More stories from Katie Fehrenbacher

The mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, has a message for all the cleantech startups out there — give him a call and let him know what you need. In a video interview with us Reed gives out his digits and tells green companies looking to […] Read more »

California utility Southern California Edison has been slowly laying down the final details for one of the largest smart meter deployments in the U.S.: 5.3 million smart meters to be installed between 2009 and 2012. California’s regulatory body for all things power-related, the California Public Utilities […] Read more »

In celebration of GM’s 100th anniversary and the unveiling of its electric car the Volt, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz took a trip over to the Colbert Report to spend some time with hilarious comic Stephen Colbert. We’ve got to say Lutz was somewhat funny in […] Read more »

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  Here’s the end-of-the-day portion of the show that many of us have been waiting for all day: the Launchpad, where a dozen startups get a few minutes to convince us they rock. Here are our lovely judges. All four scored each presenter and one offered […] Read more »

Alright, so we wouldn’t exactly call the wireless broadband standard WiMAX “hip.” But it’s gaining traction with the alternative/disruptive companies and carriers, while the competing standard LTE (Long Term Evolution) is being taken up by the dominant cell phone companies. That’s a general overview of the […] Read more »

Rich Miner, Google’s Group Manager for Mobile Platforms, says no one party should control the future of the mobile platform. Period. With two decades of mobile experience under his belt, including co-founding Android, Google’s mobile platform, Miner should know. At his previous job at carrier Orange […] Read more »

Guess what, guys — the location-based mobile model of the coffee coupon getting pinged to your phone as you walk by Starbucks is tired. Location is all about adding relevancy to applications already being used. That was the contention of Mobilize’s LBS panel. Thank you, let’s […] Read more »

How do cell phone users want to get their mobile applications, how do mobile developers want to deliver them, and what’s the future? Web or native, preloaded or installed, at a centralized app store or a distributed model, bundled or installed, offered by a company or […] Read more »

Looks like Google isn’t alone with its idea to float a data center on the sea. Om Malik points out a stealthy startup called International Data Security, which plans to build 50 sea-worthy data centers, and potentially dock its first data center ship at Pier 50 […] Read more »

Shortly after Tesla held a press conference Wednesday morning touting its $250 million planned plant in San Jose, Calif., Tesla chairman Elon Musk presented his vision of Tesla’s leadership role in the auto industry at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference. Musk said that Tesla has the ability […] Read more »

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Search engine giant Google and conglomerate GE have announced a partnership to collaborate on energy policy and technology, including pushing for a smarter electricity grid, cleaner power generation and greener transportation. GE’s CEO and Chairman Jeffrey Immelt and Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement from […] Read more »

In May when we talked with PowerGenix, an eight-year-old startup that makes nickel-zinc batteries, the company’s CEO Dan Squiller told us the team was looking to raise a final round of funding in the coming months, followed by a possible IPO in 2010. Well, looks like […] Read more »

Coskata, a startup working on next-generation cellulosic ethanol, is talking with Florida sugar producer U.S. Sugar Corp about building a plant that produces biofuels from sugar cane on its land. While U.S. Sugar is in the process of selling its land in the Everglades to the […] Read more »

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed must be happy. Tesla plans to announce Wednesday morning that it has decided to build its Model S electric sedan in a 600,000-square-foot plant in San Jose, Calif., on an 89-acre plot of land that will also include new company headquarters. […] Read more »

There’s been a wave of green goods crashing over our heads in recent months. But how confident are you really that the eco-friendly toothpaste (shampoo, notebook, chair, etc.) you bought was green enough to justify that much more of your hard-earned wages? Turns out the green […] Read more »

The water industry is a dysfunctional train wreck with a business model that could have been invented in Pyongyang, said Christopher Gasson, Editor in Chief of Global Water Intelligence magazine, at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen show on Tuesday. (OK, we’re awake now). That might not be a […] Read more »

Green chemistry startup Genomatica said this morning it has successfully produced a commonly used chemical in plastics and rubber products using sugar instead of petroleum. The chemical is called “1,4‐butanediol,” or BDO for short. Genomatica uses an engineered microorganism to convert sugar into BDO to produce […] Read more »

GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of conglomerate GE, says this morning that it is investing $4 million into startup Advanced Electron Beams, which uses electron beam technology to kick-start chemical reactions and break down chemical structures more efficiently than thermal and chemical methods. The Wilmington, […] Read more »

Clean Energy Fuels, the natural gas vehicle distributor founded by former oil baron T. Boone Pickens, has been on an acquisition and deal-making spree over the past few months. This morning it’s got another deal to build and operate a compressed natural gas station South of […] Read more »

Corn ethanol producer Poet is at an important juncture in its two decade history. The company is embracing the changing landscape of the biofuel market by investing in new cellulosic ethanol technology and building a $200 million plant dubbed Project Liberty in Emmetsburg, Iowa that will […] Read more »

Monday night is the start of the two-day AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference, and the organizers (Tony Perkins and crew) are doling out awards to the top 100 green private companies. While the majority of the list comprises the well-known players in the cleantech biz, most of which […] Read more »

Reva, the Indian electric car company that had one of the best-selling electric vehicles in the world last year, is holding a “gas-to-electric-car” exchange in Bangalore this weekend. The idea is to bring in your gas car and maybe, just maybe, come out with a brand-new […] Read more »

Hard times for the U.S. corn ethanol industry doesn’t always mean plants officially get the boot — sometimes it’s a more subtle move, like ignoring a planned plant til it’s basically kaput. That’s the case for Ford Heights Ethanol, at least according to Bloomberg, which says […] Read more »

In the past couple weeks there’s been news of hundreds of millions pumped into thin-film solar startups, with both Nanosolar and AVA Solar announcing massive rounds. Well, it’s not over yet, folks. This morning Venture Wire says that thin film solar player SoloPower has raised a […] Read more »

The Iowa Power Fund, which doles out millions of dollars for clean power projects, has just made a $14.75 million commitment to help corn-ethanol maker Poet build its first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the state. Add that to the $5.25 million from the Iowa Department […] Read more »

The New Zealand company Aquaflow Binomics, which is looking to be the first company in the world to economically produce biofuel from wild algae harvested from open-air environments, said on Wednesday that it has produced the first samples of its “green crude.” The bio-crude can lead […] Read more »

Let’s face it, no matter how much you try to investigate where your products — be they shampoo, gadgets or processed food — come from, or what they’re made of, you never really know the whole story. While some web sites, like Jimmy Wale’s new Green […] Read more »

Cleantech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been bullish on biofuels to power vehicles, but he called wind wildcatter T. Boone Pickens’ plan to power our cars with natural gas a dead end at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Green and Clean conference on Wednesday. Khosla said […] Read more »

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have been battling it out to make their neighboring cities greener than the other’s — every week it seems the Mayors have a new announcement of how they have added green jobs and coaxed a […] Read more »

On Wednesday morning, Bay Area mayors — Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Chuck Reed of San Jose and Ron Dellums of Oakland — will meet to discuss how to create “a regional climate compact” at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Clean and Green conference. The group […] Read more »

The CalCEF Angel fund is officially announcing that it has brought on a new fund manager: Matt Lecar, an 18-year veteran of venture capital and energy investing. Lecar, who previously held positions at utility PG&E, EDF Group and consulted for Trinity Ventures, actually joined the CalCEF […] Read more »

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Google’s energy gurus Dan Reicher and Bill Weihl, have so far served as the search giant’s most outspoken representatives of its plans to create new energy solutions. But at a dinner for the Corporate EcoForum on Monday […] Read more »

The solar industry is just starting to understand the benefits of distributed solar inverters — the devices that convert direct current (DC) to grid-usable alternating current (AC). While most solar panels use a centralized inverter, inverter-maker Enphase Energy says slapping a cell phone-sized distributed inverter on […] Read more »

Is Austin-based thin-film solar startup HelioVolt getting close to producing its solar material made of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS)? Sounds like it — the company just sent out invites for a “ribbon-cutting ceremony” for its factory on the morning of Friday, Oct. 24, followed by […] Read more »

When Google’s energy guru Bill Weihl told us that the search engine giant has been looking at renewable energy options for data centers like solar thermal, wind and geothermal, we had no idea the company was considering the deep blue, too. Well, according to a patent […] Read more »

In case you were wondering how T. Boone Pickens was going to break the home distribution bottleneck in his plan to get the U.S. to power its vehicles with natural gas, here’s one possible answer: Natural gas vehicle distribution company Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE), of which […] Read more »

[qi:_earth2tech] Here’s another one for Stacey’s list of the top 10 mobile applications launching at Demo — but this one’s greener than the rest. Irish company Mapflow is showing off an iPhone version of its Avego service (called Sharelift in the DEMO info), which pulls satellite […] Read more »

What would a commuter carpooling service that actually tapped into the real-time transparency and flexibility of the Internet look like? Well, a lot like high-tech hitch-hiking, and possibly a lot more popular and effective at getting single occupancy vehicles out of morning traffic. At least that’s […] Read more »

When it comes to getting U.S. federal government funding to deliver clean technology innovation and save us from the energy and global warming crisis, how much is enough ? Dan Kammen, director of UC Berkeley’s Renewable Energy Labs, touched on that subject at both the Cleantech […] Read more »

Basketball’s Phoenix Suns are living up to their name — the Suns, Arizona utility APS and the City of Phoenix say they are planning to install a solar power system at the team’s home stadium, US Airways Center. Construction is set to begin next spring, with […] Read more »

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