John Hofmeister, the former President of Shell Oil, isn’t one to mince words. He thinks the U.S. is going about energy policy “planlessly,” due to its short political cycles, and he called the stimulus package’s funding for green technology “a frittering number.” 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 »
This year, the world will hit 7 billion persons; by 2045 it will reach 9 billion. At that rate, we’ll reach a global population density of a little more than half of that of France. It’s not an explosion; it’s about resource management. Read more »
Wikileaks has given the cleantech world ammunition to show how our sector offers a solution to the extremely unstable world problems, and national security issues. We are bankrolling the same enemies we proclaim to be fighting in the battle against fundamentalist Islamic terror groups. Read more »
Since influencers are what makes the greentech industry world go round, we thought we’d bring you the 10 individuals that we think had the biggest effect on the greentech sector this year. From corporate bigwigs to policy wonks, these are the people changing the sector. Read more »
We’re all going to need to become a lot more energy literate if we’re going to fight climate change. Now the DOE has started working on a collaborative Energy Literacy document that will help guide energy education in schools, as well as federal policy and funding. Read more »
Will California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger be the next Obama Administration energy policy official? It’s just one idea that Schwarzenegger, who will step down from the governor role in a couple weeks, kicked around in an interview with the L.A. Times on Friday. Read more »
The Center for Public Integrity reports that funds from the stimulus package for clean power and energy efficiency were issued with “sweeping exemptions” from basic environmental oversight. Read more »
O.K., so there’s been a whole lotta funding news today. Here’s something a bit lighter. This weekend at a holiday gift fair in San Francisco I bought an awesome t-shirt featuring rockstar Department of Energy’s Chief Steven. Actually I bought like three of them. Read more »
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu shows off the DOE’s new cool roof and explains the benefits of ditching a dark roof and opting for a cooler (lighter one). Read more »
The modest agreement that came out of the Cancun climate talks this weekend points tells me one thing: It’s time to start talking a lot more about adaptation to climate change. It’s time for those in greentech to bet adaption will be a hot market. Read more »
Just about one year into his role heading up the DOE’s loan program office, former VC Jonathan Silver tells us he believes the agency has come a long way from it’s first few years of neglect and delays. Read more »
Everyone knows that California was the brightest shining light in the oppressive darkness that descended on the clean energy world on Nov. 2. While clean energy hopes were being snuffed out across the country, California went the right way towards a sustainable energy future. Read more »
All hail the open-source scientist. Open collaboration in energy innovation will be a key part of fighting climate change, said Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu in Cancun, Mexico, at a side event to the U.N. negotiations. Read more »
On Saturday night at the World Climate Summit, Richard Branson, delivered a message to the negotiators at the U.N.’s climate change meeting, COP 16, in Cancun, Mexico, which continues this week: “Just do it, for God’s sake. Get off your a**es and get on with it.” Read more »
The first week of the U.N.’s climate change negotiations has kicked off in Cancun, Mexico and not surprisingly, there are low expectations of any meaningful agreement coming out of the talks. What will likely provide some needed optimism will be the greentech and green-leaning business community. Read more »
Google unveiled Google Earth Engine, which combines world satellite imagery, tools and parallel processing power, at the climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, this morning. Along with a donation of 20 million CPU hours, the tool will help researchers protect the world’s forests. Read more »
Could 1.7 billion processor hours put a dent in the fight against climate change? That’s what the DOE is hoping, and this week unveiled a program to donate computing power from two super computers for dozens of projects working on energy innovation. Read more »
Google’s former Director of Climate Policy, Dan Reicher, has left the search engine giant to head up Stanford’s new Center for Energy Policy and Finance that will focus on how policy and financing can deliver the future of clean energy infrastructure. Read more »
Even though the U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen last year, COP 15, were a bust, this year’s COP 16, kicking off in Cancun on Monday, could provide some progress to reaching a treaty on how to cut world carbon emissions. Here’s our greetech guide to the talks. Read more »
There were quite a few hurdles for the overall green tech sector in 2010, from a dramatic drop in early stage investments to the consumer smart meter backlash. But there were also quite a few things to be thankful for in greentech — here’s my top 10. Read more »
A public official with a sense of humor is seriously refreshing. The DOE’s Chief Steven Chu sings praise for a particularly funny article in The Onion entitled, “Report: Global Warming Issue From 2 or 3 Years Ago May Still Be Problem,” on his official Facebook page. Read more »
The Obama administration is working on streamlining the DOE’s loan guarantee program, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tells me this morning. The program will not be abandoned, but will be changed to run more smoothly, and take less time. Read more »
The stimulus package has been one of the largest injections of government funds into green tech in U.S. history. But along with the benefits that tens of billions of dollars brings — energy innovation, green jobs — there are also some very real dangers. Read more »
With Solyndra’s announcement this morning that it will lay off dozens of workers and close its first factory, the question over whether or not the DOE’s flagship loan guarantee to Solyndra was a mistake has been answered. And yep, it’s a disaster. Read more »
Woot woot! California voters rejected Proposition 23, which would have basically suspended AB 32 — California’s climate change law — and also voted in greentech-friendly Jerry Brown for Governor. Read more »
Folks, it’s election day today and as many of you know, a major piece of legislation could very well determine the fate of the greentech industry in California: Prop 23. Here’s 10 reasons why you should vote no on Prop 23. Read more »
More third quarter greentech venture financing numbers are out this morning, and yep, they’re still bad. According to Ernst & Young, greentech VC investments in the third quarter of 2010 were down 55 percent below Q3 2009. That’s one of the highest reported drops I’ve seen. Read more »
Move over, climate and energy wonks; this is shaping up to be a triple-feature week of the geeks. Steve Jobs talked energy and innovation with President Obama, Bill Gates poured $700,000 into the fight against Prop. 23, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu is heading to Google. Read more »
The UK government unveiled major spending cuts today, taking bites out of welfare benefits and other public programs while pledging to provide £2.2 billion pounds (about $3.5 billion USD) for renewable energy and carbon capture projects and preserving a feed-in tariff for solar power. Read more »
Building the next-generation of energy-focused entrepreneurs and technologies, will need more than just money. It will need a whole generation of inspired, science-focused kids that think energy technology is the coolest thing since, well, Facebook. Read more »
The discussion around NoSQL seems to have evolved from abolishing SQL databases to coexisting with SQL databases, and then to SQL is actually regaining momentum. Is SQL regaining favor, even among webscale types? Was it ever out of favor? Read more »
Apple will be adding a video angle to its advertising offerings, and will soon begin delivering in-stream ads to videos shown on iOS devices. A new video ad product, slated to launch early next year, could boost videos available on the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Read more »
IBM today increased the scope of its internal cloud-computing portfolio with three new CloudBurst offerings. The most important of the bunch might be IBM’s Service Delivery Manager software, which has been decoupled so that it can run atop any standard x86- or Power-based servers. Read more »
Applied Material’s CEO Mike Splinter writes: At a time when the U.S. and California need to redouble its leadership in mitigating climate change and its investment in building a low-carbon economy, Prop 23 would be a major step backwards. Read more »
The Proposition 23 initiative on November’s ballot, if passed, would stifle the growth of our cleantech industries and send exactly the wrong message to investors and businesses across the state, the country and the world. Read more »
The U.S. government will be using NoSQL database technology Cassandra for a 400-node cluster for intelligence mining. In addition, Riptano, the Austin, Texas-based Cassandra-focussed startup says now the open source NoSQL software is ready to run on Amazon’s EC2 service. Read more »
IBM today said it would buy Blade Networks, a company that makes networking gear that can help vendors combine computing and networking in a box resembling Cisco’s server. Blade reported $79 million in revenue for 2009 and planned for revenue in excess of $100 million for 2010. Read more »
One of the most common questions often asked is how to get your app reviewed by the various iPhone blog sites around the Internet. While there is no guaranteed method, SlapApp.com’s co-founder Ryan Johnson has a few pointers to help you build a relationship with reviewers. Read more »
RightScale, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based cloud management software maker, has raised $25 million in new funds from Tenaya Capital, joined by DAG Ventures and current investors: Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Presidio Ventures. RightScale has raised a total of $42.5 million in three rounds Read more »
