Dan Haugen

Freelance Journalist ::: Energy : Sustainability : Technology :::

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Solar suppliers try to find place in the sun

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On their way to becoming solar-electric panels, more than half of the world’s silicon solar cells produced today reportedly pass through a furnace made by a century-old Lakeville manufacturer. What’s more, the company only started supplying the solar industry four years ago. Despatch Industries now owns more than 60 percent of the global market for firing furnaces used in solar cell production, according to John Farrell, managing director of Despatch’s solar business group — its largest segment last year. Despatch has shipped hundreds of solar cell furnaces to China, Taiwan and other Asian countries, where most solar cell manufacturing occurs. Yet its role in the solar industry is mostly unknown in Minnesota. More than 100 years ago, the company began making heaters for Minneapolis streetcars. Today, Despatch is part of what Lynn Hinkle, policy development director for the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, calls the state’s “invisible” solar supply chain, a cluster of companies quietly producing parts and equipment for the global solar industry. A new push is under way to shine more light on these solar suppliers in hopes of further building up the industry in Minnesota

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Written by Dan

October 24th, 2011 at 2:28 pm

Posted in Business,Cleantech,Energy,Finance & Commerce,Manufacturing,Minnesota

How will Silicon Energy and TenKsolar manage in oversupplied solar panel market?

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Written by Dan

October 24th, 2011 at 1:57 pm

Posted in Business,Cleantech,Energy,Entrepreneurs,Environment,Finance & Commerce,Manufacturing,Minnesota

GOOD news!

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My first story for GOOD:

Brian Van Slyke didn't want to be a boss‚ and he didn't want to have one either. But as his one-man record label grew to a three-person operation, they needed some type of organizational structure. "We wanted to be our own bosses, together," Van Slyke says. In 2006, Fall of the West Records was reincorporated as a worker-owned cooperative, giving each member an ownership stake and convincing Van Slyke to tailor his college education around cooperatives. Last week, Van Slyke was at the National Cooperative Business Association’s annual conference in Minneapolis to show off the board game he created, Co-opoly , where everybody wins or loses together and learns how a cooperative works. With rising discontent about the economic status quo (see: Occupy Wall Street) and a United Nations resolution declaring 2012 the "International Year of the Cooperative," co-op advocates at last week's conference were optimistic about what they see as a ripe opportunity to grow their movement—if only people knew about it. They need more public education, from board games to marketing. (Continue reading…)

Written by Dan

October 13th, 2011 at 12:54 pm

Posted in Business,Economy,Entrepreneurs,GOOD

Closing the Loop on Electronic Waste

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Make no mistake: Best Buy likes to see customers lining up for that next new, must-have gadget. The consumer electronics retailer is in the business of helping people upgrade their technology, whether it’s a mobile phone or a big-screen television.

For every new product, though, there’s often an old one made obsolete: last year’s iPhone, or a clunky analog TV set, or that computer your media collection outgrew. All of this stuff eventually starts to pile up in closets, landfills or incinerators.

It’s an environmental hazard, and it’s a customer hassle. That’s why Best Buy is seeking to help close the loop on the millions of pounds of electronic waste its stores and customers generate each year.

Best Buy has rapidly become a national leader in e-waste recycling since launching an in-store drop-off program in February 2009. Customers at its U.S. stores can bring in just about any old electronics, regardless of where or when they were purchased, and Best Buy will make sure they get recycled responsibly. Last year, the company collected more than 75 million pounds of unwanted electronics. (Continue reading…)

Closing the Loop on Electronic Waste

Written by Dan

September 1st, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Posted in Business,Environment,Minnesota,Momentum,Retail,Technology

Read my story on water scarcity in Twin Cities Business

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I spent a few months this spring looking into the potential risks and opportunities for Minnesota companies as development, pollution, population growth and climate conspire to strain our planet’s fresh water supply. The risk may seem distant here in the land of 10,000 lakes, but in an age when global supply chains span the globe, few industries will be unaffected. Some are already feeling the effects. Meanwhile, the Twin Cities is home to a promising cluster of companies and technologies that could play a role in addressing the coming global crisis. Read more in the July issue of Twin Cities Business magazine.

Written by Dan

July 1st, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Posted in Business,Cleantech,Energy,Environment,Minnesota,Technology,Twin Cities Business

See my cover story in the June issue of Minnesota Business

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When Target started rolling out expanded grocery sections two years ago in its general merchandise stores, the promotions featured the kind of eye-catching design people have come to expect from the retailer. Three-dimensional fruit bulged from billboards over First Avenue. Produce-filled shopping baskets jutted off bus shelters. Light-rail cars were wrapped in oranges, peppers and other grocery store images. The creative juice for the campaign came from a branding and advertising boutique just west of downtown Minneapolis. Knock Inc. produced in-store signage and promotions for the PFresh grocery concept, which is expanding at a rate of about 350 stores per year. The agency also creates Target's seasonal decorations, from the holidays to back-to-school displays. Target is synonymous with good design, but much of the retailer's creative and technical brain trust actually resides outside its Nicollet Mall headquarters. The company routinely hires outside designers and other creatives to help with projects-and not just celebrities like Shaun White or Michael Graves. It goes beyond design, too. From lawyers and consultants to programmers and photographers, scores of small- and medium-size companies play a role in helping Target hit its mark each quarter. It’s the Twin Cities’ Target economy, an entire ecosystem of companies that owe some of their growth and good fortunes even existence, in some cases to the Big Red Bull's-Eye.

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Written by Dan

June 7th, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Posted in Business,Design,Economy,Entrepreneurs,Minneapolis,Minnesota,Minnesota Business,Retail

W3i: Playing the Game

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In 1998, brothers and St. Cloud State students Rob and Ryan Weber founded Freeze.com, which offered free clip art, screensavers, desktop wallpaper, and other downloads. How’d they make money off of free stuff? Before customers could install these items, they had to click through a pitch to download software that generates revenue by displaying ads on users’ computers. Every time someone clicked “yes,” the Webers got a cut from the advertising software developer. By 2004, Freeze.com’s revenues were more than $20 million. That success with desktop software is helping fund the firm’s ambitious dive into mobile gaming. In December, the company—which rebranded as W3i in 2007—capitalized an investment fund called Recharge Studios. The fund partners with independent developers and publishers to develop and market their games.

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Written by Dan

May 19th, 2011 at 6:36 pm

Posted in Business,Entrepreneurs,Minnesota,Technology,Twin Cities Business

The Wallet-less Future

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Starbucks introduced a pay-by-iPhone or -BlackBerry option at its shops nationwide in January, and the Twin Cities got a glimpse of what a wallet-less future could look like. Soon, people could be using their smartphones to pay for everything from fast food to utility bills. Both nationally and locally, activity around mobile payments has dialed up a notch. U.S. Bank wrapped up a pilot program in March in which it embedded “wave-and-pay” technology (the technical term is NFC, or near-field communication) in employees’ BlackBerrys and iPhones, asking them to use the devices at retailers with NFC terminals. For now, terminals are most common at convenience stores and fast-food chains, and are used with smart cards issued by credit card companies. U.S. Bank is one of four major banks working with Visa to combine the contactless payment technology with customers’ mobile devices. “This is about being able to provide the option for the customer to do business with us in the way they want to,” says Dominic Venturo, U.S. Bank’s chief innovation officer for payment services.

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Written by Dan

May 19th, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Posted in Business,Minneapolis,Minnesota,Technology,Twin Cities Business

Risky Business: How insurers are adapting to climate change

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Risky Business By Dan Haugen In September 2005, Al Gore was scheduled to address the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in New Orleans about the potential impact of climate change on the insurance industry. The meeting was postponed—due to Hurricane Katrina. But the message got across. The hurricane itself served as a wake-up call to the industry, violently illustrating the type of extreme weather climate scientists predict will become more common as the planet grows warmer. In the years since, insurers have launched hundreds of efforts to better assess and mitigate climate change risks. Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists, surveyed insurers in 2008 and counted 643 climate-related initiatives underway at 246 companies worldwide. The efforts range from funding research for new risk models to innovating new products and policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, such as pay-as-you-drive auto insurance. Altogether, they paint a picture of an industry in the early stage of reevaluating both its risk and its responsibility with respect to climate change. What spurred this newfound sense of urgency was the largest single year on record for U.S. catastrophe-related insurance payouts. Average weather-related losses had already been growing faster than premiums, population or the economy, from an average of about $1 billion per year in the 1970s to about $17 billion per year in the decade leading up to and including Katrina. The total for 2005: $71 billion. Allianz, Europe's largest insurer, has said it expects weather-related losses to surge 37 percent during the current decade as intensity and frequency of flooding, wildfires and tropical storms grow due to global warming. U.S. insurers are highly sophisticated when it comes to projecting risk based on historic trends. However, in a changing climate, logic suggests that what happened in the past becomes less telling for the future. The challenge, insurers say, is that most climate change research focuses on long-term global or regional impacts, while most insurance decisions revolve around short-term risk to a specific address or property. There may be strong evidence that climate change will bring more frequent and intense weather-related events. But where? And when?

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Written by Dan

April 20th, 2011 at 3:39 pm

Posted in Business,Cleantech,Energy,Environment,Momentum

Mobile Alternatives

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When AgStar Financial Services employees are out in the field (literally, in some cases), they stay connected to headquarters using their company-issued BlackBerries. These days, though, the rural lender is wondering whether its workers might be better off carrying around a new crop of mobile devices instead. Vice President of Information Technology Paul Zyla says that as iPhones and Android devices grow in popularity, he’s seeing more requests from employees who want to check their work e-mail and calendar on these devices. Employee demand, along with major developments in the enterprise mobile market, has Zyla and many of his peers reevaluating the types of mobile devices their departments support. Should the company stick with BlackBerry, or give employees the choice of an iPhone or Android? Should the business own the device, or offer network access from personal devices? Should the IT department continue to manage the devices, or outsource the hassle to someone else? “This is probably one of the most complicated business cases that I’ve been involved in,” Zyla says. As of mid-February, he hadn’t come to a conclusion. The company was testing some of the alternatives, handing out a few iPads, iPhones, and Android devices to various employees to get their feedback on how they work. He’s looking for a long-term solution, but the challenge of that is that “the market is changing so fast,” he says. “When you feel like you have a solid foundation, something new comes along and throws a curve ball at you.”

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Written by Dan

April 18th, 2011 at 8:11 pm

Posted in Business,Minnesota,Technology,Twin Cities Business

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