Let’s face is it: Shame can be a much stronger driver of behavioral change than positive reinforcement. A mandatory note on my Facebook page that lets everyone know how much I’ve driven, or how many plane flights I’ve taken since the beginning of 2008, would be […] Read more »
Xerox has been in a long-term makeover session, attempting to convince customers it’s more than just a copier and printer company (its hard when you’re branded as a verb). Part of that revamp has been a nod towards more sustainability, because, hey, what’s more wasteful than […] Read more »
The Wall Street Journal finally posted its conversation with Kleiner Perkins green VC John Doerr from its recent ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara. The eco-biz magnate, who’s firm is investing a third of its portfolio, or $250 million, in greentech, puts greentech investing on a scale […] Read more »
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Genomics guru and cleantech entrepreneur Craig Venter is no stranger to finding creative ways to commercialize his scientific and more recent eco-themed research. In a review of Craig Venter’s book A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life in the London Review of Books, writer Steven Shapin […] Read more »
It’s official, Spring is here, and warm weather and bbqs are starting to become regular events around GigaOM’s HQ. But before you go outside and romp on this gorgeous Saturday check out what happened in cleantech this week: Tesla Starts Cranking, Slowly: Tesla started “regular production,” […] Read more »
While Google is busy being a power company, a cleantech VC and an all-round eco do-gooder, the search giant is also working on its plug-in electric vehicle project, on which it plans to spend $10 million and has converted four Toyota Priuses and two Ford Escape […] Read more »
Given the Bush administration’s reputation for failing to lead the fight against climate change, does the White House’s eco policy chief, James Connaughton, have any last-minute regrets? Actually he does, though they’re more a matter of managing PR than actual policy moves. At a talk he […] Read more »
While the solar industry has been shining bright over the past few years, the industry’s forecast isn’t all sunshine, according to a report issued Thursday morning from Lux Research. Even though solar revenues are expected to more than triple to $70.9 billion in 2012 from $21.2 […] Read more »
Some of the most important cleantech innovations can be created by tweaking traditional carbon-emitting sources to make them more efficient. Startup Advanced Power Projects is doing just that with traditional power plants, and has raised a Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Redpoint and […] Read more »
Former Vice President-turned-Kleiner-Perkins-green-VC Al Gore and Cisco’s charismatic CEO John Chambers will be giving a virtual talk on how tech innovation can fight climate change this morning. It’s not just a means to educate the world on cleantech opps, the two will be stumping Cisco’s “TelePresence,” […] Read more »
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One of the most well-funded cleantech startups in 2007, GreatPoint Energy, is using its more than $115 million in funding to tread a path toward commercializing its clean-coal technology. This week the company, which converts coal and other fossil fuels into pipeline-quality natural gas and then […] Read more »
Note to all those Tesla customers — Gavin Newsom, Flea, George Clooney — that have been waiting patiently for their electric sports cars: The Silicon Valley green carmaker has started “regular” production of the Roadster. Woot-woot! That means customers who managed to get in line for […] Read more »
True Value of Solar: UC Berkeley Haas School professor and director of the UC Energy Institute, Severin Borenstein — the one who said that people who install solar panels today are “throwing money away” — gave a thorough talk on Monday defending his calculations. — UC […] Read more »
When we interviewed Sanjiv Malhotra, CEO of fuel startup Oorja Protonics, last month, the company was still in stealth mode. Guess they decided St. Paddy’s Day should also be their coming out party — they just put out a press release declaring their public launch. Um, […] Read more »
The world’s largest natural gas producer — and Russia’s biggest firm — is getting into the smart metering business. The UK subsidiary of natural gas giant Gazprom says it has taken an equity stake in UK smart metering company TruRead. TruRead’s technology enables the remote reading […] Read more »
It takes a lot of cash to build a next-generation ethanol plant. Range Fuels, the startup that is racing to be the first cellulosic ethanol producer in the U.S., has just raised a massive round of $100 million in funding, according to Venture Wire and PEhub.com. […] Read more »
Boulder Getting Smart Grid: Power company Xcel Energy says it will turn Boulder, Colorado into the first “Smart Grid City” including advanced meters, substations, in home control devices, and infrastructure to support distributed energy generation — Clean Edge. Virgin Not the Only One with Biofuel Flight […] Read more »
The folks behind last months Greener Gadgets conference have put together an edited video clip of the panel Earth2Tech organized, which included execs of several startups that are selling mobile devices powered by alternative sources of energy. The panel included kinetic power startup M2E Power, hand-held […] Read more »
Now that Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle network startup Project Better Place has started to charge ahead in its first market, Israel, the company has begun to put the pieces in place to actually build the 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. First off, the company has named […] Read more »
When Google launched an online carbon footprint calculator in the UK back in October, we overlooked how interesting theopen platform behind the Google product was. It’s called AMEE — which stands for the unsubtle Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine, and its an API that aggregates the information […] Read more »
If your cleantech company relies on green policies and is even remotely well-funded, chances are there’s a cleantech lobbyist on your payroll. Case in point: biofuel startup Virent Energy Systems, which as Forbes notes in a company profile has been regularly visiting the Hill to generally […] Read more »
Even though ethanol maker Coskata is backed by some of the biggest names in cleantech — Khosla, General Motors — and had one of the splashiest company launches in the industry, the team was reluctant to provide details about their latest funding round. Well, that’s why […] Read more »
Like most conferences that have a hip image to uphold this year, South by Southwest is making a concerted effort to cast an eco-friendly light on their 2008 technology, music and film festival. The organizers are purchasing renewable energy credits from the city of Austin, and […] Read more »
Much like the nagging sustainability issues that are plaguing biofuel production, making solar panels has a dark undercurrent as well. This weekend the Washington Post published an investigative piece looking into Chinese polysilicon manufacturing companies accused of dumping a toxic byproduct, silicon tetrachloride, into local villages. […] Read more »
What do Russian rocket scientists know about wind power? A lot, at least according to entrepreneur Rick Halstead, who is creating a wind turbine design company with a group of Russian engineers that previously built submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. Not exactly the most common resume bullet […] Read more »
Our favorite genomics guru and cleantech entrepreneur Craig Venter gave a thorough talk on digitizing biology, designing and synthesizing life, and creating “fourth-generation biofuels” (WTF are those by the way?) at the recent TED conference. TED organizers just put the clip up on the site. (TED’s […] Read more »
When we talked with Mike Gering, CEO of thin-film solar company Global Solar back in January, he said the company would start manufacturing at a plant in Tucson, Arizona, near the end of March. Well, this morning Global Solar put out a press release officially announcing […] Read more »
A member of the cleantech elite, Tesla Chairman Elon Musk, has backed Climos, a San Francisco startup that plans to seed the ocean with iron in order to capture carbon. So what does Musk see in the controversial technology, given that other startups that worked on […] Read more »
While GE usually saves its green dollars for renewable energy like solar and wind, the company said this morning that it’s making two investments in the electric vehicle space. The first is Norwegian electric vehicle maker Think Global, in which GE says it has invested $4 […] Read more »
We brought you the news in late February that the ocean seeding startup Climos had raised its first funds, just a week after another controversial ocean seeding company Planktos had drowned under “anti-offset crusaders”. Well, on Tuesday Climos named its investors, which are none other than […] Read more »
Now that we’re well into 2008, researchers have had ample time to look back to 2007 and determine which venture and private equity firms were responsible for the most clean energy investments. Numbers from New Energy Finance found that venture and private equity investments in clean […] Read more »
Not many venture capitalists have yet tried to catch the small but growing trend of funding wave-powered startups. Part of that is because the technology is still in the works, as became clear when publicly traded wave company Finavera saw its test buoy sink. But Venrock, […] Read more »
It’s been over a year since California utility PG&E announced that it would add the always-fun-to-talk about “cow power” to its sustainable energy options. Now this morning, the utility says that the manure-powered pipeline project from waste-to-energy company BioEnergy Solutions has officially been turned on, and […] Read more »
For a while, Tesla’s Roadster was pretty much the only really sleek electric sports car making the rounds in the Valley. That ended when Henrik Fisker’s Fisker Automotive unveiled the Karma, a swanky electric sedan with an $80,000 price tag, and said the company had received […] Read more »
Using software to make computers and networks more energy efficient just doesn’t have the cool factor of solar panels or biofuels. That’s because it is wholly sensible and can predictably both save companies money and reduce carbon emissions. What’s the fun if there’s no big risk? […] Read more »
Wal-Mart wants to hear from the ecopreneur crowd. Last November, the superstore giant said it was working on a web portal in partnership with the Clean Tech Forum that would allow companies and individuals to pitch their ideas as to how Wal-Mart could decrease its carbon […] Read more »
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is looking to join the ranks of local leaders who are working to implement a carbon tax. At the Cleantech Forum in downtown San Francisco Tuesday morning, Newsom said he hopes to get authorization by the end of the year for […] Read more »
When we heard that the seventh annual Ecocity World Summit was being held in our own San Francisco, we knew we had to get involved somehow. The 5-day event, which has previously taken place in in India, China, Brazil and Australia, takes a sweeping look at […] Read more »
Nature creates the most efficient designs, which is why a whole industry has been spawned around biomimicry, or using nature as a model for innovation. PAX Streamline, a San Rafael, Calif.-based startup funded by Khosla Ventures and spun out of PAX Scientific, has been creating mechanical […] Read more »
Just last week ocean seeding company Planktos was found dead in the water, a victim of what it claimed was a band of “anti-offset crusaders” with a “highly effective disinformation campaign” that it said had curbed its ability to raise funding. Hmmm, the offset-haters don’t seem […] Read more »
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