Whether natural gas is friend or foe to renewable energy development has been hotly debated. For Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, the world isn’t paying enough attention to the impact that natural gas production and pricing will have on renewable energy. Read More »
Clean Power
The DOE has offered a $967 million loan guarantee for the Agua Caliente Solar project, a 290 MW photovoltaic facility that will be built in Yuma County, Arizona, will be developed by NRG Energy and will use First Solar panels. Read More »
The most talked about company in cleantech in 2010, fuel cell company Bloom Energy, announced Thursday morning that it’s launching an offer for 10-year electricity contracts with no upfront payment for the Bloom Box fuel cell itself, which costs between $700,000 to $800,000. Read More »
First Solar Chairman and former CEO Michael Ahearn is raising a $300 million venture fund, according to an SEC filing. Will the money be going to solar startups, or even cleantech? Read More »
Gravity Power is developing a new way to store massive amounts of energy for the power grid: gravity and a new invention using pistons, water-filled shafts in the ground and a motor. Read More »
We’ve covered China’s rapidly exploding greentech markets — from electric vehicles to solar to wind to the smart grid — ad nauseam on this site. But this afternoon I’m just really struck by how much China is starting to dominate the conversation in greentech sectors. Read More »
The argument against electric cars is that if the grid is powered by mostly coal, then so are our cars. But the long term goal is to move the grid over to clean power. However, here’s the bumpy road ahead for these transitions. Read More »
Here comes another lawsuit about a giant solar farm in California. Western Watershed Project has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over its approval of BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah project in the Mojave Desert. Read More »
Oil prices have headed back up to close to $100 a barrel. Will the demand for cleantech products — like electric, hybrid and biofuel cars — get a boost? And will high oil prices stimulate cleantech investing? Read More »
Investors loved the wind energy sector, and they showed it by blowing the most investment dollars that way in 2010. They also were most busy with energy efficiency deals, the number of which surpassed other cleantech categories last year, according to a U.S. market report by… Read More »
Solar thin films have to be cheap, and that mandate makes it difficult for startups to be profitable. In fact, these alternatives to silicon solar panels are on average 12 percent cheaper, said Paula Mints of Navigant Consulting. Read More »
We can thank China, offshore wind and European solar rooftops for a record $243 billion of global investment into clean power — including funding mechanisms like the public markets, private investment, government funding, asset financing and corporate spending — according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Read More »
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