed differently, the media response could have turned out quite differently from the negativity many have given it.

Many more interesting insights offered as well...

Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell vehicle visit to campus

I was really impressed by the Honda Clarity FCX hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. The MIT Energy Club arranged to host the car and a couple knowledgeable Honda engineers, Ryan and David, from CA to MIT this Friday as part of MIT Energy Night's events. (I setup the MIT side of this as part of my role as Lecture Chair in the club.) A visiting researcher at MIT's Sloan Automotive Lab just went back to Honda to work on this project and enabled this visit - our hats off to Dr. Wataru Nakata! The car was displayed at night and earlier in the day, they let some of us drive or ride. I was lucky enough to drive it and it was genuinely impressive. Very much a well behaved and well sorted out production level vehicle in all the respects I could see. They're even leasing a limited number in SoCal.

Here's pic's of an SDM friend of mine, Rob, and myself before we drove the car.
Here's a pic of Ryan and David, the two Honda engineers who came to tell us all about it. (Thanks guys!)


The fuel cell power source aspect itself was somewhat anti-climatic, it just behaved like one might expect an electric car programmed to emulate the creep and drag in an automatic transmission. Felt like average to good power (compared to a regular Accord) in full acceleration from about 15 mph, very quiet (though you could hear the blowers for the stack and a bit of a whine from the motor under high load), and very spacious in the passenger compartment and the trunk even though it was small on the outside. They packaged it quite cleverly by putting the fuel cell stack where the tranny tunnel usually is and making a custom rear suspension to fit the hydrogen tank very snug into the car.

The coolest feature for me was the dashboard. As Honda seems to like to do, they spent a lot of time thinking about the gauge layout and came up with something very clever, attractive and usable. Here's a link:

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/interior.aspx

Instead of a tach, they have a power output gauge in kW, that has two different color bars of LED's which together indicate the power charge or discharge off the fuel cell and lithium ion battery.

I'm still concerned about all the things that will have to happen to make a hydrogen fuel cell car a common item, but it is encouraging to see Honda putting the time into making this a very workable car. Now if only they could produce the car for cheap, build some hydrogen infrastructure, figure out higher density hydrogen storage and undo the Hindenburg PR disaster, they will be rocking it. At least they're taking some strong first steps...

It is interesting to note that the fuel cell they are using is developed and produced in house at Honda. They haven't used a Ballard stack since 2003. This appears to be a core competancy play that Honda is executing. They are currently great at designing and building small gas engines and they have used this skill to become a strong player in a number of gas engine markets like cars, motorcycles, watercraft, lawn equipment, etc. It appears they are intending to continue this dominance into the next era of power generation. I am a bit concerned for them that this "own the engine/fuel cell" strategy may make them less focused on other workable alternatives that are closer to market (BEV/PHEV and biofuel). They are well hedged, though, to take the technology from the FCX Clarity and make a BEV out of it though, since they are largely the same drivetrain with differnt energy storage.

Looking forward to driving the new Insight!

It's about time!

I've been meaning to start a blog for months now and so now here we go! The trick was to give up on coming up with a clever name and just do it....

I'll be writing about observations from the MIT System Design and Management program, the MIT Energy Club and frequent speakers and events that add so much flavor to MIT and Cambridge.