The Cleantech Avenger

In the spring, the fancy of your ever-youthful Avenger—weaned on a steady diet of Bugs Bunny—turns lightly to thoughts of... travel.

Subscribing to the notion that it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere, yours truly took a little trip around the world and sniffed out some dirty laundry that's besmirched the cleantech name.

Time for a good scrubbing.

There might be blood, but there’s no oil

As CSI: Miami’s Horatio Caine said (among other things), “The verdict is in.”

Do you remember the NOPEC company from Florida that told investors it was processing waste cooking oil from local restaurants into biodiesel fuel?

NOPEC’s founders recently went through a different kind of processing.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Karl and Helen Rehberg, both in their 60s, pled guilty to fraudulently scamming over 2,500 investors around the country into investing nearly $21 million US in a non-existent biodiesel fuel company.

The couple fled the Tampa Bay area in 1998 and were arrested in Arizona last August.

The Rehbergs each face $250,000 fines and years of imprisonment for fabricating the NOPEC biodiesel company out of whole cloth.

Or should that be invisible cloth?

Cleantech that really isn’t?

First came the news that biofuels weren’t sustainable, which cheered the petroleum industry.

Now, certain cleantech companies are in trouble for adding onto the pollution problem rather than reducing it.

Just this week, grain producer Cargill was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for discharging too much wastewater and sludge from its Iowa Falls biodiesel facility. According to the attorney general’s office, some 582 fish from a nearby creek died as a result of the toxic dumping.

That’s small fry. According to the New York Times, Missouri state officials recently charged a businessman with dumping uncleaned glycerin into region’s water system. He may have been trying to save a few bucks, but was indicted on charges of killing at least 25,000 fish and wiping out the endangered fat pocketbook (yes that’s really their name) mussels species.

The Missouri anecdote comes from a new Times report that a biodiesel company upstream of Alabama’s Black Warrior River has been discharging oil and grease into the water.

China’s Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co. has a whitewater scandal of its own, one without the Clintons.

According to the Washington Post, the polysilicon company has been found to be dumping the polysilicon waste byproduct sodium tetrachloride into nearby villages for nearly a year. The Post notes polysilicon companies in developed countries recycle the waste back into the process, but suggests some in China have been cutting environmental corners in an effort to get into the business as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Some industry watchers have been sounding alarms for some time about the egregious amounts of energy and CO₂ required to create silicon solar panels (see the Cleantech Group guest editorial Cleaner solar cell manufacturing - we have the technology!)

In the meantime, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry is confident that the country’s $17 billion US investment to keep the air quality in Beijing and surrounding municipalities “fairly good” will pay off during the Olympic Games.

Olympic Fuwa mascots are probably hoping the investment is a long-term one.

DayStar’s shine dims again

If the company's name indeed references Venus, the goddess of love, it's a shame DayStar hasn’t been receiving much lately.

This Friday will be Raja Venkatesh’s last day as CFO for DayStar Technologies (Nasdaq: DSTI). According to the company, Venkatesh will be temporarily replaced by acting chief accounting officer Chris Lail until a new CFO is appointed.

This isn’t the first loop on the DayStar coaster. (Industry observers have likely designed a course here based on the company’s ups and downs in recent years.)

In 1996, the company hired a new CEO just two weeks after then-CEO and DayStar founder John Tuttle revealed that DayStar had just a few months of cash left during the first quarterly conference call.

The company was able to secure funding later on, and Tuttle stayed on as chief development officer for another three months before resigning in February 2007. After another three months the company workforce was downsized by 30 percent and the headquarters moved from New York to Silicon Valley.

"We think this is a positive move even though it has some rough edges in terms of the messaging of it,” said DayStar sales and marketing VP Terry Schuyler at the time.

Earlier this month it seemed DayStar’s ride had finally smoothed out for good. German company juwi agreed to buy 25 percent of all the thin-film solar DayStar produces through 2011.

Is this part where we’re supposed to catch our breath? Investors apparently thought so, sending DayStar's shares up almost 8 percent today to close at $2.69 a share.

Inhale.

Got more cleantech sector gossip, rumor or word of sordid goings-on? Do tell, or the bunny gets it.