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- February
2014
Enernoc buys Entelios – did this cleantech exit happen too fast?
On 14 February 2014, Enernoc buys Entelios, Germany’s demand response pioneer. The Munich-based startup was founded in July 2010 by serial entrepreneurs Oliver Stahl, Tom Schulz and Stephan Lindner. With a holding period of 3 years since the first VC investment this is definitely a fast cleantech exit. But this exit may have happened too fast given that demand response is the killer app of the smart grid, a massive global market opportunity and a capital efficient option to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transition). In the end, smart demand wins over stupid supply even though it is hard to convince all market participants. And before we forget: congratulations to the Entelios team.
Read more- 1
- September
2013
Philipp Pausder pitches Thermondo (heizkosten-senken.de)
Philipp Pausder, CEO of Thermondo (formerly known as FutureWatt), pitches their new online portal for heating cost reduction at ECO13 Berlin. The idea is to make buying heat as simple as buying electricity. At the same time, heating is often neglected in the discussion about the Energiewende (energy transition). In fact, consumers can save a lot of money and energy when they buy a new heating system and move from oil to gas or wood pellets. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a big trend in the consumer market, too. Most steps in the purchase process can be organised online before a plumber comes to your house to install the new heating system. Philipp is very happy with their traction and they just closed their seed round. But the heating e-commerce business will need more venture capital to grow, so put Thermondo on your watch list and get in touch.
Read more- 21
- July
2013
Prof. Eicke Weber is very optimistic about the solar industry
Ecosummit TV: Prof. Eicke Weber, Director of Fraunhofer ISE, is very optimistic about the future of the solar industry. Firstly, the PV cost curve is going down continuously. Even in Germany with Alaska-type sunshine, we can produce electricity with silicon-based PV for 10-12 cents/kWh. At this cost level, grid parity is already outperformed since 1 kWh costs 22 cents (net) in Germany if you buy it from your local utility. Making your own electricity and storing it in a solar battery is a smart economic idea. Secondly, the global solar market will grow 10 times from 30 GW/year in 2012 to 300 GW/year by 2025. At the same time, higher efficiencies and lower production costs make PV competitive with onshore wind and hydro power. The current oversupply of 60 GW/year is a temporary phenomenon that causes trouble for PV manufacturers for another 1-2 years. Afterwards, Europe should reenter the PV industry with a “multi-GW solar Airbus project” to drive the enormous PV industry again as a technology leader.
Read more- 10
- May
2013
Martin Riedel pitches the small wind startup Enbreeze
Ecosummit TV: Decentralised local energy production is a key trend in the Energiewende. While small PV systems are already widespread, small wind is a new market with large potential growing at 30% CAGR. The advantage of small wind is that the wind also blows during the night and on cloudy days. At ECO12 Düsseldorf, Martin Riedel pitches the German early stage cleantech startup Enbreeze that develops small wind turbines.
Read more- 6
- May
2013
Jörg Fabri analyses wind energy and recommends operational excellence
Ecosummit TV: The Energiewende, i.e. the transformation to a smart green energy system, is a massive challenge for the energy industry and the government. Globally, renewable energy attracts $200B investment per year to which wind energy contributes one third. In his talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf, Joerg Fabri of allocate, analyses how we can keep up the pace in the European wind energy sector if the level of subsidies further decreases.
Read more- 24
- April
2013
Philipp Pausder pitches FutureWatt
Ecosummit TV: The Energiewende is not only about electricity but also about heat. Philipp Pausder pitches the Berlin-based startup FutureWatt at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. For business customers, FutureWatt controls the design, the financing and the operation of distributed energy systems with the aim of significantly reducing the energy bill. In December 2012, Philipp and his team launched the B2C Internet platform called heizkosten-senken.de which helps consumers reduce their heating costs.
Read more- 16
- April
2013
Urban Keussen introduces Connecting Energies, the new CVC of EON
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen presents EON’s innovation strategy for its smart green utility transformation and introduces their new corporate venture capital (CVC) activities. At ECO12 Duesseldorf, Urban announced EON’s CVC called “Connecting Energies” that co-invests in mid and late stage startups in Europe and the US that are focused on distributed renewable energy, energy storage, smart grid and customers and data. Moreover, Urban and his team work on a lot of innovation that does not have a business case yet but may well have in the future. Thus they are open for joint projects with smart green startups, especially if their solution is able to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transformation), the key task of all utilities.
Read more- 25
- March
2013
Thomas Grigoleit invites startups to invest in the cleantech nation Germany
Ecosummit TV: Thomas Grigoleit, Director Renewable Energies & Resources at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), invites the best smart green startups from all over the world to invest in the cleantech nation Germany at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012. GTAI is a governmental organisation that provides a free location consulting service to cleantech startups and corporates interested in taking advantage of Germany’s Energiewende (energy transformation) and its long-term business opportunities. Thomas presents a few case studies of foreign startups GTAI successfully attracted to Germany including Bsolar from Israel and Parmenion from Canada. Talk to Thomas if you want to follow their example.
Read more- 5
- November
2012
Smarter, greener, leaner – startups accelerate the Energiewende at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012
9 days to go until ECO12 Düsseldorf. The perfect moment to do some serious pattern recognition and talk about the cleantech startups to be featured on stage – and Ecosummit TV. Our second conference this year enjoys again a very high startup density: 26 startups present new solutions for accelerating the Energiewende (energy transformation). The Internet of things and cleantech grow together. More and more green startups develop smart hardware products that have an IP address. The startups pitching at Ecosummit control cars, helicopters, charging stations, PV systems, wind generators, batteries, street lights, homes and even entire cities over the Internet. Smarter, greener, leaner – that’s the way we want them.
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- October
2012
Urban Keussen presents EON’s smart green innovation strategy
Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen, SVP Technology & Innovation, presents the smart green innovation strategy of EON at ECO12 Berlin. Urban gives a very informative lecture on how a big utility like EON analyses megatrends and new key technologies that are decisive for the Energiewende (energy transformation). Although EON is still very active in large-scale energy generation with fossil fuels, it invested over €7B in renewables during the last couple of years, mostly in wind. Urban is the perfect point of contact for high-quality cleantech startups that are interested in doing business with EON. We look forward to his upcoming talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf.
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- October
2012
Lean cleantech startup – New Context Conference Tokyo 2012
Only successful cleantech startups have a positive impact on climate change and global resource problems. The problem is that most hardware-based cleantech startups are very capital and time intensive. Entrepreneurs and investors constantly look for new strategies to accelerate the development and marketing of smart green innovation. Applying the lean startup philosophy to cleantech could be the perfect solution. Cleantech startups also search for scalable business model, product market fit, validated learning from customers and engine of growth. In this context, it was a special honour to go to Japan – especially after Fukushima – and speak about Lean Cleantech Startup at the spectacular New Context Conference Tokyo 2012 two weeks ago.
Read more- 11
- June
2012
Joerg Fabri of Allocate recommends a holistic business strategy for the energy turnaround
Ecosummit TV: Joerg Fabri, Managing Partner of the consulting firm allocate, talks about a holistic business strategy for the utilities to manage the energy turnaround (Energiewende). To implement the transformation to the clean energy system companies need to reallocate their 4 key corporate resources: capacities, capital, people and energy and materials. There is a new paradigm driven by energy efficiency which means that the former business model of megawatt growth will not work anymore. The smart green utility of the future has to become an allocation manager that learns how to better manage the increasing complexity in the supply side and the demand side.
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