The state of cleantech venture capital, part 2: The investors
There’s a widespread perception that cleantech venture capital must be tanking compared with VC overall. That perception is wrong. Read more »
Why Cyber Monday is greener than Black Friday
In addition to Cyber Monday being a lot more convenient than Black Friday, it turns out that shopping online can be a lot greener than shopping in stores. Read more »
The state of cleantech venture capital, part 1: The money
Plenty of late-stage financing will be available for cleantech start-ups over the next few years, but seed/Series A money is another matter. Read more »
Google shuts down its initiative to reduce the cost of clean power
Google is officially shutting down its own in-house research initiative and equity investing focus on lowering the cost of clean power, called Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, or RE
Cleantech Open announces winners
Twenty-one cleantech startups from across the U.S. competed for a grand prize of $250,000 in investment and services at this year’s Cleantech Open Business Competition. And the winners are . . . Read more »
Subscriber Content
Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Fisker won’t ramp up production of Karma until Q2 2012
Electric vehicle startup Fisker Automotive has dramatically scaled back production plans of its first car, the Karma, in the fourth quarter of 2011, and it won’t ramp up to full production until the second quarter of 2012. Read more »
Groupon’s $12.6B valuation compared to greentech (it’s sad)
Looks like Groupon will go public on Friday morning at $20 per share, giving it a valuation of $12.6 billion for its online coupon business. Let’s compare it to some of the greentech startups and big energy firms and try not to get disturbed. Read more »
Cleantech VC investing in Q3 is up, but still focused on follow-ons
Venture capital investing in cleantech companies was up slightly in the third quarter of 2011, but still continues to focus on large follow-on rounds as investors’ more capital-intensive companies are maturing and need more capital to scale up, and in some cases, reach a commercial stage. Read more »
5 bets the DOE made that are better than Solyndra
It’s been over a month since the Solyndra news came out, but it’s still dominating. Because it just won’t go away, here’s my top five list of projects that the DOE also backed with loan guarantees and that are showing some early signs of success. Read more »
Steve Westly: Pretty good at predicting cleantech
Investors, including Steve Westly, cautioned the White House against visiting Solyndra’s factory, because the company seemed risky, according to emails. Read more »
Chinese cleantech firms under spotlight for financial disclosure troubles
U.S-listed Chinese public companies are facing growing scrutiny for their accounting practices, and that investigation has extended to cleantech businesses as well. The latest example comes from A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese wind turbine maker. Read more »
Cleantech’s total public market cap is the same as Pfizer
The combined market cap for publicly-listed cleantech companies is about $142 billion today, or roughly about the same as pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, says UBS Securities’ David Dolezal. It’s also a decrease of about two thirds from a market cap of $475 billion back in 2007. Read more »
‘Zero emissions’ wholesale data center coming to Iceland
Colt, the British data center specialist, is building what it and Verne Global call the world’s first “zero emissions” data center slated to come online in four months. Located on a NATO base in Iceland, it will run solely on geothermal and hydroelectric power. Read more »
What the clean power industry needs: more lobbying
Is the clean power industry not doing enough to win political support in the nation’s capital? While Solyndra has gotten flack for its significant lobbying efforts, the reality is that the industry should do more, not less. Read more »
Don’t be a solar PV efficiency snob
Physics professor Tom Murphy fights solar PV snobbery with his explanation of why 15 percent efficiency rates for solar panels is actually quite remarkable and not the real barrier to clean power. Read more »
An exercise in galactic-scale energy
Follow physics professor Tom Murphy on an exercise in galactic energy that points out the absurdity that results from the assumption that we can continue growing our consumption of energy forever. Read more »
The dark side of solar and compensation tactics
On Thursday JinkoSolar issued a lengthy explanation of an environmental controversy surrounding its solar cell factory in China that led to a massive protest and plummeting share prices. The disclosure raises questions about what and how JinkoSolar should have disclosed this as a public company. Read more »
Today in Green IT: Cleantech meet mobile
Cleantech, meet mobile. The intersection between these two industries has grown over the past twelve months as companies increasingly look to use smartphones as a platform to enable their services, according to a new report from our GigaOM Pro Green IT analyst Adam Lesser. Read more »
How clean is your cloud, really?
Clean is as clean does when it comes to cloud computing and green data centers. Much has been said about how cloud computing boosts energy efficiency as data centers move off old tech and into the cloud. But there’s more to being green than energy use. Read more »
The Surge accelerator: an incubator for energy and IT
A new Y Combinator–style incubator that will focus solely on the intersection of energy and information technology is launching in Houston, the founder of the group, Kirk Brand Coburn, told me in an exclusive interview. Read more »
Green building firm Project Frog raises $22M from GE, VCs
Despite the seemingly downward short-term trend for cleantech investing, corporations and investors continue to back the green building sector. On Wednesday San Francisco–based energy-efficient building company Project Frog announced that it has raised $22 million from GE and a group of investors. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
Solar technology startup Solyndra, which has raised more than $1.5 billion in private and government funds, has suspended manufacturing and laid off 1,100 full-time and temporary employees. We conducted a survey and asked GigaOM readers for their views on the fallout of Solyndra’s decision to file for bankruptcy and what the future holds for the company. This research examines the survey’s results. It also includes an analysis of Solyndra’s struggles over the past two years to move into mass production, and to do it amidst difficult and volatile economic conditions. Companies mentioned in this report include Evergreen Solar, First Solar and SpectraWatt. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How the military and solar industry can work together
As energy use by the U.S. military grows — the Department of Defense (DoD) uses 300,000 barrels of oil every day — the conversation about how the military can consume cleaner power continues to grow, too. One potentially good fit could be concentrating solar photovoltaic technology. Read more »
Survey: Weigh in on the impact of Solyndra’s bankruptcy
This week Solyndra announced plans to file for bankruptcy and said it will lay off 1,100 employees. How will the event impact the larger cleantech industry, greentech startup funding and the solar sector as a whole? We ask you to weigh in. Read more »
The cleantech graveyard to start filling up
Silicon Valley’s so-called undertaker, Sherwood Partners, which specializes in shutting down startups, sees a major fallout coming for cleantech, according to an interview with PeHub. If the IPO window has really slammed shut for much of 2011, that prediction could come true. Read more »
No DOE loan guarantee for KiOR, at least not this year
There will be no loan guarantee for recently public biofuel company KiOR, at least this year. According to correspondence with the SEC, KiOR put its application for 2011 on hold in May, with plans to roll it over to 2012 — assuming the program gets funded for 2012. Read more »
Algae company Solazyme reports revenue & losses up
Algae oil company Solazyme, which went public in May of this year, reported both revenue and losses up for the second quarter of the year. At the same time, the company said it expects to produce 500,000 metric tons of algae oil by 2015. Read more »
A growing market for cleantech: data centers
Data centers might not be the energy hogs anticipated in 2010, but they’re still offering a growing market for both energy efficiency technology and clean power. Read more »
A123 Systems hooks into China’s grid
Only 72 percent of China’s wind-power sources are connected to its grid — meaning there’s a good deal of wind turbines that are spinning that aren’t providing usable clean power. Battery maker A123 Systems hopes its first deal in China can help with that problem. Read more »
5 smart grid startups to watch via the Cleantech Open
The network of the smart grid is taking its sweet time to get deployed, but we still need smart applications to run over these networks once they are fully installed. Here are five smart-grid startups to watch via the Cleantech Open. Read more »
Rant: Green-marketed phones are total BS
Trying to use green marketing to sell cell phones is a misplaced effort by the phone companies. There, I said it. I’m not even going to do a light-hearted lead into the thesis of this post. Read more »
The clean economy employs more workers than fossil fuels
The green technology and clean power industries are currently employing more workers than their dirty fossil fuel peers. That’s according to a report released from the Brookings Institution, which has crunched the numbers of jobs created in the U.S. from cleantech. Read more »
Cleantech apocalypse? No, but it’s cyclical
The cries declaring a cleantech armageddon are coming keep on getting louder. But I don’t think cleantech is headed for a sharp crash. It’s been going through consolidation for some time now, and the cleantech sector is inherently cyclical and is heading into a down cycle. Read more »
How farmers are clean power pioneers
When it comes to adopting new technologies, particularly solar, farmers and owners of ag-related operations have often led the way. We list some recent projects that rely on agricultural producers to demonstrate new technologies. Read more »
Feds offer $105M loan guarantee for “Project Liberty” biofuel plant
Poet’s so-called “Project Liberty” biofuel plant, which will use corn waste instead of edible corn, is getting some support from the U.S. government. On Thursday, the Department of Energy announced it will offer Poet a $105 million loan guarantee to build out Project Liberty in Iowa. Read more »
What cell phones can teach us about energy efficiency
Cell phones can teach us a lot about energy efficiency. New energy technologies that have commonly been introduced first in cell phones are now being mimicked across other industries, leading to information technology and transportation that is more energy-efficient. Read more »
The tale of two IPOs: cleantech vs social media
While the greentech IPOs that have happened in the past year have fared decently, they’re no comparison to many of the public debuts in the works by social media companies. Zynga’s reported potential $2 billion raise could deliver five times Tesla’s combined IPO and follow-on offering. Read more »
Zynga, Groupon to the rescue for cleantech bets
The future of clean power and greener transportation is being carried by FarmVille and online coupons — at least in terms of venture capital portfolios. Read more »
How to keep the cloud from killing the planet
The cloud may have driven down the cost of bandwidth and computing instances dramatically, but engineers shouldn’t take this as carte blanche to be wasteful with resources, said Intel’s GM of high density computing, Jason Waxman, at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco on Thursday. Read more »
