A source close to the situation said that Serface plans to transition out of his role at the incubator over the next six weeks; Austin Clean Energy, meanwhile, plans to open up a nationwide search for Serface’s replacement. Prior to his job in Austin, Serface worked at several venture firms, including as a partner at Eastman Ventures, the venture arm of the Eastman Kodak company; as a director at Sierra Ventures; and as a principal at Alliant Partners.

In his new role as an EIR for Kleiner, Serface will work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., to find technologies to commercialize. The other firm-lab partnerships are ARCH Venture Partners, which will team up with Sandia National Laboratory, and Foundation Capital, whose entrepreneur will work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The DOE will provide $100,000 for each entrepreneur; the venture sponsor will then match that funding. Each firm will have one entrepreneur-in-residence at their assigned lab at a time, with the hope of spinning out a company in three to four months. At that point, the venture firm will put into residence their next entrepreneur to begin the process all over again. Once an entrepreneur has identified a technology for commercialization, he or she, in concert with the sponsoring venture firm, will negotiate a license for the technology.

Serface has been helping startups negotiate licensing and commercialization deals at the incubator for almost two years, so the experience shouldn’t be too different for him. Given his background in venture investing, he should have a good idea of what types of deals to look for.

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Newsom traveled to Israel last week to meet with representatives of the company. The mayor’s office tells us that during a luncheon with Moshe Kaplinsky, CEO of Project Better Place Israel (pictured after the jump with the mayor), and Aliza Peleg, a rep from the startup’s U.S. offices, Newsom offered to work with Project Better Place if it would consider doing a test project in San Francisco. Newsom also met with the company’s chairman, Idan Offer, at a reception earlier.

The city is already in early talks with private companies that could potentially work with Project Better Place to build an electric vehicle infrastructure, according to the mayor’s office. Newsom was also said to be “very impressed” with the Project Better Place’s team in Israel.

If San Francisco does do a deal with Project Better Place, it would be the first city in the U.S. to get on board with Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure plan (with three cars, San Francisco currently has one of the largest plug-in hybrid fleets in the country). This is the first we’ve heard of Project Better Place being in serious discussions stateside; we’ve tried to contact them for comment and when we hear back, will update the post.

Project Better Place also showed off a prototype of its electric vehicle in Israel over the weekend. But by then, Newsom had already jetted back to the States to speak at the New Yorker’s “Stories from the Near Future,” conference. In his talk, he described Project Better Place’s plans in Israel, saying that San Francisco wants “to be the first city [in the country] to adopt that strategy.”

Video courtesy of Israel21c. Golden Gate Bridge photo courtesy of http2007.

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Brazil currently produces 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol every year; the Brazilian government estimates that number will double by 2015. And they are increasingly looking at the U.S. as potential buyers. Although President Bush did sign an ethanol technology-sharing agreement with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a 54 cent-a-gallon tariff prevents cheap Brazilian ethanol from competing with homegrown U.S. corn ethanol.

But the readily fermentable sugars found in sugarcane make it a far better ethanol feedstock than grain. Brazilian sugar ethanol gives an eightfold return on the fossil energy used to make it; American corn, on the other hand, only yields 1.3 times the fossil energy used. Brazil is now the No. 2 producer of ethanol, dethroned by the U.S. in 2005, but still leads in ethanol exports, sending some 900 million gallons of ethanol overseas last year, according to Reuters.

Brazil’s ethanol success and failures can teach the rest of the world a lot about biofuels. So who are the big Brazilian ethanol players? Who’s investing in the sector? And which biofuel startups are making Brazilian deals? Below, a primer:

Big Players:

• Cosan SA: The largest grower and processor of sugarcane on the planet, Cosan crushed some 36.2 million tons of sugarcane into 326.7 million gallons of ethanol in 2007. More recently, the company made a move to buy all of ExxonMobil’s Brazilian distribution and service-station businesses for $826 million. Speaking at Stanford last November, a month after the company raised $1.2 billion via an IPO on the NYSE, Cosan CFO Paulo Diniz broke down Cosan’s $1.7 billion in revenue: 61 percent from sugar sales, 33 from ethanol sales, and 6 percent from selling the electricity generated by burning sugarcane byproducts. Diniz added that the company is developing genetically modified sugarcane that can be grown in various climates and could increase its production to “at least 150 or even over 200″ tons per capita from the current 85.
• Petrobras: Petrobas still has significant petroleum interests but is also the largest buyer of ethanol in the world. Petrobras is an energy company; it doesn’t actually grow any sugar but buys it and sells the fuel through its distribution arm, Petrobras Distribuidora. According to Bloomberg, Petrobas plans to invest $600 million by 2010 to expand its ethanol exports. “The U.S. is the market where we would like to be,” Petrobras head Jose Sergio Gabrielli told Bloomberg. Petrobras also recently formed a partnership with Japan’s Nippon Alcohol Hanbai to export Brazilian ethanol to Japan.
• Santelisa Vale: Brazil’s second-largest sugarcane and ethanol producer, Santelisa Vale recently sold its 50 percent stake in Tropical BioEnrgia — which was launched with plans for $1 billion of ethanol refineries — to BP Oil for $60 million. In the meantime, the commodities division of Goldman Sachs put more than $200 million into Santelisa Vale.
• Crystalev: A subsidiary of Santelisa, Crystalev’s own operations are massive. In addition to being Brazil’s largest producer of renewable energy, the company says they produce 2 billion tons of sugar and 1 billion liters of ethanol each year. However, Crystalev’s operations represent only 8 percent of the total sugarcane crushed in Brazil. The company also recently partnered with California startup Amyrsis to develop renewable, sugar-based fuels including diesel, jet fuel and gasoline; they’re aiming to commercialize sugar-based diesel by 2010.

Startup Players Heading to Brazil:

Brazil doesn’t just tap the cane’s sucrose for ethanol. The country’s sugarcane crop also produces a considerable amount of bagasse, the fibrous leftovers and fodder for a growing number of cellulosic ethanol ventures that are finding Brazil to be a great place to set up shop.

• Brazil Renewable Energy Co.: Founded by former Petrobras president Philippe Reichstul, Brenco, as it’s known, has A-list investors including Bill Clinton, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, and film producer Steve Bing, and has raised nearly $150 million from Brazilian, American and European investors. The company is now working hard to become Brazil’s largest ethanol producer, with 14 mills under construction at a cost of $2.4 billion. While the company suffered some bad PR following accusations of illegal labor practices, the Brazilian Labor Ministry has lifted the operation restrictions and declared Brenco compliant.
• KiOR: A joint venture between Khosla Ventures and Dutch BIOeCON, KiOR has signed on with Petrobras to work on its biomass catalytic cracking technology at the energy giant’s research center. Using catalytic pyrolysis, Kior “cracks” cellulosic biomass, like sugarcane slag, into a biocrude.
• Amyris Biotechnologies: In a joint venture with Santelisa Vale-owned Crystalsev, Amyris plans to commercialize “advanced renewable fuels” including sugar-based gasoline, diesel and jetfuel. Called Amyris-Crystalsev Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento de Biocombustiveis Ltda, the JV will start with renewable diesel; it has contracted Santelisa Vale to provide two million tons of sugarcane crushing capacity and a test plant. With $90 million from an impressive list of Sand Hill Road investors — Kleiner, DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures and TPG Ventures — Amyris is making lucrative deals on both sides of the Gulf.
• Ethos Ethanol: Backed by biofuel-happy Khosla Ventures and GreatPoint Ventures, Cambridge, Mass.-based Ethos Ethanol has been pretty stealthy about exactly what it plans to do. Its web site says merely that Ethos plans to pursue sugarcane-based fuels “in areas of Central/Latin America and the Caribbean.”

International Investors:

With such a large market opportunity, you can bet that huge multinational corporations and investors are making Brazil part of their portfolios.

• Goldman Sachs: Last July, Goldman put $210 million into Santelisa Vale to expand the company’s sugar mills.
• Dow Chemical: Midland, Mich.-based Dow last year teamed up with Crystalslev to make polyethylene from sugarcane ethanol.
• ExxonMobil: Cosan will be buying Esso’s Brazilian distribution network, but the oil company’s Chilean and Uruguayan distribution business is up for grabs and Cosan will likely again be bidding against Petrobras.
• BP: BP entered the Brazilian biofuel scene with their initial $60 investment in Tropical Bioenergia SA and say they and their partners plan to invest $1 billion in two new ethanol plants. Ethanol consumption is starting to outstrip gasoline use and fixed gas prices keep petrol fuels more expensive than ethanol, all signs that fuel players in Brazil need to get into ethanol.

Hurdles:

While sugarcane makes for more energy-efficient ethanol than corn, it is an extremely labor-intensive process, with much of the harvesting being done by hand. Earlier this year, Bloomberg TV aired a documentary called “Deadly Brew – The Human Toll of Ethanol,” which chronicles the horrendous working conditions in many Brazilian sugar fields (trailer embedded at the bottom).

The environmental toll has also been in the global media spotlight. While the Amazon is indeed being chopped and burned down at an alarming rate, farther south new sugar growth taking place at the expense of the Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse savannas.

Meanwhile, food riots are breaking out in cities around the world, with much of the blame being placed on biofuel production. But Brazil says that it will continue to produce ethanol from sugar.

Graph courtesy of Petrobras.

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1. Shai Agassi, Founder, CEO Project Better Place.
2. Bob Metcalfe, Partner, Polaris Venture Partners, CEO GreenFuel.
3. Vinod Khosla, Founder Khosla Ventures.
4. Sunil Paul, Seed investor, early stage cleantech, Nanosolar, Oorja.
5. John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins.
6. Elon Musk, Chairman, Tesla, Chairman, CEO SolarCity
7. Steve Jurvetson, Partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
8. Bill Gross, Founder Idealab.
9. Ray Lane, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
10. Al Gore, Chairman Generation Investment Managment, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
11. Raj Atluru, Partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
12. Steve Westly, Founder The Westly Group.
13. Dan Whaley, Founder, CEO Climos.
14. Martin Eberhard, Founder, former CEO Tesla.
15. Martin Roscheisen, Founder, CEO Nanosolar.
16. Martin Tobias, Former CEO Imperium Renewables.
17. Manny Hernandez, CFO SunPower.
18. Jonathan Gay, CEO of GreenBox
19. Jeff Skoll, Founder Skoll Foundation, investor in Tesla, Nanosolar.
20. Mitch Mandich, CEO Range Fuels.
21. Bill Joy, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
22. Larry Gross, CEO of Edeniq.
23. Bruce Sohn, President First Solar.
24. David Kaplan, Founder V2Green.
25. David Cope, CEO of PurFresh.

Go to page 2 (of 26) on GigaOM .

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It’s not as weird as it sounds. The Twitter stream is an exercise in using the data from home automation feeds, and the hope is that, by making energy usage data transparent and easy to digest, it will change consumer behavior and reduce energy consumption. The former Flash guys at GreenBox are working on using the same type of info for their energy management software, as are startups Agilewaves, and Lucid Design Group.

Stanford-Clark runs the Pervasive and Advanced Messaging Technologies team at IBM in Hursley Park, and he recently told the folks at startup AlertMe more about the home setup. Updates are sent via sensors in the home, and the system uses an IBM middleware product to connect the service. Stanford-Clark also told AlertMe that he can turn the lights and the fountain on or off from a website.

Stanford-Clark has also worked on the Power Orb, which changes colors to reflect energy use. He told Eureka Magazine that the inspiration for the Orb came from a project started to monitor electricity consumption for Enron.

So, what’s Andy House doing now? Go look: Its electricity meter reading is 31,400 kWh. It’s strangely addicting.

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Glance

With recent flight cancellations, airlines in bankruptcy and other issues, Glance is offering a free month’s subscription for those affected.  Simply head over to Glance’s site and tell them your tale of woe to be considered for the offer.

The service is hoping rather than hopping on a plane to visit conduct a meeting, demonstrate a product, or otherwise share desktop information, you’ll instead use Glance to show clients/co-workers your on-screen presentation.

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• 8.9-inch screen
• 1024×600 resolution
• FingerGlide Touchpad Technology
• Xandros Linux OS
• 20GB Storage
• 2.2 pounds

All you have to do is go to the contest entry page and enter away.  Good luck!

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More dendro-technophilia pics after the jump.

Check out some other stories on green gadgets:

• 
  5 Sites That Want Your Janky Gadgets
• 10 Green Social Networks You Should Know
• The iPod of Cleantech?
  
• CES Green Gadget Wrap Up
• Want Green Cell Phone Goods? Solar Bluetooth, Recycled Tire Case

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Protectoria offers both standalone (web mail) and integrated (Outlook/Exchange) versions. Pricing is per recipient either way, and quoted in Norwegian Kroner at rates that start just under $2 per message.

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After an instant signup, you get your own “canvas” – think of a bulletin board. You can, of course, create, edit, delete, and reposition notes. But you can also email them, set reminders on them, and add photos as well as text. There’s a tagging facility to let you manage groups of stickies by any keyword you want. You can create new canvases, and keep them private, make them public, or share them with friends. What’s missing? Incoming email integration would be nice. But for a service that just entered beta, this one is already looking pretty good.

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