Cleantech | GigaOM

Building a startup that develops solar-powered microgrids in rural Indian villages is as hard as it sounds. Hear the lessons learned from one entrepreneur who co-founded a startup called Mera Gao Power and turned it into a real business. Read More »

The Model S Betas got buffed between rides.

Electric car company Tesla Motors is continuing to spend heavily to get its second electric car the Model S out the door, but now says the first Model S shipments will happen in June, a month earlier than expected. Read More »

 
 

There is still not a solar panel capable of displacing electricity from fossil fuels. Disruption calls for smart innovation; several companies are ready for the challenge. The clear winner will be the solar-energy player that breaks new records in solar efficiency without the breaking the bank.

Despite continued struggles for next-gen biofuel makers, VCs are still putting money into startups, particularly when it comes to follow-on rounds. EdeniQ announced that it has raised another round of more than $30 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and The Westly Group. Read More »

Every year at our Structure 2012 conference we host a Launchpad of startups. This year, we decided to give the 10 finalists more than stage-time: We teamed up with venture firm Sequoia to give them a hands-on training session at Sequoia HQ. Read More »

A startup making smart windows that can tint and block light, Sage Electrochromics, has been acquired by French glass and construction giant Saint-Gobain. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read More »

A new startup called Gridium, which launched a couple months ago and is co-led by energy entrepreneur Tom Arnold, has developed software that can help industrial and commercial building owners tap into smart meter data to help lower their energy bills. Read More »

Microsoft is joining a growing number of tech companies that want to do something about their growing carbon emissions due to power hungry data centers and office buildings. The software giant on Tuesday announced a plan to become carbon neutral by fiscal year 2013 (this July). Read More »

Who’s liable in the share economy?

The tragic story in which a man rented a car in Boston via peer-to-peer car sharing company RelayRides and wound up seriously injuring four people while losing his life, raised a familiar question for the share economy: Who’s responsible? Read More »

OMG! These returns!!

The investment team at the Kauffman Foundation believes the venture capital industry is broken and they — or rather investors in VC funds — are partially to blame. The report condemns venture firms for being to big, not delivering returns and not adjusting to the times. Read More »

Finally the worlds of big data geeks and clean energy nerds have collided. Researchers have proposed building a “GreenHadoop,” that is a version of the MapReduce programming framework that could manage a data center’s computing workload to optimize clean energy from a solar system. Read More »

We’ve heard an awful lot about lean startups lately. Now it’s time to focus on Phat Startups — companies willing to take big risks to solve big problems — like clean energy and nuclear waste remediation, according to Jamie Goldstein, general partner at North Bridge Venture … Read More »

More Must Reads

Azure Power will be building one of India’s first megawatt-scale rooftop solar projects that will put solar panels on dozens of rooftops and share revenues from power sales with building owners. Read More »

The bare-knuckle boxing match between thermostat giant Honeywell and smart thermostat startup Nest Labs entered round three on Monday, with Honeywell’s official denial of Nest’s counterclaim. Read More »

Wireless charging sounds great: Drop your gadget on a little mat, which itself is plugged into an outlet, and your phone or MP3 player sits there and charges away. But the industry can’t agree on standards, and on Monday a new wireless charging group was formed. Read More »

AT&T’s Digital Life program may have started overseas, but this summer AT&T will offer its new connected home service in two U.S. trial markets, Atlanta and Dallas, where it will install home monitoring and automation devices that homeowners can access from a browser, smartphone or tablet. Read More »

Smart meters eventually will be ubiquitous globally over the next few decades, but, interestingly enough, installations of smart meters in the U.S. will actually sharply decline over the next two years, before they pick back up, according to Pike Research. Read More »

Electric car charging network owner Coulomb Technologies has lined up $47.5 million to expand its reach during a year when more new electric vehicle models are showing up. Read More »

A startup called GELI, lead by battery guru Ryan Wartena, has developed an operating system and software for grid batteries and plans to launch its beta software in the coming weeks. Think of it like the Android for energy. Read More »

We see a lot of early-stage research coming out of labs of universities around the world. And because we don’t always have time to cover these innovations in stand-alone articles, I’m resurrecting an old column: In the labs! Read More »

Japan plans to close its last nuclear reactor this weekend, a move that will take nuclear power out of its energy supply for the first time since 1966. Among those who will celebrate that will be solar companies as Japan gets ready to boost its … Read More »

The Kickstarter for solar, Solar Mosaic, is just about to launch the truly disruptive part of its business: this Summer the startup plans to start offering people a way to buy into rooftop solar panel projects, and make back a return on their investment over time. Read More »

A startup called Scoot Networks, which is looking to be the Zipcar for electric scooters, recently launched its beta service in San Francisco after being incubated out of the Greenstart program. For GigaOM TV’s latest Green Overdrive show, we go on a ride with Scoot. Read More »

Solar bellwether First Solar has two pieces of big news out of its earnings on Thursday: a new CEO with deep experience with conventional power and a new 5-year plan to transform the company into a power plant developer. Read More »

Zagster aims to bring shared bikes to a campus, apartment complex, or hotel near you. The startup (once called CityRyde) just signed Cisco and Hyatt Hotels to install its shared bike service in their locations, CEO Timothy Ericson told attendees of TechStars Boston Demo Day. Read More »

There are expected to be over 9 billion on the planet by 2050 and you can expect that to strain the world’s resources like energy, water and food. But big data tools will be able to help organizations track and attempt to solve this problem. Read More »

You won’t be replacing batteries on Logitech’s newest iPad keyboard case. As its name implies, the $129.99 Solar Keyboard Folio uses light — either indoors or out — to maintain its battery life, which is two years on a single charge, claims Logitech. Read More »

Young, early-stage green-focused startups are a rare breed these days. The demo day for the green digital-focused accelerator Greenstart was one of the first times in a long time that I’ve seen a grouping of new young green-leaning startups looking for their first round of funding. … Read More »

Building sustainable data centers is hard — especially if you’re trying to do it in office space in Houston. This and a few less obvious lessons were the takeaways from a panel on sustainable data centers at the Open compute Summit on Wednesday. Read More »

When your business is to insure farmers against the effects of bad weather, you’d better have some seriously accurate data on your side. Mother Nature, after all, can be somewhat unpredictable. The Climate Corporation thinks the answer is lots of data and lots computing power. Read More »

Six smart grid projects you don’t see everyday courtesy of Smart Grid News. Read More »

In the emerging vision for the smart city of tomorrow, we often hear about next gen smart grids, smarter buildings and smart transportation systems. But we hear much less about smart water systems and the need to develop more efficient approaches to water as a resource. Read More »

At its third summit, the Open Compute Project is adding new partners, showing off cool use cases and adding new technologies. And surprisingly, it’s being done in a way that will enable hardware vendors to hold onto some of their margins and still deliver innovations. Read More »

The story behind why solar thermal company BrightSource Energy pulled its IPO: basically because it could. Read More »

Watch out Opower. Carbon and energy software player C3 — the quiet firm started by Thomas Siebel and which counts Condoleezza Rice as a director — has acquired another energy software startup Efficiency 2.0. Read More »

San Diego-based EcoATM wants to make for electronic recycling convenient and even rewarding (with cash!), and the idea has enabled it to raise a B round of about $17 million to expand its reach nationwide. Read More »

Japan is even hip when it comes to nuclear fallout. The Gamma Watch Squadron is a crew led by a Japanese rapper that takes Instagram photos of elevated Geiger counter readings in public places around the Fukushima area. Read More »

An 180-mile drive takes me through the farm belt of California to Coalinga, where Chevron runs an old oil field that uses steam to boost its production. It operates a demonstration project, completed last fall, that uses sun’s energy instead of natural gas to produce steam. … Read More »

We were wondering where Apple and Bloom Energy were planning on getting all that biogas to run the large fuel cell farm at Apple’s North Carolina data center. According to a filing with FERC, Apple will get the biogas from landfills. Read More »

On Monday clean water startup NanoH20 announced that it’s closed $60 million in financing from chemical giant BASF, oil refiner Total, and Valley investors Khosla Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, and CalPERS Clean Energy & Technology Fund. Read More »

Last month I exclusively reported that Apple was buying fuel cells from Bloom Energy for its data center in Maiden, North Carolina. Well, on Monday morning Bloom Energy has finally confirmed that yes, it is supplying fuel cells for Apple’s data center, reports CNET. Read More »

Despite the series of withdrawals of greentech IPOs this month, solar rooftop installer SolarCity announced on Monday that it is planning for an IPO. Will it fare better than the other greentech IPO hopefuls this month? Read More »

On the occasion of the groundbreaking of Bloom Energy’s new east coast factory, the company gives us a rare video interview detailing its next-gen fuel cell tech, which has double the power in the same footprint, and is 20 percent more efficient than its older tech. Read More »

India is struggling to add more electricity capacity for the country’s rapidly growing economy, but the domestic coal industry is an absolute mess. That situation means that India could possibly be one of the most high-growth solar markets in the world. Read More »

If a smartphone or tablet with glass that’s glare-free, repels liquids and is self-cleaning sounds appealing, you might want to start following MIT’s research. By adding layers on glass that are then selectively removed, microscopic cones are created and provide these desirable characteristics. Read More »

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