The days of startups building custom-made, capital-intensive machines to produce next-gen energy products is over. Today’s energy entrepreneurs are using standard machines from sectors like the chip industry, the lithium ion battery industry and printing. Read more »
The world needs more crazy energy entrepreneurs, said Bill Gates. Well here’s five potentially disruptive but a little out there energy projects spotted at the ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
A well-funded startup spun out of Arizona State University called Fluidic Energy unveiled a glimpse of its zinc air batteries for one of the first times this week. The batteries are already being tested in developing countries where grid power is unreliable. Read more »
Tune in to a live discussion between Otherlab’s Saul Griffith, IDEO’s Dave Blakely and myself on why creating narratives and telling stories for early-stage energy technologies is important. The talk starts here at 1:30PM PST, 4:30PM EST (live streamed from Washington DC). Read more »
Following the close of a year which saw the politicization of clean energy technologies, the struggles of dozens of solar manufacturers and electric car companies, and a “cleantech cliff” for startup investing, the 2013 ARPA-E Summit could be a sober affair. Read more »
Looks like Google is resurrecting supporting energy innovation out of its philanthropic arm Google.org. The search engine giant has hired on the former director of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, which puts small grants into early stage energy breakthroughs. Read more »
A startup called Alveo Energy, with technology developed at Stanford University, is building an ultra low cost and long lasting battery that could help deliver breakthrough energy storage technology for the power grid. Read more »
The Department of Energy’s grant program ARPA-E has chosen 66 more projects to fund, from printed batteries, to smart grid analytics to a Valley battery startup. Here’s some I think are particularly interesting. Read more »
A Chicago startup is ready to commercialize an electric motor that presents an alternative to the conventional motors that require the use of rare earth materials. HEVT hopes to raise money to scale up production. Read more »
The U.S. government continues to give small grants to early stage next-generation battery technology in an effort to boost innovation in the U.S., and provide energy storage for electric cars and the power grid. Read more »
The Department of Energy’s high-risk, early stage program — ARPA-E — has announced a new project that will give $30 million in grants to companies, university labs and startups building the next-generation of natural gas vehicle technology. Read more »
As the 2012 election unfolds and debates about clean energy foment, looking back at the history of energy subsides tells us how the bulk of subsidies have gone to fossil fuels. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The kind of flat solar mirrors that BrightSource Energy is erecting in California’s Mojave Desert run 7.2 meters by 10.5 meters. The kind that Saul Griffith is working on stretches all 5 centimeter by 5 centimeter and sit on trackers that are no taller than a toothpick. Read more »
Investors and entrepreneurs don’t always connect via the standard VC pitch. According to Phil Giudice, the CEO of a battery startup called Liquid Metal Battery, his company found their most high profile investor, Bill Gates, through a more unusual way: the classroom. Read more »
Bill Gates told an audience of energy entrepreneurs, scientists and investors at the ARPA-E energy conference on Tuesday that “It’s crazy how little we’re funding energy.” Read more »
The third annual ARPA-E conference — created to highlight research and startups that have received mostly small grants from the Department of Energy — kicked off just outside of Washington DC on Monday. Here’s my photos of some of the next-gen energy tech from the show: Read more »
One of the key misplaced assumptions that Valley VCs made in cleantech boom times is that the rapid progress of Moore’s Law could be created for cleantech with a little bit of VC funding and Valley smarts. Read more »
MIT Tech Review’s annual list looking at 35 innovators under 35 always has gems for the energy sectors. This year’s list is no different and the publication highlights three under-the-radar entrepreneurs at startups including ultracapacitor company FastCAP, geothermal drilling startup Foro Energy and battery company Wuhe. Read more »
Fighting for funding is a perennial, bloody sport for just about every federal agency. But the budget funding cycle is seriously out of whack with the development cycle for clean energy, according to Arun Majumdar, director of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E). Read more »
Figuring out ways to convert solar power efficiently is attracting a lot of public and private dollars these days. Google-backed Transphorm is teaming up with another startup, Enphase Energy, to develop a device using a novel material with financial support from Department of Energy’s ARPA-E. Read more »
Electronics that can break out of their rigid boxes, and be embedded into stretchy, even wearable, materials — that’s the goal of startup mc10, which packages up semiconductors, like silicon, so they can bend, twist and wrap around other structures. Read more »
Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at MIT, aims to deliver a “lifesaver” for renewable energy in the form of a stable, low-cost, large-scale battery. Here are 15 questions with Sadoway on the future of liquid metal batteries. Read more »
At the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk says he bets that it could be capacitors — rather than batteries — that will deliver an important breakthrough for electric transportation, an interesting comment from a CEO whose products are based on lithium-ion batteries Read more »
Here’s a handful of photos of the most photogenic, early-stage green technology that was being displayed at the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Summit this week. Read more »
Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rocked it at the ARPA-E Summit on Tuesday with one of his best green-themed speeches that also received a standing ovation. Here’s the audio of the speech, for your listening pleasure. Read more »
Charismatic speakers, from DOE Chief Steven Chu, to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off the first official morning of the ARPA-E Summit — the Department of Energy’s high-risk, early stage grant program. But amidst all of the inspiring words budget cuts loomed large. Read more »
Early-stage, high-risk, and potentially game-changing — those are a few things all the companies that have been funded by the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program have in common. I’m at the ARPA-E Summit this week and here are 10 companies to watch for. Read more »
President Obama unveiled his proposed budget Monday that calls for boosting funding to the Department of Energy by nearly 12 percent. The spending plan would focus on research and deployment of technologies he’s championed repeatedly: renewable energy, electric cars, biofuel, energy efficiency and nuclear. Read more »
The DOE’s program to fund high-risk, early-stage, greentech projects is working, the DOE says this week. The indicator, says the DOE, is that private investors have invested a combined $100 million into at least 6 ARPA-E awardees. Here are the six ARPA-E graduates: Read more »
Can cleantech companies cut millions of dollars from their capital needs by retrofitting old chip equipment to turn out brand-new products? If the advantages are anything close to what AQT Solar and Planar Energy claim, it very well could be the start of a new trend. Read more »
