Will huge returns on social media investments — like Groupon, LinkedIn or Pandora — help make up for underperforming greentech investments in a venture firm’s portfolio? If so, perhaps this gives firms time — and wiggle room — to keep up their cleantech investing. Read more »
Deploying information technology is supposed to be able to reduce 15 percent of global carbon emissions by 2020 through things like creating smarter grids, buildings and transportation. But some governments are doing better than others at supporting the use of IT to build low-carbon infrastructure. Read more »
Some of the best ideas on our network sometimes come from reader comments. In response to our piece last week on Why the LinkedIn IPO is Bad For Cleantech, commenter Bill Hewitt, I think hit a nerve with his suggestion: “Clean tech has gone beyond VC.” Read more »
Amidst all of the champagne cork-popping, and bubble talk in the wake of the LinkedIn IPO Thursday morning (high-five to Reid Hoffman) I’ll offer up this downer of an article: the LinkedIn IPO is bad for cleantech. Read more »
Khosla Ventures, the firm of influential venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, is raising a new $1.05 billion fund — Khosla Ventures IV — according to an SEC filing. The filing comes just a little over a year since the firm closed on $1.3 billion. Read more »
Greentech investor Steve Westly has been out there raising a new $175 million cleantech fund, and recently closed on the first $50 million. Particularly interesting is that Westly plans to have a special focus on green building technology for the new fund. Read more »
Nine-year-old energy-focused venture capital firm Braemar Energy Ventures is looking to raise $300 million for its latest fund, Braemar Energy Ventures III, according to an SEC filing. Read more »
Cleantech investing: it’s no longer for the everyday general venture capital firm. Mass High Tech digs into data about 10 venture firms that made five or more new cleantech deals between 2003 and 2008, and then completely pulled back from new cleantech investments after 2008. Read more »
Battery-powered energy storage provides an on-demand, predictable source of energy to power systems to keep them running optimally, and even to enable new projects, but the cost seems to be scaring some people away despite the high value the technology brings beyond mere stored energy. Read more »
How do we get consumers to use less energy and to use it smarter? State and local governments might be able to incentivize smart grid rollouts, but to ensure adoption, utilities will need to educate consumers and giving them the right tools, such as peak pricing. Read more »
The next big driver of cleantech innovation won’t come from the hardware side, Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures said at the Green:Net conference Thursday. The next big wave will be in the “CleanWeb,” which marries information technology and the social web with green initiatives. Read more »
The future of the power grid is combining clean energy together with the intelligence of the smart grid. But kickstarting that convergence requires some serious salesmanship to convince consumers of the benefit, as NRG Energy’s David Crane and Silver Spring Networks said at Green:Net. Read more »
If you want to change something, first you have to measure it, and when it comes to energy consumption and generation we don’t have the tools yet to do either. But as Saul Griffith said at Green:Net, we’re still in the dark ages for energy literacy. Read more »
Do you think companies like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon should clean up their acts and stop using coal? Are you into electric vehicles? Do you want to know what’s next in the clean energy market? Then tune into the live stream of GigaOM’s Green:Net conference. Read more »
Big money deals are back in style. Venture firms dropped nearly $5.9 billion on 736 deals during the first quarter of 2011. Fourteen companies got at least $50 million, while four drew more than $100 million – numbers not seen since the third quarter of 2001. Read more »
If there is a cleantech investing renaissance coming, I’d bet on the growing team at Silver Lake Kraftwerk to find it. According to Dan Primack at Fortune, Silver Lake has recruited former Draper Fisher Jurvetson cleantech VC Raj Atluru to join its new cleantech fund. Read more »
Global investments in renewable energy have risen dramatically over the last decade, but governments need to step up support for clean energy innovation. That’s one of the findings in a report out this morning from the International Energy Agency. Read more »
Venture capital spending on cleantech isn’t the only thing that’s up. According to a new report out from Ernst & Young, three-quarters of corporate investors surveyed said they plan to increase their budgets for cleantech investments between 2012 and 2014. Read more »
I didn’t think it was possible for the shares of rare earth mining company Molycorp to go much higher. But this morning, on news that Molycorp plans to buy 90 percent of European rare earth mining company AS Silmet, shares in Molycorp are surging. Read more »
Cleantech is losing its mojo to upstarts peddling coupons. These days, it’s not hard to find tech companies, investors and market analysts comparing cleantech to Groupon, which generated a lot of buzz when it turned down a reportedly $5-6 billion offer from Google late last year. Read more »
Trash king Waste Management has joined a $22 million investment in startup Agilyx, which has technology to turn plastic otherwise headed for the landfill into a synthetic crude oil. The garbage and recycling company has one of the more interesting investing strategies out there. Read more »
The growth of the cleantech industry may have started slowly, but it is surely happening. Silver Lake Kraftwerk Partners, Adam Grosser and Cathy Zoi, will speak for the first time publicly about the second wave of cleantech funding and growth at Green:Net 2011. Read more »
Entrepreneurs and investors have long believed water tech represents the next big market. ET Water Systems hopes to ride this wave and announced Monday that it had raised $2 million for a new irrigation control and management technology. Read more »
The heat and rays of the sun aren’t just being harnessed for electricity. An early stage startup called Thermata, backed by Bill Gross’ Idealab, is looking to build a business around solar-powered boilers that produce steam for industrial processes. Read more »
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Staff Scientist Venkat Srinivasan delves into what he thinks are the three laws of batteries that govern how batteries operate, plus he throws in a bonus one at the end. Read more »
Safer driving isn’t only better for your car and your personal well being, it can also lead to more fuel efficient driving. For this week’s episode of the Green Overdrive show we check in with GreenRoad, which helps companies drive more safely and fuel efficiently. Read more »
Intel has taken up a patriotic cause this year, paying special attention to promising U.S.-based companies. The company announced four software and chip companies that have collectively received over $30 million from its Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund, including an energy software maker. Read more »
China has historically been a tough market to crack for foreign companies, and cleantech companies, too, face a number of hurdles in that space. Here’s what you need to know to start doing green business in China, and how to make the right ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Green technology will soon be getting a player with a pedigree born out of one of the most successful gadgets of all time. Tony Fadell, one of the original developers of the iPod at Apple tells the New York Times that he will be leaving the […] Read more »
When private investment in cleantech fell last year, government stimulus programs more than made up the difference, according to estimates that the Cleantech Group released at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco this week. And no government is doing more to fill the gap than China’s. […] Read more »
