Zipcar tweaks its pricing (a sign of increasing competition), scientists peg the cost of climate change at $1,240 trillion, and there’s a new fuel cell outta an MIT lab that uses vanadium oxide as the anode to both generate and store energy. Today in cleantech! Read more »
Massive thunderstorms knocked out Amazon’s web services on Friday night and the cloud giant was still struggling to get service back up on Saturday. To me the news raises the question: is it time for data center operators to more seriously investigate off grid options? Read more »
Uber, the startup that has disrupted taxis everywhere with its on demand car service, plans to launch a new lower cost, and greener hybrid option for customers this week, according to the New York Times. Read more »
While web sharing sites — like Airbnb and Zipcar — have an environmental angle, potential users of these services aren’t all that motivated by the environmental benefits, according to a new survey. Instead web sharing users are motivated by saving money and by having easy access. Read more »
Battery innovation takes an unusual twist with a spray-on (or paint on) battery, as well as battery that leaves room to grow. Read more »
After nine-years, an IPO and $125 million in venture funding, Solazyme is finally ready to break into biofuels in a more commercial way: this week Solazyme announced the ground-breaking of a biofuel plant in Brazil through a joint venture with Bunge. Read more »
Will Apple make a big bet on clean power at its new planned $1 billion data center just outside of Reno, Nevada? While details are few at this point, it sure looks like it. Read more »
At least one venture firm is still standing strong behind energy technology. Ten-year-old Braemar Energy Ventures announced on Wednesday that it has closed its latest third fund, of $300 million, to invest in energy technologies. Read more »
Will hyperscale data centers like those at Facebook, Google and Amazon be willing to adopt low power ARM or even Linux based multi core processors in their data centers? Read more »
San Francisco is truly the test bed for alternative tech-focused transportation. And on Tuesday, folks in the Bay Area will have access to yet another option: SideCar, a mobile app that will offer real time ride sharing. Read more »
Data centers don’t have to be powered by a solar farm to be smart about their energy consumption — often times it’s the far less glamorous choices that can lead to energy savings. Those are the choices that Belgian startup Cluttr is helping data center operators make. Read more »
The Nest learning thermostat is now winning over utilities, too. On Monday, startup Nest announced that Texas energy service provider Reliant has started offering its learning thermostat through one of its energy efficiency programs. Read more »
Soladigm, a startup that makes windows that can be tinted on demand, has raised another $55 million, bringing the company’s total funding to $125 million. Read more »
Electric car maker Tesla Motors officially handed off the first ten of its Model S electric cars at a launch event at its factory in Fremont, Calif. on Friday. Here’s our photos from the event. Read more »
We’ve brought you photos and videos of Tesla’s Model S electric car for months as it moved from alpha to beta and finally to commercial stage. And on Friday we finally got a chance to drive the car on the streets around Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif. Read more »
Tesla Motors investor, and DBL Investor’s Partner, Nancy Pfund has been waiting about three years to get her Model S electric sedan. Pfund is one of a group of customers that will receive their Model S cars during a big media event at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif. on Friday. Read more »
Tesla’s Model S represents a new chapter for the Silicon Valley–born, venture capital–backed company and a new hope for the mainstream adoption of electric vehicles. GigaOM readers weigh in on the new vehicle and what it means for the future of the entire industry. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
“Infrastructure of the future will be programmed,” says Dante Malagrinò, Co-Founder and CEO of Embrane, at GigaOM’s Structure conference on Thursday. Read more »
Data center operators are looking to differentiate themselves on efficiency and geography, says Kevin Timmons, the CTO of co-location data center operator CyrusOne, at GigaOM’s Structure event on Thursday. Read more »
eBay just one-upped Apple’s data center fuel cell farm. On Thursday the commerce giant announced that it is building additional capacity at its data center in Utah and it plans to power that new capacity with 30 fuel cells from Bloom Energy. Read more »
A non-profit government watch dog group called Cause of Action has filed a lawsuit accusing Delaware Governor Jack Markell and the Delaware regulatory agency Delaware Public Service Commission of cronyism with fuel cell maker Bloom Energy. Read more »
As we move into the age of webscale and cloud computing the traditional data center architecture is blowing apart, according to execs of startups that have built new kinds of disruptive data center gear and software at the Structure conference on Wednesday in San Francisco. Read more »
SunBorne Energy, backed by Khosla Ventures, is looking to raise $20 million, and has closed on $5 million, according to a filing. Read more »
Investor Peter Thiel, who has long been bullish on cleantech investing, just announced that he’s the largest investor in a new potentially $1 billion growth fund that will back companies across sectors including in energy and those tackling resource constraints. Read more »
Mapping the world’s radiation and air pollution data, using one volunteer with one gadget at a time — that’s the goal of the Safecast project, which this week closed over $100,000 on Kickstarter to deliver a limited run of its open source geiger counters to interested buyers. Read more »
A limited edition run of the open-source geiger counter designed by Xbox hacker and Chumby co-founder, Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, is about to score over $100,000 on Kickstarter in less than an hour. If you want one, pledge fast. Read more »
By September the European Union may have a new energy efficiency strategy in place. On June 14 negotiators struck a provisional deal on the proposed new EU energy efficiency directive (the “Third Energy Efficiency Directive”). Final approval is likely. Read more »
So with natural gas prices so low – under $2 per thousand cubic feet for the first time in April — it’s worth taking a look at whether natural gas could play a larger role as a transportation fuel. Read more »
The pain of the down round. According to DowJones VentureWire, Nanosolar closed its most funding at a pre-money valuation of $50 million, which was a massive drop from a valuation of over $2 billion years earlier. Read more »
Google says that a company can see energy savings of 65 to 85 percent from moving their internal hosted IT services — from email to documents to spreadsheets — over to Google Apps. Read more »
The VC exodus away from cleantech startup investing continues. One of Europe’s most well-known venture firms, Index Ventures, has closed a new €350 million fund for early stage companies and Index partner Mike Volpi tells Fortune that the firm is no longer focusing on cleantech investments. Read more »
The world of information technology is always changing, but in the last six years it has started to change more rapidly. We celebrate the people who are orchestrating this change. Here’s ten innovators that are changing the game of Internet infrastructure. Read more »
If one percent of retail investments in savings accounts, money markets and U.S Treasuries was put into crowdfunding of solar projects, that would deliver more than $90 billion for the creation of clean energy projects, according to a new white paper from Bloomberg. Read more »
Despite that smart grid network company Silver Spring Networks has yet to go public, the company is chugging along and had a pretty good quarter, according to the latest amendment to its S-1. Read more »
Turns out investors like the intersection of big data and weather. On Thursday morning six-year-old Climate Corporation announced that it has raised another round of $50 million, led by the Founders Fund and including existing investors. Read more »
Here’s a weird bit of energy data courtesy of energy software startup Opower: people that use Yahoo email spend $110 more a year on electricity — or 11 percent more — than Gmail users. Why? Read more »
Can data centers play a role in helping utilities maintain grid stability? It might sound weird, but data centers are built with about 20 percent extra capacity and on top of that can have utilization rates as low as 10 percent. Read more »
The market for solar panels might be booming in the U.S., but it’s still early days for matching battery systems with solar panel installations. But that’s not stopping battery maker Saft from looking to make batteries a natural extension of a solar panel system. Read more »
Can a humble system of gravel and a heat pump provide a breakthrough for utility-scale energy storage? British startup Isentropic thinks so, and this week announced that they’ve raised $22 million in project funding and an equity investment. Read more »
Now that solar startup BrightSource Energy has ditched its IPO plans, some might think the company has dropped off the radar. But there’s actually some interesting things — some positive, some not so positive — going on with the company this week. Check out this latest news: Read more »
