Updated: This weekend CNN published a report from Silicon Alley Insider which says, “It appears as though GE Capital has invested in Tesla Motors.” The publication took the words of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a leaked interview with Car and Driver on a Tesla forum, […] Read more »
Building out the smart grid will be one of the largest coordinated network buildouts of our time, and a group of commonly accepted standards and tools will be crucial to help the process run smoothly. Even the companies that are selling into the space want to […] Read more »
Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard, delivers his keynote address, “IT Solutions for a Low-Carbon Economy” at Green:Net 2009: Read more »
{"source":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/author\/katiefehren\/page\/78\/wijax\/b959f4af7e82222223ac4cb50ea2d81d","varname":"wijax_4766dd5934b475303c546e5d61c0c201","title_element":"h2","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Ch2%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fh2%3E"}
An audience favorite at our Green:Net conference was the Power Grid 2.0 panel, where executives from utilities, startups and technology providers hashed out what the next generation of the electricity grid would need to look like. Panelists included: Andrew Tang, senior director of Smart Energy Web […] Read more »
Thanks to our Earth2Tech sponsors, Green IT Tools and Mozy. Download “The Green IT Guide and Toolkit for Sustainable Businesses.” Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month. Interested in sponsoring Earth2Tech? Contact Nick Basso and Paul Irving […] Read more »
We’ve uploaded all of the videos from our Green:Net conference, the first green conference for the Internet industry, and here’s two of the most requested: Jonathan Koomey, Project Scientist and Professor, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University, and Bob Metcalfe, inventor of ethernet, and General […] Read more »
Update: Back in September, all seemed well between the smart-charging startup V2Green and its new owner, smart grid company GridPoint. At that time GridPoint raised a $120 million equity financing round, in part, to fuel an acquisition strategy, and snapped up newcomer V2Green for its technology […] Read more »
In the summer of 2008, 2009 looked like it could be a breakout year for the next generation of ethanol. There were dozens of companies racing to be the first to churn out cellulosic ethanol made from non-food crops and plant waste from pilot and even […] Read more »
We’ve had a lot of requests for the videos and presentations of our speakers at Green:Net, the first green conference for the Internet industry. So here you go, guys; these are the first available video clips of mininotes from Saul Griffith, founder of Makani Power and […] Read more »
Whew. Green:Net, the first green conference for the Internet industry is done and done. As twilight descended onto the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco’s Presidio last night, the 400-plus attendees at the sold-out event were able to grab a glass of wine and reflect on […] Read more »
{"source":"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/wijax\/a206c64880c8215b985ab24ebe90eafd","varname":"wijax_d269eebc26af5b39ec3c65bb7948e7ce","title_element":"h2","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Ch2%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fh2%3E"}
We are very excited to let everyone know that Green:Net, the first green conference for the Internet industry, kicks off today! If you aren’t one of the registered attendees of our sold-out conference, there are still a variety of ways you can get the news: Live […] Read more »
As we’ve pointed out recently, the power grid will increasingly be adding computing and intelligence, and will in turn be susceptible to the security issues that are currently plaguing the Internet. One of the smartest ways to address these concerns is by following the security lessons […] Read more »
Imagine if the damage caused by Internet viruses and worms — such as downed web sites and snatched credit card info — were unleashed on the critical infrastructure of the power grid. The results could include targeted blackouts, tampering with power generation (nuclear!), or using energy […] Read more »
There were several startups that became poster children of the dot com era, representing bad choices, millions lost, and dozens of employees hired and fired in the blink of an eye: Pets.com, Webvan, and Kozmo.com, to name a few. The newer cleantech boom has recently started […] Read more »
First Solar , the thin-film solar darling that has reportedly reached grid parity, or the point where photovoltaic electricity is as cheap as conventional electric power, has hit another milestone this morning: 1 GW of production. That’s the total amount of thin-film solar modules it has […] Read more »
Silver Spring Networks is one company that doesn’t have to rebrand itself as a smart grid maker to benefit from the billions of dollars in stimulus funds likely to usher in a smart grid boom. Investors are still handing out funds to the so-called “Cisco of […] Read more »
Tough times mean the big companies get bigger and the smaller firms, well, drop out. On Wednesday morning renewable energy project financier Recurrent Energy will announce that it has bought up the solar project assets of Chicago-based UPC Solar, which has developed solar farms across the […] Read more »
Solar is a tricky source of energy — anything from shade to tilt to dirt can affect the amount of electricity produced by the panels. That’s why large solar installations are getting hooked up with monitoring systems to oversee and optimize the output. Tomorrow, at the […] Read more »
Most of us depend on information technology in our everyday lives — the Internet, your laptop, your cell phone. The planet is depending on these tools, too, to help cut energy use and fight climate change. If you want to learn more about companies and innovations […] Read more »
Gavin Newsom, the mayor who’s pushing San Francisco to be one of the greenest cities in the U.S., will be giving the opening remarks at our upcoming Green:Net conference on March 24 in San Francisco. Yep, the man that could be California’s next governor (OK, it’s […] Read more »
Updated: AT&T may have a lot of issues to work out with its data networks, but that’s not stopping the second-largest U.S. cell phone company from using its wireless network to angle for a piece of the smart grid market, which is set to grow rapidly […] Read more »
Updated: Smart grid analyst Jesse Berst wasn’t kidding when he said companies are in a frenzy repositioning themselves to grab a piece of the smart grid market. The latest is the second largest cell phone company in the U.S.: AT&T. This morning, AT&T says it is […] Read more »
Most of us depend on information technology in our everyday lives — the Internet, your laptop, your cell phone. The planet is depending on these tools, too, to help cut energy use and fight climate change. If you want to learn more about companies and innovations […] Read more »
U.S. government labs can offer a handy toolbox for up-and-coming cleantech startups. GreenVolts, which builds solar concentrating photovoltaic projects, said today that it has partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to commercialize a high-efficiency solar cell. The cell, called the Inverted Metamorphic (IMM) advanced […] Read more »
Updated: Would you pay $150 for an energy-efficient battery for your laptop? In this economy? Hewlett Packard and Boston Power, a three-year-old startup that makes rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for laptops, are hoping you will, and this morning the companies have officially started selling the Enviro Series […] Read more »
While PG&E is waiting for the California Public Utilities Commission to approve its 500 megawatt (MW) distributed solar PV project, the northern California utility is moving ahead on some of the legwork anyway. PG&E wrote on its blog this morning that it’s inviting solar suppliers to […] Read more »
The news that biodiesel maker Imperium Renewables will be cutting 24 employees (or more than half of the staff) from its Grays Harbor plant, announced Thursday night, won’t be a big shocker to anyone who has followed the company’s yearlong downward spiral. The Seattle-based biofuel firm, […] Read more »
Nothing can cripple a promising web site faster than an embarrassingly bad top-level domain choice. No matter how many businesses sign up for a dot-biz domain (.biz), for example, it still connotes Uncle Gary’s online shoe site. Likewise, top-level domains like dot mobi (.mobi) and dot […] Read more »
Whether you like it or not, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the nonprofit Internet naming registry that controls all the top-level domains like dot com — will likely be accepting new ones within the next 12 months. If the entrepreneurs behind […] Read more »
Today is like Christmas morning for energy-efficiency funds. Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu today are allocating $8 billion dollars from the stimulus package for weatherization and energy-efficiency upgrades to the states. Those funds, which are supposed to create 87,000 jobs, will be […] Read more »
Updated: The former oil baron T. Boone Pickens was so giddy about AT&T’s plan, announced this morning, to make one of the largest purchases of compressed natural gas vehicles in the U.S. to date, that he tweeted about it. AT&T said it will spend $565 million […] Read more »
Solar companies might be shedding jobs at an uncomfortable rate right now, but the U.S. solar industry is expected to provide a good 440,000 permanent jobs by the year 2016, according to researchers at Navigant Consulting. While those job figures are substantial, when it comes to […] Read more »
As the doors of the metal fabrication company Integrity Manufacturing closed last week, so did the funding prospects behind a manufacturing plant that would make Zap electric vehicles in Kentucky and supposedly deliver 4,000 green jobs. But like a green zombie that just won’t die, Zap […] Read more »
OK, so coal isn’t actually going anywhere, but plans for coal plants in the US continue to get the ax. The reason: concerned power companies are facing difficult economic times — not to mention the likelihood of upcoming regulation that would put a price on carbon, […] Read more »
Remember Integrity Manufacturing? It was a metal fabrication company that had a partnership with electric vehicle maker ZAP to build a new assembly plant in Franklin, Ky. The deal had clearly been having issues over the past couple of months, as Integrity Manufacturing told the local […] Read more »
Startup SynapSense said today that it has pulled in $7 million in financing for its wireless energy-efficiency systems, designed to cut down the carbon footprint of energy-hungry data centers. The Folsom, Calif.-based startup offers a wireless monitoring system that tracks real-time thermal, pressure, and humidity readings […] Read more »
Can the power of social networks on the web be leveraged effectively to fight climate change? That’s a question a lot of companies — from startups to Yahoo to Facebook — are wondering, and it’s still very unclear. But the uncertainty isn’t stopping young firms like […] Read more »
For young companies toiling over how to convert plant waste and non-food crops into ethanol — the next generation of biofuels — the effects of the downturn are starting to play a familiar beat: access to capital is so limited that companies that could have snagged […] Read more »
Former Vice President and cleantech VC Al Gore has a new catch phrase that combines two of his favorite interests — energy and the Internet. At the Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, Calif. Thursday afternoon he said a couple times (in a couple […] Read more »
Let’s face it: The next-generation of transportation, governed by electric vehicles and biofuels, will take years to reach average users. What can we do in the meantime? Look to the tools created by information technology — cell phones, software, online mapping tools, social networks — to […] Read more »
Follow @katiefehren or @gigaom for more stories like this.
You're subscribed to our newsletter. If you'd like, you can update your settings
