Research firm Kachan & Co. publishes new, simplified cleantech categorization

- Kachan's widely-referenced taxonomy of cleantech, first published in 2010, has been updated with latest cleantech innovation -

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Cleantech research and advisory firm Kachan & Co. has issued a new version of its taxonomy of the cleantech sector, a document that helps clarify which industries and technologies should be considered under the cleantech umbrella.

"Classic definitions of cleantech had gotten long in the tooth. The sector has evolved, and other taxonomies hadn't kept up," said Kachan Managing Partner Dallas Kachan. "When we introduced it in 2010, ours was the first major reworking of the taxonomy of cleantech by a research firm since the category's introduction in 2002. This new edition, first released in draft early last month, reflects even more analysis and categorizes latest global cleantech innovation as well."

The clean technology sector—a high profile investment theme that receives billions in venture capital and project investment every year—had long been a bewildering array of energy, industrial and vehicular emissions-related products and services.

The Kachan taxonomy brings order to cleantech, grouping clean technology innovation into eight high-level categories: Clean energy, energy storage, efficiency, transportation, air & environment, clean industry, water and agriculture. Each category includes additional sub-categories by which technologies and the companies providing them may be organized and tagged.

Many organizations in cleantech use and recommend the Kachan taxonomy.

Some of the specific revisions in this year's edition include:

• Addition of collaborative consumption systems, which include systems for vehicle sharing, collaborative workspaces, time banks, virtual currencies, etc.
  
  
• Embellishments of the energy storage category to reflect latest innovation
  
  
• More detail in nuclear technologies after a recent Kachan report investigating and comparing new emerging nuclear technologies and companies (see http://www.kachan.com/research/emerging-nuclear-innovations-report)
  
  
• Moving fuel cells from energy storage to clean energy to better reflect their current state of commercialization
  
  
• Reorganization of data center technologies, and
  
  
• Significant expansion to the agricultural category, reflecting recent work for a forthcoming Kachan report on leading agricultural technology companies (see http://www.kachan.com/content/agricultural-tech-companies-watch)
  
  

Newly updated, this categorization was informed by Kachan staff's years of writing thousands of clean technology articles and reports. Each edition of the Kachan cleantech taxonomy was crowdsourced and validated by the industry before being finalized.

This year's edition was first published to the cleantech sector for feedback on August 10^th, 2012 at http://www.kachan.com/content/two-years-later-revisiting-taxonomy-cleantech - the final version of Kachan's new taxonomy is available at http://kachan.com/about/cleaner-technology-definition-cleantech.

About Kachan & Co.
Kachan & Co. is a cleantech research and advisory firm with offices in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. The company publishes research on clean technology companies and future trends and provides consulting services to large corporations, governments and cleantech vendors. Kachan staff have been covering, publishing about and helping propel clean technology since 2006. For more information, visit http://www.kachan.com. 

SOURCE Kachan & Co.