Vulcan Power, a company with one of the larger geothermal project portfolios, says it has received an investment of $145 million from Boston-based private equity firm Denham Capital. The sizable funding has been planned for awhile, as last year Vulcan raised $45 million from Merrill Lynch […] Read more »
Tom Friedman’s column in this Sunday’s New York Times advocates a meeting of the minds between two of the green energy revolution’s most well-known entrepreneurial leaders: Shai Agassi and T. Boone Pickens. As Earth2Tech readers likely know through our endless coverage of these two innovators, Agassi […] Read more »
Man, silicon solar gear maker GT Solar has been having a rough couple of days. Shares of the company, which priced at $16.50 for their stock market debut yesterday, closed down almost 12 percent. But the stock lost even more ground today, slumping as much as […] Read more »
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Utilities are about to become the gas stations of the future, the Electric Power Research Institute’s Mark Duvall, said at a GM-sponsored dinner event Monday night that kicked off this week’s first annual plug-in vehicle conference in San Jose, Calif. The image stuck in my head […] Read more »
U.S. biofuel policy will determine the fate of a very diverse group of companies in that space, from the first generation, which produces fuel from corn and soy beans, to the next generation, which is working on fuel made from feedstocks like waste and algae. Both […] Read more »
In one of the biggest solar IPOs since First Solar, the public offering from polysilicon solar gear maker GT Solar priced at the middle of its expected range on Thursday, raising $500 million. Merrimack, N.H.-based GT Solar priced 30.3 million shares of its common stock at […] Read more »
Thin-film darling First Solar said it will build a 10 megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant for power company Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of California utility Sempra Energy [SRE]. Sempra Generation said the solar plant will be built on 80 acres next to a 480 megawatt combined […] Read more »
Even at 80 years of age, the former oil magnate that’s building the world’s largest wind farm, T.Boone Pickens, still seems like a party guy. Between launching a plan to kick the U.S.’s addiction to oil, buying up wind farmland in Texas, and testifying before Congress, […] Read more »
Battery startup ActaCell wasn’t the only recipient of funding from Google.org’s RechargeIT program. Last night at the Plug-In 2008 conference, Google.org’s Director of Climate Change & Energy Initiatives, Dan Reicher, announced a $2.75 million investment in green vehicle startup Aptera Motors and ActaCell. (That’s $2.75 million […] Read more »
Last month, Google.org’s director for climate change and energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, told us that Google would be making investments in green cars this summer through it’s plug-in hybrid program, RechargeIT. Well, here it is: Austin-based lithium ion battery start ActaCell said on Tuesday that it […] Read more »
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Google’s got a handful of plug-in electric hybrids that it’s been testing on the roads for over a year now through its employee car-share program. But since many Googlers just take the cars out for a local spin, the search engine giant recently decided to complete […] Read more »
Andy Grove, the former chairman of Intel turned plug-in vehicle advocate, set a goal at a conference on Tuesday that the U.S. should have 10 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the roads in four years. Those plug-ins should be converted from vehicles with poor mileage […] Read more »
OptiSolar is a thin film solar maker with massive claims, like a 550 MW photovoltaic farm in San Luis Obispo County that it says is in the works. And the Hayward, California-based startup appears to be raising loads of cash to try to implement its aggressive […] Read more »
General Motors VP of Global Program Management, Jon Lauckner, gave a quick update on the Volt, GM’s plug-in vehicle, at the Plug-In 2008 conference Tuesday morning. Lauckner showed off several video clips of the Volt technology — including the lithium ion battery — being tested in […] Read more »
Mayors these days never seem to miss a chance to promote their cities’ green jobs. This morning the mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, gave a brief opening address at the Plug-In 2008 conference in which he promoted the California city’s cleantech business incentives. He also […] Read more »
At a time of record high gas prices and presidential candidates who are fighting over energy platforms, what could be more prescient than a conference highlighting plug-in vehicles? The first annual Plug-In 2008 conference kicks off this morning in downtown San Jose, and it looks to […] Read more »
That California business competition that continues to launch some of the cleantech industry’s most innovative startups has just announced their finalists for this year. The California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) has announced 44 finalists (must not have had enough good ones to have the estimated 50) […] Read more »
General Motors says in an effort to prepare the market for its electric vehicle the Volt and the plug-in version of the Saturn Vue, the automaker has partnered with a consortium of over 30 utilities and the Electric Power Research Institute. The consortium, which GM’s Vice […] Read more »
This weekend saw two Tesla milestones: the grand opening of Tesla’s Silicon Valley store (which we attended, snapping these photos), and the delivery of former Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard’s founder series Roadster. Eberhard finally getting his car has important significance — the car had been accidentally […] Read more »
Toyota might be considering solar for the rooftop of its next Prius, but that add-on is reported to only power part of the air conditioning system. What about powering the basic driving of the vehicle via the sun? Well, you’ll need something more like the 6-square-meter […] Read more »
So the first North American Intersolar, the San Francisco-based version of the massive European solar conference, is over. And the Earth2Tech crew sent these 9 stories from the show your way. Send us over your thoughts on our conference coverage — more stories/less stories, more photos? […] Read more »
Solar stocks have been down across the board this week, thanks to reports that Spain is considering cutting solar subsidies. Even a bright earnings report from SunPower couldn’t clear those clouds. So when Evergreen Solar said its second-quarter loss widened over the same period last year, […] Read more »
CarbonFlow, a startup that makes software for carbon markets, has apparently raised its first round of funding, a source close to the company tells us. We’re not sure how much it’s raised, but Clean Pacific Ventures led the round, and OVP Venture Partners participated. Both Clean […] Read more »
You’d think with a second quarter that saw a significant jump in revenue, a swing to profitability, and raised guidance, solar cell and module maker SunPower (SPWR) would catch a break from Wall Street. Not so much: SunPower’s shares traded down 7 percent to $74.54 (one […] Read more »
And you thought the U.S. was getting big solar photovoltaic projects (like the one being built by SunPower for FPL, or SunEdison for Duke). But those will deliver just a little more than half of what a Godzilla-like solar PV project in Germany will soon provide. […] Read more »
Last Friday California approved a contract between utility Southern California Edison and thin-film solar maker First Solar to build a thin-film photovoltaic project in Blythe, Calif. (on the border of Arizona). But just this morning the thin-film-plus-utility duo has more news to share: So Cal Edison […] Read more »
The first annual North American solar conference kicked off on Tuesday with a lot of insight and discussion from some of the solar industry’s bigger and more well-established players (Applied Materials. SunPower). But leave it to the wily fast-moving startups to upstage the big guys when […] Read more »
Nuventix, a startup that sells a cooling technology for consumer electronics and LED lighting systems, says it has raised $14 million led by Advanced Technology Ventures and including Braemar Energy Ventures. The Austin-based company says its technology, which uses quick pulses of air, is more efficient […] Read more »
The solar guru at semiconductor equipment company Applied Materials, Charlie Gay, says the chip companies that drove the electronics revolution will be important in bringing down the production costs of the solar industry. Gay gave a speech to launch Intersolar, the first U.S. version of a […] Read more »
Intersolar, the first U.S. version of a grandaddy European solar convention, officially kicked off this week in downtown San Francisco. We’ll be covering the event closely, including the bit of news that came out of yesterday from the conference pre-events (GreenVolts raising sizable funding). In a […] Read more »
The San Mateo, California county court database is seeing its fair share of lawsuits dealing with electric car startup Tesla Motors. First the suit Tesla filed against competitor Fisker, then Magna’s suit against Tesla for an alleged breach of contract — now CNET reports that the […] Read more »
On Monday the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) made its draft Strategic Plan for Energy Efficiency available for comment, which details a sweeping plan to implement energy efficiency technology for residential, industrial and commercial buildings. CPUC Commissioner Dian Grueneich said last Friday at the Silicon Valley […] Read more »
Here’s a way to use solar power that’s not so great for the planet — enhanced oil recovery. The executive vice president of solar thermal startup Ausra, Robert Morgan, said on Monday at the Intersolar conference that the company is looking at selling its solar-powered steam […] Read more »
GreenVolts, a three-year-old San Francisco-based solar startup is looking to raise a significant round of Series B funding of “less than $100 million” in late 2008, CEO Bob Cart told us at the Intersolar conference in downtown San Francisco on Monday. But that hoped-for round would […] Read more »
[qi:_earth2tech] Electric car startup Tesla Motors has raised more than $100 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture firms and has its roots in the Valley’s entrepreneurial culture. So it should come as no surprise that next week, on July 22, the company will open its […] Read more »
Electric car startup Tesla Motors will open its second store, this one in Silicon Valley, to the public on Tuesday, July 22, the company tells us this morning. Tesla CEO Ze’ev Drori wrote an announcement on the company’s web site this weekend that details the company’s […] Read more »
PG&E CEO Peter Darbee, at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Energy Summit at Stanford on Friday, told us that he was “concerned” about the plan unveiled last week by oil baron T. Boone Pickens to get the U.S. off oil. While reducing foreign oil consumption is […] Read more »
With so many venture-backed startups looking to build solar thermal power plants in the U.S. desert, we thought it would be interesting to hear from one of the more well-established — and well-capitalized — players. Abengoa Solar is the solar arm of the decades-old Spanish renewable […] Read more »
The California Public Utilities Commission has approved what it says is the first utility-scale thin-film solar project to be built in California, in a contract between utility Southern California Edison and thin-film solar maker First Solar. The contract is for a 7.5 megawatt solar facility, with […] Read more »
The small-scale solar thermal startup Sopogy, which we reported just raised $9 million from investors including the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Ohana Holdings, says that it started construction on one of its solar power farms on Hawaii’s Big Island at the Natural Energy […] Read more »
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