Successful Green Energy Conference in Pasadena Highlighted Significant New Technologies

Business Wire, June 15, 2007

PASADENA, Calif. -- An informed audience of almost 200 business leaders, academics and energy researchers heard Idealab Founder and CEO Bill Gross give the keynote address at GreenTech 2007, the inaugural green energy conference presented by Caltech's Office of Technology Transfer, Entretech and Materia at the Pasadena Hilton on Thursday, June 14.

Materia CEO and conference host Mike Giardello explained his company's olefin metathesis catalyst technology, which stands apart as one of the most exciting green technologies commercialized to date. CEO & Founder of Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation (a VIASPACE Energy Co.) Carl Kukkonen impressed the audience with his immediately marketable portable fuel cell cartridges for personal electronics. Carl Schulenburg, CEO and Founder of PowerMEMS Technologies, Inc., discussed MEMS technology and his company's expertise in mechanical energy harvesting. Miasole Sr. VP of Sales Martin J. Wenzel highlighted his company's innovative thin solar films manufactured into thin, flexible panels as offering businesses new, energy-saving construction materials. Christophe H. Schilling, president and CSO of Genomatica, discussed yet another advance using microbes to manufacture industrial chemicals more cheaply and cleanly than with conventional industrial manufacture.

Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard started the day off by mentioning Pasadena's incentives to build green business.

The day concluded with a lively discussion by an impressive venture capitalist panel including top firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Battery Ventures, TPG Growth, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners; the opportunities in clean tech had a surprisingly wide range, from engineering advances in car engine design and energy-saving sheetrock building materials, to innovations in water management and solar power. While they apply the same scrupulous criteria to energy investments and will seek established businesses, each company will work with promising early stage, risky start-ups supplying management expertise, financial resources and connections.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Dr. Nathan S. Lewis, Caltech professor, opened the conference with a pointed, stat-driven, realistic presentation of the state of our energy platform. He opened by professing that energy is "the most important scientific and technological problem facing mankind in the 21st century." In his presentation "Scientific Challenges in Sustainable Energy Technology," he outlined what our past, present and future energy consumptions have been and will be and indicated that solar energy is really our only "big card" to play. The eye-opening presentation set the stage for a day of solutions for what many agree is the single biggest challenge facing scientists, policy-makers and economists on a global level. For Dr. Lewis' entire presentation, please go to nsl.caltech.edu.

Carl Kukkonen, president and CEO of Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation and chairman, CEO & co-founder of VIASPACE, Inc., presented "Fuel Cells and Fuel Cartridges to Power Portable Electronics." His company's portable cartridge burns methanol safely enough to be approved by the FAA for airplane use, and will allow consumers to re-charge or operate their electronics for far longer than today's lithium ion batteries and the like. DMFCC is mainly working with Korean and Japanese partners to commercialize the product. He expects his cartridges to hit the marketplace in 2008 with volume in 2009. His company is working on the energy infrastructure to not only get the cartridges produced in large quantities but to allow them to easily hit the mainstream market.

James T. Stoppert, senior director of Cargill Industrial Bioproducts, Cargill, Inc., presented "The Bio-Industrial Revolution Has Begun." Cargill is a $40 billion agricultural products company deeply involved with creating biorefineries for converting seed oils into materials used in everyday products and in the expertise to deliver bio-products that are converted into biofuel by Materia's proprietary metathesis olefin technology. Cargill's ability to leverage other people's research to get products into the marketplace quickly is impressive. The company is a leader in the industrial bio-products business. Stoppert stated that if added together, all the crops used to create biomass for biofuel could replace half the fuel on earth. He explained that this could be 'an' answer that can drastically lessen the amount of energy it takes to make one pound of plastic, for example. Metathesis technology that is the basis for their partnership with Materia is "the most exciting thing I have worked on in my career," stated Stoppert. And for Cargill, it represents a $7 billion opportunity--the excitement over this technology is undeniable.

Michael A. Giardello, CEO of Materia, Inc., a conference sponsor and MC for the day, presented his company's Nobel prize-winning olefin metathesis catalyst technology, which with partners like Cargill, is helping to create chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals from renewable sources for a potentially massive market. He stated that this technology is based on the precise control and manipulation of a simple carbon carbon bond and is so fundamental that it can be generically applied across a number of industries. The application of this fundamental discovery "is changing the way chemists will develop and create new products" and its impact on products we haven't even thought about yet will be significant to the marketplace and the green marketplace in particular. Materia works with a diverse group of partners including biopharmaceutical companies Aileron Therapeutics and Lanxess Deutschland GmbH, as well as Peakdale Molecular Ltd., a company producing hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber.