As we reported this morning, after over 5 months of haggling, the San Francisco board of supervisors has finally passed what they say is the most aggressive municipal solar program in the nation: an annual budget of $3 million dollars each year for 10 years, doled […] Read more »
The power grid — our crucial yet oh-so-antiquated electricity system — is seeing several announcements today, as startups and big companies alike see room for innovation and investment. And, by the way, who’s going to pay for all this? Maybe you are: Trilliant On Its Way […] Read more »
Even if San Francisco’s high-profile, city-wide Wi-Fi network with EarthLink and Google was a fundamental flop, residents of the city that need it the most could still get some free wireless broadband. Meraki Networks, a San Francisco-based startup that makes mesh networking gear is building an […] Read more »
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T. Boone Pickens, the oil-baron-turned-wind-power-wildcatter, keeps bumping up the estimated cost of the world’s largest wind farm, which he’s building in Texas. Pickens tells the Living On Earth radio show that the whole 4,000 megawatt wind project, including the cost of building his own transmission lines, […] Read more »
Aurora Biofuels, an algae-to-biodiesel startup we profiled in our 15 Algae Startups list, said this morning that it’s raised a second round of funding of $20 million; Oak Investment Partners, Gabriel Venture Partners and Noventi were included in the round. Developed at the University of California […] Read more »
Enphase Energy, a startup that has been developing solar management systems with a network of distributed inverters, says its solar inverter setup is now commercially available. That means the company, which announced it had raised $6.5 million at the end of January, has started selling its […] Read more »
Everyone was chattering about the record $4 price at the pump this weekend, from my SUV-driving relatives at a family barbeque, to GigaOM’s own Om Malik, who doesn’t even currently drive a car. On Sunday AAA officially said that the national average hit $4 for the […] Read more »
Coskata, a startup working on the next generation of cellulosic ethanol with support from GM and Khosla Ventures, tells us that it’s in the process of raising a Series C equity financing. Update: Coskata’s chief marketing officer Wes Bolsen says the planned round will be approximately […] Read more »
With Trina Solar’s (TSL) announcement this morning that its quarterly earnings had more than doubled, you’d expect to see the solar cell maker’s shares at least rise slightly this morning. Not so much. There’s still that little problem of the rising cost of polysilicon, which has […] Read more »
Even though we heard about two companies (Iogen and Alico) canceling plans to build cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S. this week, Verenium doesn’t seem to be getting cold feet. Just last week the company opened up its demonstration facility and this morning an executive said […] Read more »
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Score one for Georgia in the nationwide battle to secure green jobs. Suniva, a solar startup building highly efficient solar cells with low-cost manufacturing, said this morning it will be building its first manufacturing plant in Gwinnett County, Georgia. For those of you not familiar with […] Read more »
The CEO of SunPower Tom Werner said this week that if the U.S. federal government doesn’t renew the investment tax credit (ITC) that provides 30 percent on the investment of solar, the company will be forced to move its business “elsewhere” to make up for that. […] Read more »
While we just heard that land management company Alico has decided to nix its plans to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the U.S., Canadian company Iogen tells us that it, too, is backing away from its intentions to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in the […] Read more »
In the process of mapping out these dozen or so companies that are racing to build the first cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S., we discovered that not all the companies are still rushing forward. Some, in fact, have quit the contest completely. Alico, a land […] Read more »
eSolar, the solar startup backed by Google.org and Bill Gross’ Idealab, said today that it’s inked a deal to build a 245 MW solar thermal power plant in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California and sell that solar power to utility Southern California Edison. eSolar […] Read more »
There are almost a dozen companies racing to build the first next-generation cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States over the next few years. The plants will be built all over the U.S. and will churn out biofuels made from waste, plant byproducts and woody energy […] Read more »
While analysts are busy haggling over First Solar’s price — is it heading up or down? — the company got a potentially nasty sign that it could soon be heading south. Bloomberg reports that First Solar CEO Michael Ahearn, the company’s second largest shareholder, sold half […] Read more »
British Telecom (BT) said today it plans to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. The UK-based incumbent telecom operator is already on its way to meeting that aggressive target, and last October said it would invest close to half a billion dollars in wind […] Read more »
Leave it to San Francisco to decide that the city is not only going to recycle grease from its restaurants to be used for biodiesel, but that the city will build its own grease-to-biodiesel plant. On Friday San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said that the city […] Read more »
Here comes a potential hiccup for companies in the business of ocean seeding like startup Climos, which just last week we reported was looking to raise more funding. Delegates at a U.N. biodiversity convention on Friday decided to call for a temporary ban on the practice […] Read more »
Canada’s first emissions trading market, the Montreal Climate Exchange, opened for business this morning, becoming part of the $64 billion global carbon-credit market. The exchange is a joint venture between the Montréal Exchange (MX) and the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), and participating companies can buy and […] Read more »
The small-scale solar thermal startup Sopogy that we reported was in the process of raising a $9 million round last October, has closed that round from investors including the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Ohana Holdings. The folks at New Energy Finance reported the […] Read more »
“Plug and play” is a term often used in the infotech world to describe a technology that a consumer can purchase and easily use out of the box — like that new mouse you bought at Best Buy, the one with little setup and software installation. […] Read more »
There’s a quiet race going on to be the first in the U.S. to turn the country’s waste and biomass into next-generation ethanol at a large scale; as companies make progress it’s getting louder. Ethanol producer Verenium said today it has officially opened a demonstration facility […] Read more »
Sometimes we get wrapped up in detailing bleeding-edge innovations that startups are developing to help monitor home energy use. But, first and foremost, cutting home power requires a huge investment from your utility, and usually a well-established company to sell and install all those necessary smart […] Read more »
A few startups are just beginning to sell solar-powered backup chargers for our gadgets and cell phones, but none of the big consumer electronics makers has yet embraced embedded solar power as a viable option for mainstream devices. Well, according to a patent application picked up […] Read more »
Startup Transonic Combustion has been quietly working on its efficient fuel-injection technology, which the company says can deliver 100 mpg for an internal combustion engine vehicle. At the FiRe conference this week, Transonic Combustion’s VP of business development, Mike Rocke, showed us this image of Transonic’s […] Read more »
Looks like the Wall Street Journal is going have to write a flaming op-ed about the research firm New Energy Finance now, too. While earlier this week the WSJ lambasted Vinod Khosla for down-playing the role of ethanol in the food crisis (we reprinted Khosla’s rebuttal […] Read more »
A lot of people have been wondering what Martin Tobias has been up to since he left Imperium Renewables, a startup he led to become one of the largest biodiesel producers in the U.S., last December. Well, surfing, for one; he runs a surf camp in […] Read more »
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial this week in which it took offense to comments made by Vinod Khosla that have downplayed ethanol’s contribution to the food crisis. The WSJ said: “As long as he’s on the federal dole, perhaps Mr. Khosla should take a […] Read more »
The PayPal-founder-turned-green-entrepreneur, Elon Musk predicts that in 30 years solar will be the single largest source of power in the U.S., and possibly the world. Musk made the prediction at the Future in Review (FiRe) conference in Coronado, Calif., this week, where thought leaders met to […] Read more »
Startups looking to sell the next generation of batteries for our electric and hybrid vehicles will have to grow big fast to grab lucrative deals with the automakers. While A123 Systems is preparing an IPO to bring in funds for growth, a startup called International Battery, […] Read more »
Ocean seeding startup Climos said back in March that it had become the world’s first venture capital-backed startup planning to attempt the controversial technique of fertilizing the oceans with iron to fight climate change; Climos was able to convince Tesla Chairman Elon Musk and Braemar Energy […] Read more »
How does a company like Dow Chemical, with a reputation attached to chemicals like napalm and DBCP (which made workers sterile), find itself in the green biz? Well according to Neil Hawkins, the company’s VP of sustainability, it’s by no means an act of philanthropy. Hawkins, […] Read more »
An energy-efficient gadget needs to be green at its very core: the chip. CamSemi is a six-year-old fabless semiconductor startup based in Cambridge, England, which is designing energy-saving integrated circuits for the power supply consumer electronics market. On Monday the startup said it had added $8 […] Read more »
Optimal Technologies CEO Roland Schoettle likens the country’s current power grid to a person with Alzheimer’s: As time goes on, the brain gets worse and the problems just keep on growing. The eight-year-old company said today that it’s started to sell its first commercial product that […] Read more »
We reported in April that the CEO of ethanol startup AltraBiofuels, Larry Gross, had left the company and planned to head up a spin-off firm called Edeniq, which will focus on cellulosic ethanol. This morning AltraBiofuels put out an announcement officially naming former Exxon Mobil exec […] Read more »
The 81 million buildings in the U.S. consume more energy than any other sector of the U.S. economy, including transportation and industry, says the U.S. government. Here’s five startups that are building software and hardware to help consumers and businesses cut down on power consumption. The […] Read more »
According to enthusiastic blog reports (here and here), startup Widetronix, maker of silicon-carbide based wafers for electronics, just won the Draper Fisher Jurvetson East Coast Venture Challenge, which will see it be awarded $250,000 in seed money from the venture firm. Widetronix is using technology from […] Read more »
Even though Silicon Valley electric vehicle startup Tesla started “regular” production of its first vehicle, the Roadster, in March, it won’t be producing cars with the permanent transmission until September, the company said Thursday afternoon. Tesla also says that initial production of the Roadster has been […] Read more »
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