While using machine learning over large data sets to serve up ads inside social networks isn’t new, there’s an era emerging where social network data can be used to help people solve important problems. Read more »
Beleagured Chinese solar giant, Suntech Power, was once the largest solar maker in the world. This week the company was forced into bankruptcy. But it’s not all bad news. Read more »
One of the few investors to make money from backing cleantech startups, The Westly Group has finally closed on a $160 million cleantech fund. Read more »
Companies that are still looking to produce biofuels from plant waste (and not corn) are making slow, but steady progress on milestones in 2013. Read more »
As cleantech investing continues to evolve, an accelerator focused on cleanweb startups is dropping its accelerator program in favor of becoming a venture capital firm with an in-house design studio. Read more »
President Obama starts to show his hand for how he’ll keep support going for clean energy and greener vehicles, and also fight climate change, at a time when Congress won’t likely approval major budget increases or aggressive policies. Read more »
Contrary to the politics and headlines of the day, clean energy is a relatively trusted sector, and companies should be leveraging that good faith to lead. Read more »
Internet giants, investors and web and mobile startups are placing even more emphasis on design and user experience in 2013. Read more »
Solar panels are breaking through into the mainstream. Last year there were a record-breaking amount of panels installed on rooftops in the U.S. making solar the fastest growing source of energy in the U.S. Read more »
Dreaming and doing are far apart. Here’s three potential problems — from environmental containment to economics to infrastructure — for mining natural gas from the sea in Japan. Read more »
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks held a relatively successful IPO on Wednesday. Here’s 5 reasons why I think that was important for the smart grid, and for cleantech. Read more »
The co-founder of electric car startup Fisker has resigned, after having stepped down as CEO a year ago. The company has stopped production of its cars as it searches for a partner, investor or acquirer in China. Read more »
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks saw its shares soar almost 30 percent in morning trading on its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock is settling around $21 per share, up from a pricing of $17 per share. Read more »
Silver Spring Networks prices its IPO at the midpoint of its planned range, but ends up selling a million more shares, leading the company to raise $81 million. The smart grid company debuts on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol SSNI. Read more »
Silver Spring Network’s IPO could be as early as Wednesday (yep tomorrow). It’s been a year and a half since Silver Spring first filed to go public. Read more »
Google is showing off samples of the first apps made by companies for its new augmented reality device Google Glass, including apps to read headlines, email and see photos. But this is the app I really want: augmented reality to overlay carbon emissions data. Read more »
Startup Alphabet Energy, which makes materials out of silicon that convert heat into electricity, has raised a $16 million series B round led by Canadian natural gas company Encana. Read more »
Tesla has quietly pushed back production of its third electric car, the SUV/minivan, the Model X. The car is important for the company and signals to the world that Tesla is an automaker with a line of cars that appeals to a broader demographic. Read more »
In a wide ranging interview at the SXSW festival in Austin on Saturday, entrepreneur Elon Musk talked about his crazy life bringing the world life on Mars, electric cars, and solar rooftops. Read more »
At the official kick-off party for SXSW, Frog Design created an installation around unusual objects embedded with technology, creating an Internet of truly weird things. Read more »
The annual SXSW Interactive festival kicked off on Friday with a call to makers, designers, and creators to build devices and hardware. In a new twist, the physical world is outshining the virtual one. Read more »
One of the more subtle problems with the first wave of cleantech investing I think has to do with passion, identity and save-the-world over exuberance. It’s hard to call that a fault, but when it comes to making money in the VC model, it’s a problem. Read more »
Using chip and hard disc drive manufacturing processes, startup Gridtential is rethinking the simple lead acid battery to be able to store more energy and be lower cost. The company just got a seed round from The Roda Group to move closer to commercialization. Read more »
Now that SolarCity is publicly-traded it’s got the quarterly numbers game to play. In its first earnings report post-IPO SolarCity’s shares drop on quarter loss. Read more »
Say goodbye to the much-hyped artificial leaf from MIT-spin out Sun Catalytix. According to MIT Tech Review the startup is now building a flow battery, which is a major change in strategy for the venture capital and Department of Energy-backed company. Read more »
The LED chip and component maker has launched a line of low cost LEDs that it thinks could be a game-changer for consumers buying LED bulbs. The cheapest retails for under $10. Read more »
The almost two decade old electric car company Reva hasn’t given up on the electric car market in India, despite super slow sales of its original car. Now backed by Mahindra, Reva plans to launch a new electric hatchback called the E20. Read more »
Will Kickstarter come through for an energy entrepreneur looking for funding for a next-gen energy storage device? A startup called Velkess is looking for $54,000 to build a large prototype of a new type of flywheel, which is a like a spinning kinetic battery. Read more »
Solar startup Alta Devices says its achieved a new efficiency for its solar cells developed for mobile gadget makers. In a difficult year solar companies are heads down focused on boosting the efficiency of solar cells. Read more »
The days of startups building custom-made, capital-intensive machines to produce next-gen energy products is over. Today’s energy entrepreneurs are using standard machines from sectors like the chip industry, the lithium ion battery industry and printing. Read more »
The world needs more crazy energy entrepreneurs, said Bill Gates. Well here’s five potentially disruptive but a little out there energy projects spotted at the ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
A well-funded startup spun out of Arizona State University called Fluidic Energy unveiled a glimpse of its zinc air batteries for one of the first times this week. The batteries are already being tested in developing countries where grid power is unreliable. Read more »
The similarities between Solyndra and SoloPower are getting closer and closer. Read more »
Check out our photos of how startup Vorbeck is working on embedding graphene into everything from batteries to bags to paper to packaging. Read more »
The leader of the 210-year-old science giant DuPont, Ellen Kullman, sits down with GigaOM to give us her take on the future of energy for a world population that will boom to 9 billion in 2050. Read more »
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks has finally set the terms for its IPO a year a half after it originally filed. But the company could raise $63 million, which is less than half of what it originally planned. Read more »
Startup Smart Wire Grid in Oakland is making transmission lines act more like the smart infrastructure of the Internet. Using its power flow control devices, utilities can prevent outages by routing power around the transmission grid when it’s needed. Read more »
Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledges to pay back the company’s loan to the Department of Energy in five years instead of ten. Musk says if the DOE should be criticized for failures like Solyndra it should be praised for successes like Tesla. Read more »
Tune in to a live discussion between Otherlab’s Saul Griffith, IDEO’s Dave Blakely and myself on why creating narratives and telling stories for early-stage energy technologies is important. The talk starts here at 1:30PM PST, 4:30PM EST (live streamed from Washington DC). Read more »
Following the close of a year which saw the politicization of clean energy technologies, the struggles of dozens of solar manufacturers and electric car companies, and a “cleantech cliff” for startup investing, the 2013 ARPA-E Summit could be a sober affair. Read more »
