Green & Renewable Energy Events - March 2010

Here is EcoSearch's regular Events list for March 2010. If we have missed an event in the industry, don't hesitate to let us know.

Green Mondays (2degrees)
1st March 2010 - London, UK

National Energy Foundation - Introduction to Renewable Energy
2nd March 2010 - Milton Keynes, UK

EcoBuild 2010
2nd - 24th March 2010 - London, UK

Carbon Market Insights
2nd - 4th March 2010 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Renewables East - Feed in Tariff - The real potential for renewable enregy support
3rd March 2010 - Cambridge, UK

New Energy Finance Summit 2010
3rd - 5th March 2010 - London, UK

BWEA Wave & Tidal 2010
4th March 2010 - London, UK

EnerTech World Expo' 2010
3rd - 5th March 2010 - Mumbai, India

Gulf Environment Forum
7th - 9th March 2010 - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

UK OFFSHORE WIND SUPPLY CHAIN CONFERENCE
9th March 2010 - Bristol, UK

Climate Change: How will it impact on your business?
12th March 2010 - Aberdeen, Scotland

World Biofuels Markets
15th - 17th March 2010 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

RENEWABLE HEAT INCENTIVE - WARMING UP THE MARKET
16th March 2010 - Bristol, UK

Thin Film Solar Summit Europe
17th & 18th March 2010 - Berlin, Germany

New Energy Husum 2010
18th - 21st March 2010 - Husum, Germany

National Home Building and Renovation Show
18th - 21st March 2010 - Birmingham, UK

Scottish Renewables - Annual Conference
23rd & 24th March 2010 - Glasgow, Scotland

GLOBALCON 2010
24th & 25th March 2010 - Philadelphia, USA

Offshore Wind & Transmission
30th & 31st March 2010 - Hamburg, Germany

Green and Renewable Energy Events - February 2010

Each month we aim to bring you a comprehensive list of all the events happening in the world of Renewable Energy, Clean Technology, Carbon Management and Sustainability.

If we have missed any events, just let us know and we will be happy to add to our list.

You can also see our list for January 2010 here.

~*~

Green Mondays (2degrees)
1st February 2010 - London, UK

Offshore Wind Power
2nd & 3rd February 2010 - Philadelphia, USA

The CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards 2010
3rd February 2010 - London, UK
You can follow @CIBSE on Twitter

RETECH 2010
3rd - 5th February 2010 - Washington, USA

Bioenergy Expo
4th - 7th February 2010 - Verona, Italy

Scottish Energy and Environment Conference
9th February 2010 - Glasgow, Scotland

Plastic and Thin Film Photovoltaics
11th & 12th February 2010 - Barcelona, Spain

Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo
23rd - 25th February 2010 - Texas, USA
You can follow @REWorld on Twitter

Cleantech Forum San Francisco
24th - 26th February 2010 - California, USA
You can follow @cleantechgroup on Twitter

Stay tuned - we will publish a similar list for March 2010 soon.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from EcoSearch

All at EcoSearch would like to wish our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We are all looking forward bringing you more exciting news, views and snippets from the world of talent in Renewable Energy, Clean Tech and Carbon Management in 2010.

If you would like to keep up to date over the festive period, EcoSearch is on Twitter. So feel free to follow @EcoSearch and never miss a thing.

In the meantime, you might like to check out some of our most popular posts of 2009:

• Our Green and Renewable Energy events lists
• Do you still need head hunters in a down economy?
• Green IT challenges
• Boost Your Career in 2009 with LinkedIn
• VCs - Where has the 'venture' gone from Venture Capital?

Image by josh.liba

Green and Renewable Energy Events – January 2010

Here is the first event list for 2010.

If you know of an event we have missed, please let us know and we will add it to the list. You can drop us an email or leave us a comment here on the blog. You can also view and download our full list of events for the next six months.

If there is anything else we can add to this service to make it more useful to you, just let us know.

~*~

Green Mondays – Post Copenhagen
11th January 2010 – London, UK

Green Drinks – London
Green Drinks events are held globally – find many other events via their website.
12th January 2010 – Soho, London UK

Follow @greendrinks on Twitter

InterSOLUTION - the 1st and only solar energy trade fair in the Benelux
14th – 16th January 2010 – Belgium

World Future Energy Summit
18th – 21st January 2010 – Abu Dhabi, UAE

Solar Power Generation USA
20th & 21st January 2010 – Las Vegas, Nevada USA

Distributed Wind Interconnection Workshop
21st – 23rd January 2010 – Golden, CO USA

Climate Change: Effective Communication
22nd January 2010 – Edinburgh, Scotland

Energy from Biomass and Waste
26th & 27th January 2010 – London, UK

Wind Power Monthly Offshore Event
27th January 2010 – London, UK

Wind Power Commercial Strategies
27th – 29th January 2010 – Vienna, Austria

Course: Renewable Energy Technologies for 6* Sustainable Homes
29th January 2010 – University of Brighton, UK

Here is December 2009’s event list, and pop back or subscribe via RSS as we will be publishing a similar list for February soon.

VCs: Where has the “venture” gone from Venture Capital?

Well here is a question that no one seems able or willing to answer, I’ll throw it open to the investment Universe -VCs, private equity, corporate finance, angel funders, high net worth individuals – be you early stage, late stage (or indeed ANY stage which would be good right now)

Who is REALLY investing over here in the UK – have we closed for Christmas early this year?

From where I am sitting (having watched a colleague bash the phones for the last 4 weeks across a myriad of investor networks on what is – to me – a “no brainer” cleantech medical device manufacturing process) it strikes me that there is an inordinate amount of tyre kicking going on out there, people sitting on piles of cash with no home and not a lot of action.

Today we hear of an investor pulling the plug on a £7m investment because they were feeling “over exposed”.

And at the other end of the spectrum on my desk I can’t find £150K for something that has mass market developing country and remote energy application potential.

Come on people, shame on you! Do I really have to create something totally radical to bypass you lot?

If the anti risk and tyre kicking stance most of you are taking presently continues, how do we progress the low carbon technology agenda? The Carbon Trust and those delightful public sector competition rounds are not going to get us anywhere fast.

My sweeping generalisation about investment land presently is that you are all lacking in creativity, sophistication, knowledge and your models and ideals means you will miss some technology waves. Some spaces are moving so fast by the time you’ve even “gated” the first investment proposal the opportunity has been snapped up into corporate land, is mothballed never to see the light of day, or worse – goes bust before it's started.

The lack of funding supply also means that there is a world of collaboration starting to open up out there that will completely bypass you in future. All those lovely technologies that are scalable and interesting may well find themselves swept up into the arms of a cash rich Corporate doing a nice line in acquiring patents and technologies and sand-bagging for the future. Again, some of those may never see the light of day because we all know corporate cultures aren’t great at “incubating”.

Anyone notice a bit of sweeping up of patents going on of late?

Push back by all means …

By Debby Lloyd

Managing Director, EcoSearch

Commercial Realism and Wind Energy

Two articles published today (Friday 13th November) have caught my attention. The first is a discussion piece by Petra Barnby in the FT EnergySource blog. The second is the press release accompanying the Institution of Mechanical Engineers latest paper Climate Change: Have we lost the Battle?

Both these articles try to depict a true and realistic story, a story which is still being written and may or may not have a happy ending. They also address different topics; the FT piece is about offshore wind and how it can contribute to energy security, and the IMechE report is about Climate Change (i.e. reducing CO2) targets. They have different goals, although possibly with common causes and shared solutions.

However, I have a few observations. The FT article is outwardly a “pro-Wind” stance. It talks about the turbines’ “serenity and peacefulness about their understated orbital business that fits in with the drab North Sea scape” and contribution that wind could make to energy generation in the UK, with offshore wind farms “powering 18.5m homes in 10 years’ time.” The author also chooses to quote members of the BWEA. Yet there is something mildly frustrating about the opening line to the piece…

They’re beautiful,’ breathed a bearded wind farm enthusiast as he spotted the shape of a turbine appear from the mist on the horizon.

I think it is the use of the word “bearded” that concerns me. Are enthusiasts of wind power still associated with bearded, sandal-wearing hippies? Can we not be black shoe wearing, clean shaven (or female!) enthusiasts who see that energy security is a commercial, economical and political necessity? Maybe the analogy is only there in my mind? Maybe the guy stood next to the journalist was bearded AND suit-wearing, and it is my own sensitivities? Or is it a sub-conscious association that the journalist still makes with renewable energy enthusiasts.

I found the IMechE’s report refreshing. Whilst it may be pessimistic about actually achieving the 2050 CO2 reduction goals that have been currently set, it is real and it addresses action. It calls for a mixture of “geo-engineering” solutions. Whilst I disagree with the need to change DECC to DECS (is an initial actually going to make the difference?), I agree with the positioning.

Let’s move away from the association with bearded, sandal wearing climate change activists with pie-in-the-sky goals, and be realistic, commercial and proactive about securitising and changing our energy sources.

By Clare Buxton

Wind Energy Sector Lead

Picture courtesy of phault

10 Tips for Writing Your Cover Letter

I have recently been asked by several people about writing cover letters. They can sometimes be overlooked but are often an important tool for securing an interview. Here are my top ten suggestions to make yours stand out from the crowd:

1. If you are responding to a specific role, state your intention to apply for this job. Talk briefly about your motivations for pursuing a career with this company.
2. Make it specific to the company to whom you are writing; demonstrate that you understand a bit about their business. If you can make it personal to an individual (Dear Mr Smith) then do so.
3. Think of the cover letter as an extension of your “elevator pitch”. Why should the person opening your email/letter invite you for an interview?
4. Talk about your aptitude to do the job in question; this may be by giving example achievements from your recent experience.
5. Answer the question “What differentiates me from my peers?”
6. Use the cover-letter as a way to demonstrate your prose writing skills (i.e. don’t make it a list of bullet points).
7. Close the letter, i.e. suggest a next step, such as “Please take a look at my CV for further information”, “I look forward to hearing back from you”, “Please do not hesitate to get in contact with me if you have any questions”.
8. Keep it to one side of A4, type font 10 or 11 (if it is via email, keep it to 3 paragraphs).
9. Do not talk about salary in the cover letter.
10. Make sure your contact details are clear and correct; and also make sure that the company’s address and contact details are correct.

By Clare Buxton

Wind Energy Sector Lead, EcoSearch

Photo Courtesy of woodleywonderworks.