These are the types of panels that you might see on the back of cell phones, for example. Light and thin equals much broader uses for the cells, which means more potential energy produced from the sun.

Most people know GE for light bulbs, but they are much more than that. “Over the last decade, through technology investment, GE has become one of the world’s major wind turbine manufacturers, and our investment in high-tech solar products will help us continue to grow our position in the renewable energy industry,” said Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy business.

In other solar news, Google has invested roughly $5 million in a German 18.7-megawatt solar power plant. It is Google’s first investment in clean technology outside of the United States.

The solar power plant occupies around 116 acres and can generate enough power for around 5,000 homes. More than 70 percent of the panels installed at the plant are manufactured in Germany.

The funds will come from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant the city received from the Department of Energy last year as part of the broad federal stimulus package.

To qualify, among other things, you must contract with a Certified Energy Manager (Green Squared has these) to perform an energy audit (Green Squared does these) and make energy utilization recommendations for the office building and the minimum amount of work to qualify for this program is $100,000.

This announcement coincides with the comments that we relayed in August from Spanjian at the Clean Air Through Energy Efficiency Conference held in Austin.

It also jives with what Spanjian said in reference to slowing PACE progress in Texas.

Houston, the “Oil Capital of the World”, has a recently appointed Director of Sustainability, Laura Spanjian, and she told the Texas Tribune that her city was “not going to wait” for the PACE problems to get solved. “We have set aside funds to help commercial property owners with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements,” she said in an e-mail. “We’re going to find another model in the short-term while the issues with PACE are being worked out.”

Kudos to Ms. Spanjian on her aggressive approach.

Hat tip to Green Tech Media and Venture Beat’s Green Beat that do great jobs on the money that flows into the space.

Cleantech saw $7.8 Billion in 2010 (the most post-credit bubble), but that was somewhat tempered with slower third and fourth quarters.

“Venture funds are still in a cautious place” as they continue to try to raise money for their own funds, said Sheerez Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group. That makes it hard for early-stage startups, as investors look for later-stage companies where “the technology risk has been taken care of,” he said.

Greentech mentions that December was a big month, however. There were more than 40 solar, smart grid, efficiency, lighting, biofuels, wind and recycling firms that raised more than $700M in VC in December.

A couple of interesting other highlights:

++ OPower, the home energy-efficiency startup, closed on their round C with $50 million led by two of Silicon Valley’s premier VC firms — Kleiner Perkins and Accel Partners, along with New Enterprise Associates. OPower is focused on customer engagement and behavior modification, and is currently providing tens of thousands of homes with in-home energy data and efficiency advice via paper reports or online. The platform is described as advanced customer engagement.

They got a visit from Obama earlier this year with respect to clean jobs.

More on OPower’s $50M raise here.

See our earlier discussion using energy data to curb usage behavior: New Electric Bill could Drive Better Usage

++ Energy efficiency continues to be the hottest segment with 7 deals for $162 million in the fourth quarter per E&Y.

++ Solar saw $150 million in 10 deals.

Ernst & Young itself seems bullish on cleantech’s future. “This quarter reflects the ongoing volatility in cleantech investment that we have observed over the past two years, depending on the presence of the very large transactions we see in cleantech,” said Jay Spencer, Ernst & Young’s Americas cleantech director, in a company statement. “However, a number [of] factors point to the continuing strength in the U.S. cleantech sector, including growth in energy efficiency investments and corporate involvement throughout multiple industries — from utilities to technology to consumer products.”

Don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @greensquaredcom.

According to this Reuters article, NRG Solar as they are known, has also invested in the following solar projects recently:

+ BrightSource Energy’s 392-megawatt solar thermal Ivanpah project in the Mojave Desert of California
+ 21-megawatt project in California from First Solar
+ Partnered with Euru Energy America to build three power projects totaling 45 megawatts in California.
+ NRG said it was buying nine projects under development in California and Arizona from U.S. Solar.

Vice President Biden said, “The initiatives announced today are putting the Recovery Through Retrofit report’s recommendations into action – giving American families the tools they need to invest in home energy upgrades. Together, these programs will grow the home retrofit industry and help middle class families save money and energy.”

Now we need a working solution for building owners, whether it is PACE or something else.

Houston is #2 on the most likely to dry up list. San Antonio’s #4. Who’s #1?

Two recent reports, an October 2010 report by environmental research and sustainability group Ceres, and a July 2010 report from the National Resources Defense Council, each outlined some of the likely areas where water issues will likely have a major impact on life as its citizens know it.

The investor website, 24/7 Wall Street, then ran analysis of those reports and cross-referenced it the water supply and consumption in America’s 30 largest cities to identify potential conflicts in regions which might have disputed rights over large supplies of water and the battles that could arise from these disputes.

They then created a Top Ten list with the most acute exposure to problems which could cause large imbalances of water supply and demand.

10. Orlando, FL

The area has implemented extreme conservation measures, including aggressive water-rationing policies and lawn-watering bans. As of 2013, Orlando will no longer be able to increase the rate at which it uses water from the Floridan aquifer, the city’s main source of fresh water supply. It is estimated that water usage in the Orlando area will increase from 526 million gallons per day from 1995 to 866 million in 2020. On the city website, the mayor is quoted, saying: “Orlando Utilities Commission water usage trends show Orlando water demand exceeding the supply by approximately 2014 if no action is taken.”

9. Atlanta, GA

The crisis began when the Army Corps of Engineers released more than 20 billion gallons of water from Lake Lanier, the city’s primary source of water. The lake is the site of an ongoing legal conflict between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, all of which rely on the reservoir for fresh water. Last year, a federal judge declared Atlanta’s withdrawals from the lake illegal, and if the ruling stands, the city will lose roughly 40% of its water supply by 2012.

8. Tuscon, AZ

6. Fort Worth, TX

As Fort Worth continues to grow, the amount of water demand has continued to exceed the amount of water available through local supply. The Tarrant Regional Water District is trying to bring in more water from Oklahoma’s Red River. Oklahoma, wishing to preserve its water sources, limits interstate water sales. Fort Worth has countered with a lawsuit, which is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

5. San Francisco, CA

4. San Antonio, TX

The NRDC says that the area is at extremely high risk for water demand exceeding supply by 2050 if no major systematic changes are made. Legal battles over the Edwards Aquifier with surrounding areas, including Austin, TX, are ongoing.

3. Phoenix, AZ

2. Houston, TX

Throughout most of its history, the city of Houston primarily drew water from the Jasper Aquifer, located along the southeastern coast of Texas. Over the last 30 years, the city began to suffer from dramatic rises in sea level of nearly an inch a year. Geologists eventually realized that the cause was Houston’s withdrawal of fresh water from the aquifer located under the city. This discovery forced city officials to use nearby Lake Houston and Lake Conroe for municipal water instead of the aquifer. Since 2000, Houston has been the fifth-fastest-growing city in the country, and its presence in an area with high drought likelihood makes it an immediate risk for serious water shortages.

1. Los Angeles, CA

Great work by 24/7 Wall Street in putting this list together.

If there is any doubt about the severity of this issue, legendary investor T. Boone Pickens has been spending MILLIONS on water rights throughout the Southwest (note the overlap in the above list).

Now, what are we going to do about it?

According to Building Green, the suit was filed on behalf of mechanical systems designer Henry Gifford, owner of Gifford Fuel Saving. Among other allegations, the suit argues that USGBC is fraudulently misleading consumers and fraudulently misrepresenting energy performance of buildings certified under its LEED rating systems, and that LEED is harming the environment by leading consumers away from using proven energy-saving strategies.

Those are some very damning allegations, if they are true. The crux of Gifford’s allegations revolve around this:

The suit alleges that USGBC’s claim that it verifies efficient design and construction is “false and intended to mislead the consumer and monopolize the market for energy-efficient building design.” To support this allegation Gifford relies heavily on his critique of a 2008 study from New Buildings Institute (NBI) and USGBC that is, to date, the most comprehensive look at the actual energy performance of buildings certified under LEED for New Construction and Major Renovations (LEED-NC). While the NBI study makes the case that LEED buildings are, on average, 25%–30% more efficient than the national average, Gifford published his own analysis in 2008 concluding that LEED buildings are, on average, 29% less efficient.

USGBC hasn’t commented yet, obviously due to the pending litigation, but Gifford is certainly talking…

Gifford said, “I’m afraid that in a few years somebody really evil will publicize the fact that green buildings don’t save energy and argue that the only solution [to resource constraints] is more guns to shoot at the people who have oil underneath their sand.”

“Nobody hires me to fix their buildings,” he said. Though not an engineer, Gifford is respected in energy efficiency circles for his technical knowledge. He told EBN that he has lost out because owners are fixated on earning LEED points, and he doesn’t participate: “Unless you’re a LEED AP you’re not going to get work.” That’s unfair, he claims, because while USGBC says that its product saves energy, it doesn’t. Gifford says that his services actually save energy, and he’s prepared to prove it by sharing energy bills from buildings he has worked on.

According to this article, the investment will cost about $4.6 million.

That investment will generate $684,000 in revenue annually according to Ikea estimates, based primarily on the 71.3 cents a kilowatt hour feed-in tariff.

That is a good news-bad news scenario in my opinion. This solar investment has a very good simple payback of 6.72 years. The bad news is that without the feed-in tariff that this same investment would provide a 60-year payback.

Photo credit:COLIN MCCONNELL/TORONTO STAR

Per the report, the following EEMs played important roles in reaching the 50% energy savings target:

• The baseline hydronic VAV system was replaced with radiant heated and cooled slab
ceilings with DOAS for ventilation.

• Total plug loads were reduced by 23% to 0.68 W/ft2 (7.3 W/m2) by purchasing high efficiency electronic equipment and employing control strategies to eliminate plug loads when equipment was not being used.

I like how they approached all of the major energy drivers: building envelope, HVAC, lights, AND PLUGLOAD. Plugloads are often ignored and are hidden consumers in buildings.

I may have missed the full payback calculations (it is, after all, 163 pages), but I sure what have liked to see them. They did provide a summary of paybacks which were somewhat disappointing:

Low-energy high-rise large office buildings featuring well integrated energy efficiency measures demonstrated simple payback periods of less than ten years; low-energy low-rise large office buildings had simple payback periods of between nine and 16 years; and low-energy high-rise large office buildings with high glazing
fraction and minimal insulation had simple payback periods of greater than 20 years.

What about in this economy?

Prior to the recession, LEED-certified buildings enjoyed noticeably faster lease-up times and lower vacancy rates in addition to commanding higher rental premiums compared with their non-green peers.

However, currently, vacancy rates have remained relatively high for Class A LEED-certified buildings, with a national average of 37.6% compared with 25.8% for all Class A office.

Why?

Many of the new Class A office buildings that started development before the recession and came online after the economy had begun to weaken were LEED certified buildings. As a result of the economy, many new office buildings have struggled to attract tenants and have higher than average vacancy rates.

Miller then analyzed two sets of office buildings: pre-recession new builds (completed 2000-2005) and post 2005 new builds.

Pre-recession completed Class A LEED office buildings average $28.50 per square foot in rent with an average vacancy rate of 6.5%, compared with $25.89 per square foot in average rent and an average vacancy of 10.7% for all Class A office stock. That’s a 10% rent premium!

In post 2005 completed buldings, the LEED certified buildings average $33.24 per square foot compared to $30.11 per square foot for all Class A office. Again, that’s over 10% rent premium!

However, the national vacancy rate for all Class A LEED office properties was 36.4% at the end of the first quarter of 2010, compared with 31.1% for all Class A multi-tenant office property. That makes it about a push in this economy, but as the economy strengthens that rental premium will pay big long-term dividends. Plus, annual operating expenses should be less in the LEED building, tilting the balance again to green.

Don’t forget that Green Squared promotes Green that makes cents! — (i) “green”, as in environmental sustainability, and (ii) “green”, as in cost savings. That’s Green²; that’s Green Squared!