Solar startup Alta Devices says its achieved a new efficiency for its solar cells developed for mobile gadget makers. In a difficult year solar companies are heads down focused on boosting the efficiency of solar cells. Read more »
A young battery startup called Imprint Energy has designed a new type of battery that uses zinc and can be screen printed. It’s innovation could enable entirely new types of wearable electronics. Read more »
Alta Devices has spent the past year courting the military with its highly efficient solar cells, which could go into mobile chargers to help lighten a soldier’s pack. Read more »
What most people don’t realize is that a chunk of the crude oil that goes into an oil refinery doesn’t end up anywhere near a car’s fuel tank. It ends up making chemicals. Read more »
Solar startup Alta Devices, backed by investors such as Kleiner and Dow Chemical, gives us a tour of its new pad in Silicon Valley where it’s setting up a pilot production line to make gallium-arsenide solar cells. Read more »
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 »
Four-year-old OPX Biotechnologies, which uses genomics to make biofuel production more efficient and economic, is in the process of raising a $45 million round, and has closed on $37 million of that funding, according to a filing. Read more »
Konarka Technologies wants to see its solar material lining building’s windows everywhere, but finding customers in that market appears as difficult as convincing the Koch brothers that climate change is real. Read more »
Algae could land on the Nasdaq some time this year. Late Friday algae company Solazyme filed for an IPO of up to $100 million. The move follows the company’s announcement that it had struck a deal with Dow Chemical to make a algae-based fluid for transformers. Read more »
There’s a whole lotta stuff to make out of algae beyond the oft-discussed algae fuel. The latest is an algae-based insulation fluid to bathe transformers, courtesy of a partnership between Dow Chemical and algae startup Solazyme. Read more »
After years of talking about flexible, light-weight solar thin film material that can drape over roofs, manufacturers are finally starting to deliver. SoloPower is announcing on Tuesday that its first flexible solar panel has gotten UL certification, which is required for installation in many U.S. regions. Read more »
Global Solar on Tuesday unveiled its new flexible solar panel that can be integrated into roofing membranes. The idea is that buildings and roofs can be built with the solar materials weaved right into them, lowering the cost and the time of the solar installation. Read more »
Algenol Biofuels, with its just-announced plans to build an algae fuel demo plant in partnership with Dow Chemical, isn’t the only startup taking the demise of a well-funded algae fuel company — GreenFuel Technologies — in stride. Today 3-year-old Solix Biofuels, which has some similarities with […] Read more »
The demise of a well-funded algae fuel company earlier this year doesn’t seem to be deterring startups, or oil and plastics companies, from working on new algae fuel tech. This morning Algenol Biofuels, a Naples, Fla.-based company that uses carbon dioxide from power plants to grow […] Read more »
How does a company like Dow Chemical, with a reputation attached to chemicals like napalm and DBCP (which made workers sterile), find itself in the green biz? Well according to Neil Hawkins, the company’s VP of sustainability, it’s by no means an act of philanthropy. Hawkins, […] Read more »
