Hawkins & Doyle - Lots of green for ‘clean’

July 23, 2008 - PRLog -- CTL companies netted $49.8 million, less than 2 percent of that, said Charles Peterson, Hawkins & Doyle chief operating officer.

Through the first three months of this year, more than $2.2 billion of venture capital and private equity flowed into the alternative energy industry, according to the London-based market research firm, New Energy Finance (NEF). That is almost 60 percent more than the year-earlier period’s investment total, underscoring robust investor interest in low- or no-carbon technologies.

“We believe we can turn a crisis into an opportunity,” venture capitalist John Doerr told a Washington audience recently. His Menlo Park, Calif., firm — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers — has earmarked $100 million for its “green tech” portfolio, which includes ethanol developer Altra Biofuels and coal-to-natural gas developer GreatPoint Energy.
The solar and biofuels sectors saw the biggest first-quarter capital inflows — about $514 million and $305 million, respectively, NEF reported. Biomass and waste-to-energy, the next biggest recipient, netted $83 million.

NEF reported no first-quarter venture capital or private equity flows into the CTL industry.
Rather, investment in the global CTL industry has been dominated so far by integrated oil companies, such as Sasol Ltd. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which hold most of the patents for large-scale gasifying and catalytic-reforming technologies, NEF analyst Roberto Rodriguez Labastida explained.

Comparatively small players in the energy business — such as China-based Additron Technologies Inc. — hope to build Asia’s first 16 commercial-scale CTL refineries over the next decade.

So far, Denver-based Rentech Inc. is the only company to begin front-end engineering and design work (FEED) on a U.S. project — the conversion of a natural gas-fed fertilizer plant into a refinery that would produce up to 1,800 barrels of fuel from coal and 920 tons of fertilizer daily. Like the country’s other prospective CTL developers, Rentech is paying for preliminary planning efforts out of pocket, noted Mark Koenig, the company’s director of investor relations.

“We’re out talking with potential equity partners,” added Koenig, whose company hopes to complete the refinery specs this summer.

Additron technologies John Sabers, whose company hopes to begin front-end engineering and design work this fall on a 40,000 barrel-a-day CTL refinery in China, agreed that small companies like his must ultimately make a compelling sales pitch to outside investors.
“It will have to happen because the size of the projects are so large,” added Ward, who said his company’s North Dakota refinery will cost more than $3 billion to build.


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Minato-ku postal code 105-0001
Tokyo, JAPAN

Phone number: +81 345 802 168
Fax: +81-3-4496-5000
Email : info@hawkinsdoyle.com

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