No name is more synonymous with cleantech investing than Sun Microsystems co-founder turned venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. His Khosla Ventures invested between $60 million to $70 million into 14 cleantech startups in the first three quarters of 2007, according to third-party data; Khosla himself estimates that […] Read more »
Now that solar panels are supposedly the world’s fastest-growing source of energy, startups are building tools and analytics to help manage the rise of smaller solar systems. One of those is two-year-old, Petaluma, Calif.-based startup Enphase Energy, which announced on Tuesday that it has raised $6.5 […] Read more »
It seems like every conference these days is adding green elements, from the gadget-laden Consumer Electronics Show to the car-crazed Detroit Auto Show. So why shouldn’t DEMO, the ultimate startup launchpad conference taking place this week in Palm Desert, Calif., test what it means for them […] Read more »
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The race to build solar thermal power plants is heating up in the U.S. Southwest desert this year, and companies that are building these massive solar systems will need a lot of funding to get these things constructed. This morning Israeli solar thermal plant builders Solel, […] Read more »
“Clean coal” startup GreatPoint Energy, which had one of the largest venture investments in 2007 with $115 million, is getting funding from massive coal company Peabody Energy. A nod from the coal company that fuels about 10 percent of all U.S. electricity, and more than 2 […] Read more »
Genomics guru and cleantech entrepreneur Craig Venter — whom the New York Times once referred to the Larry Ellison of the lab and the Richard Branson of biology — is a step closer to creating the first artificial life form, a breakthrough that could lead to, […] Read more »
In an effort to get its electric sports car to market, Silicon Valley startup Tesla Motors has given the boot to the planned two-speed transmission, and decided to use a modified one-speed transmission instead. The company says the one-speed transmission will be combined with an enhanced […] Read more »
SunPower, the San Jose, Calif.-based manufacturer of high-efficiency solar panels, said on Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit fell due to growing costs, to $4.88 million, or 6 cents a share, from $11.3 million, or 15 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Wall Street didn’t like […] Read more »
It seems like everyone’s bullish on Cree’s light-emitting diode (LED) business these days. Shares of the company’s stock rose as much as 16 percent in morning trading Wednesday after it reported second-quarter profit above Wall Street’s expectations and the Durham, N.C.-based company said it sees third-quarter […] Read more »
Solar monitoring technology doesn’t sound as whiz-bang as say methane-powered vehicles, or biofuels made from old tires. But bringing transparency to the rapidly growing solar industry, can deliver the wowee-factor, at least for investors. On Wednesday Fat Spaniel, which sells a monitoring software and service for […] Read more »
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A breakthrough in fuel cell technology, which seems to be perpetually “just a few years away,” means there’s still a lot of room for startups to help bring this complex technology to market. We recently read in Israel’s Globes, via a blog post from Israel Cleantech […] Read more »
Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure venture Project Better Place announced on Monday that it will build its first pilot electric battery rechargeable grid system in Israel, and has partnered with the Renault-Nissan Alliance on the project’s electric vehicles. There were some rumors about the deal being […] Read more »
Back in November, the Google guys said they planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on renewable energy projects, but offered few details as to where the funds would go. Then today, Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which will put 1 percent of the company’s equity […] Read more »
The annual cleantech investing numbers are out from the good folks at the Cleantech Group, and gosh darnit they’re just as high as you’d expect. For 2007 cleantech investment in North America and Europe rose to $5.18 billion. Geez — that’s up from $3.6 billion in […] Read more »
You can thank this blog post for even more carbon emissions in the atmosphere. That’s because web hosting is largely powered by fossil fuel power plants and computers run on electricity. To help bring a little carbon transparency to web sites, including those in our good […] Read more »
We’ve seen solar stocks take a hit so far this year. SunPower’s shares have slumped 20 percent since the first trading day of 2008, and Chinese solar companies Trina Solar, Yingli Green Energy and Solarfun Power Holdings have all seen their stocks fall as well. But […] Read more »
Investment bank Morgan Stanley apparently doesn’t just see profits in solar technology installations or electric vehicle infrastructure startups; the firm has also decided to take a minority stake in cleantech venture firm NGEN Partners. Morgan Stanley calls its investment “the first by a major Wall Street […] Read more »
There’s been days of rumors about the MacBook Air, Apple’s big announcement at MacWorld in San Francisco on Tuesday. But we just heard from the show floor, where NewTeeVee editor Liz is representing the GigaOM crew, that not only is Apple claiming that MacBook Air is […] Read more »
The funds of massive power companies and the minds of academia have been collaborating on the world’s energy problems for years. Here’s an impressive collaboration centered on solar and clean energy R&D that was announced on Tuesday: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Italian oil and […] Read more »
The Detroit Auto Show is dominating cleantech headlines this morning (biofuels, alt vehicles, efficient engines), but there’s a bit of interesting news shining out of the solar industry, too. Solar is learning from nanotech to the tune of $32 million, while German solar maker Schott is […] Read more »
As Silicon Valley’s original eco sports car company, Tesla, leaves customers twiddling their thumbs, another venture-backed green sports car startup is rising to the occasion, backed by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. KPCB partner Al Gore even gave some advice on the deal, according […] Read more »
We just wrote about a Khosla-backed alternative vehicle company making noise at the Detroit Auto Show (Coskata). And now here’s another one: Khosla Ventures announced it has invested in EcoMotors, a startup building more efficient engines, in particular a diesel engine that can do 100 mpg […] Read more »
Drive half an hour west from downtown Chicago and you’ll find the headquarters of Coskata, an 18-month-old company that says it has developed a major breakthrough for making low-cost ethanol. On Sunday, timed to coincide with the Detroit Auto Show, Coskata has decided to come out […] Read more »
In addition to electric sports car company Tesla’s production delays, CEO trade-in, recent internal funding and an interim transmission in its first vehicles, the company has also cut a significant amount of staff recently, according to various reports. Former Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard, who left Tesla […] Read more »
Shai Agassi’s well-funded electric vehicle infrastructure startup, Project Better Place, produced this video clip for the YouTube Davos video contest in answer to the question posed: “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place […] Read more »
There’s a lot of new startups, as well as big companies, making software tools, network hardware, smart meters and web sites that enable consumers to manage their energy consumption — Lucid Design Group, IBM, SmartSynch, eMeter, and Invensys Controls, to name just a few. And we’ve […] Read more »
Venture capitalists have said they expect there to be more money invested in cleantech in 2008 than even the $2.6 billion invested in the first three quarters of 2007. And we’ve only just put away our holiday decorations and already there’s news of two funds that […] Read more »
James Hansen, one of the world’s best-known global warming researchers and a recent vocal advocate of proposed coal plants, says clean coal technology used on a full-scale coal-fired plant could be at least a decade away. He expressed the sentiment in a media briefing organized by […] Read more »
A speech from General Motor’s Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday night was the first keynote from a car maker at CES in 41 years. We chatted with GM’s VP of R&D, Lawrence D. Burns, on Monday, and we just […] Read more »
V2Green, a startup that bridges the broadband, energy and automotive industries, needs a leader that can seal the necessary business deals — with utilities, car companies, and even telecom providers. To succeed at that tech intersection the Seattle-based company, which makes software and hardware to help […] Read more »
If CES’s green announcements are any indicator, 2008 is going to be a banner year for gadgets going greener. Or at the very least, a good year for discussing more sustainable consumer electronics; we’ll see how earth-friendly gizmo companies are if it means added costs. But […] Read more »
When startups refocus, they can run the risk of falling flat. In the case of two-year-old startup SoonR, it looks like the company, whose product allows you to access documents from your desktop on your cell phone, is finally doing something right. And Cisco likes what […] Read more »
Oil recently touched that cleantech milestone of $100 a barrel, sending pundits to speculate if the price would go up or down in 2008. Apparently the speculation among those with the most to win (or lose) is to the upside. According to Bloomberg, traders are starting […] Read more »
There are reasons to both love and hate the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — it showcases practically every gadget due to come out in the year ahead (nice!), it has a football stadium’s worth of corporate And booths (yuck), and media events are […] Read more »
Just before the holidays we took a trip down to Sand Hill Road, and filmed this interview on cleantech investing with Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s partners Steve Jurvetson and Raj Atluru. With 11 deals, and over $40 million dollars in 2007 DFJ was one of the leaders […] Read more »
Just before the holidays we took a trip down to Sand Hill Road, where we filmed this interview on cleantech investing with Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s partners Steve Jurvetson and Raj Atluru. With 11 deals and over $40 million dollars, DFJ was one of the leaders of […] Read more »
[qi:045] Meraki Networks, the startup that makes mesh networking gear and is building an ad-hoc San Francisco Wi-Fi network, says it has raised $20 million in a Series B round. While San Francisco’s official Wi-Fi network is MIA, Meraki has been building out a distributed Wi-Fi […] Read more »
Akeena and Suntech Make a Deal: Solar installer Akeena Solar (AKNS) says some of its solar panel technology will be distributed in Europe, Japan and Australia under a license agreement with Suntech Power Holdings — release. LDK Gives Guidance: Chinese Solar manufacturer LDK Solar (LDK) gives […] Read more »
General Motor’s Bob Lutz, the exec that helped lead GM while it was being vilified in “Who Killed the Electric Car,” is now being lauded for leading production of GM’s Chevy Volt, a plug-in electric car due out in 2010. Newsweek writes a standard turn-around story […] Read more »
After word got out a couple weeks ago that the CEO of biodiesel producer Imperium Renewables, Martin Tobias, had left the company, we were wondering about the status of the company’s planned IPO. While a company spokesperson refused, at that point, to comment, Imperium has now […] Read more »
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