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Out of all of Google’s close to $1 billion in clean power projects, turning biomass into energy seems like the least relevant technology to Google’s core business. But Google has made a few small investments into biomass projects, including a hog waste to energy project. Read more »

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Three-wheeled electric-car startup Aptera has already delayed the launch of its car and has discussed restructuring and moving its manufacturing out of California. But it looks like the company is not completely down for the count: According to a filing, Aptera has raised $2.5 million in debt. Read more »

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A new $3 million NIST award could offer a significant boost for Austin, Tex.-based ActaCell, whose backers include Google.org, DFJ Mercury and Applied Ventures. The startup aims to scale up production of its novel nanocomposite material for lithium battery anodes by a factor of 1,000. Read more »

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An electric vehicle charging project led by one of the fathers of so-called vehicle-to-grid technology — the two-way flow of electrons between electric vehicle batteries and the power grid — could someday soon move from academia to the commercial world. Read more »

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“Aptera’s production and delivery will be tied directly to funding,” said Aptera Motors CEO Paul Wilbur in a release from the ultra high-efficiency vehicle startup late yesterday. That very mild assessment belies the reality that Aptera is peering across the Valley of Death, where many ventures […] Read more »

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Updated with additional info from ActaCell: Lithium-ion battery startup ActaCell has just added the state of Texas to its corral of high-profile backers. The state is providing a “pre-seed award” of $250,000 to ActaCell, according to a release from the Austin-based company this morning, and putting […] Read more »

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Electric car maker Aptera Motors has deep-pocketed friends — it’s raised more than $24 million from investors including Google.org, Idealab, The Beall Family Trust, The Simons Family, Esenjay Investments and David Gelbaum’s Quercus Trust. But Uncle Sam has so far declined to pony up the $75 […] Read more »

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While “the boring stuff,” — permitting and siting solar plants and transmission lines — might cause the biggest hurdles for Oakland, Calif.-based solar thermal startup BrightSource, the company doesn’t seem to have any trouble bringing in big backers. According to the New York Times, BrightSource will […] Read more »

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A growing number of automakers are readying plug-in vehicles for mass market rollouts within the next 3-5 years. Racing against the clock, some of the first major deployments of smart charging technology — software, networks and devices that can manage vehicle recharging to minimize strain on […] Read more »

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By relying on Twitter, new screencast tool Screenr has created a really simple option for recording and distributing short videos. Recording a screencast is as easy as logging in to your Twitter account and pressing the record button. From there, you can easily post the link […] Read more »

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With billions of dollars in government funds coming down the pipeline for advanced batteries courtesy of the stimulus package, and the auto industry gearing up to make its first real go at marketing plug-in vehicles for the masses, the race to build lithium-ion batteries for vehicles […] Read more »

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An issue near and dear to Silicon Valley — financing for high-risk clean energy projects in the midst of a recession — took center stage on Capitol Hill this morning, as the Senate Committee on Natural Resources delved into the nitty gritty of proposed changes to […] Read more »

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Lately, when Google.org has gotten involved with the workings of Capitol Hill, it has called for transparency and open standards, and promoted its PowerMeter tool. Today Dan Reicher, Google.org’s director of climate and energy initiatives, put another Google initiative — that of enhanced geothermal systems — […] Read more »

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“The dog finally caught the car” is how Dan Reicher, Google.org’s director of climate and energy initiatives put it today — with the dog being clean energy advocates, and the car being government funding for renewables. Now, according to Reicher, who spoke on a Ceres conference […] Read more »

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A study released today by a team of leading database experts, among them Structure 09 speaker Michael Stonebraker, has been generating buzz for its assertion that clustered SQL database management systems (DBMS) actually perform significantly better for most tasks than does cloud golden child MapReduce. But […] Read more »

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U.S. to Set Single MPG Standard for Cars, Trucks? Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate, says she and others in the White House back the idea of a universal fuel-efficiency standard aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. — Washington Post Growing the […] Read more »

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The U.S. has imported millions of barrels of oil every day for more than three decades — but the flow of dollars and fuel has fluctuated over time. How to illustrate such a massive amount of trade over time? With a new map from the Rocky […] Read more »

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Sling Launches Video Portal; hardware maker’s Sling.com features content from Warner Bros., Sony, MGM, CBS and more. (See our previous coverage.) Hulu Users Prefer Front-Loading Ads; 88 percent choose to watch a two-minute ad prior to the program in exchange for no ads during the content. […] Read more »

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Neither the blogosphere nor Web 2.0 social networking services provide the kind of intellectual community that drives innovation, according to Google.org‘s executive director, Larry Brilliant. As a result, there’s room for growth for companies that can find ways to foster productive intellectual exchange — and facilitate […] Read more »

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New numbers from comScore show that 6.5 million Americans watched mobile video in August. AT&T, which is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, was tops among providers, with 4.4 percent of subscribers accessing programmed or on-demand mobile video. Read more »

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Google.org continues to dole out the dough, on Monday awarding a $250,000 grant to the U.S. National Academies for a cooperative U.S.-Chinese study on renewable electricity. The 18-month transnational study has three goals: Assess the potential of utility-scale renewable energy in China and the U.S. Explore […] Read more »

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A bailout, a debate and a flurry of cleantech press releases could have had you distracted. Here are the important headlines from the week. Google, No. 2 Cleantech Venture Investor in Q3: Google has taken such an enthusiastic role in investing and promoting clean energy that […] Read more »

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Google’s gotten all steamed up on its quest to make renewable energy cheaper than coal and today has announced $10.25 million in investments in geothermal technologies. Specifically, the money is going towards a technology known as “enhanced geothermal systems,” an approach that doesn’t require existing steam […] Read more »

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Battery startup ActaCell wasn’t the only recipient of funding from Google.org’s RechargeIT program. Last night at the Plug-In 2008 conference, Google.org’s Director of Climate Change & Energy Initiatives, Dan Reicher, announced a $2.75 million investment in green vehicle startup Aptera Motors and ActaCell. (That’s $2.75 million […] Read more »

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Google has gone to Washington this week and teamed up with the Brookings Institute to host a conference called “Plug-in Electric Vehicles 2008: What Role for Washington?” At the show we grabbed some camera time with Google.org’s director for climate change and energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, […] Read more »

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Hey, you got your mobile phone in my TV! No, you got your TV in my mobile phone! You’re both right. The big wireless CTIA show is happening in Vegas right now, and there’s a ton of mobile video news coming out of it. NBC‘s Chief […] Read more »

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The exodus of senior management at Cisco Systems (CSCO) continues. Today, Chief Development Officer Charlie Giancarlo and the #2 man at Cisco resigned. He is joining buyout shop, Silver Lake Partners. He was amongst the trusted lieutenants of CEO John Chambers, but like many others before […] Read more »

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VC funding is flowing into the backbone of online games. Last week, Hummer Winblad put $4 million into game billing service Aria Systems; this week, Benchmark is investing $7.8 million into Vivox, the official VoIP solution provider for Linden Lab’s Second Life and CCP’s sci-fi Eve […] Read more »

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Is it possible the AirPort Extreme base station isn’t catching all the malicious traffic bound for my home network? I just opened Console to check on an issue I was having with lookupd, but I was distracted when the ipfw.log firewall log file popped up with […] Read more »

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The original Toshiba R500 announcement hinted at an SSD option in the future, and it looks like the future is now. The lightweight 12.1-inch notebook with LED backlit screen is now available with a flash-based drive and not just a skimpy 32 GB unit: Toshiba went […] Read more »

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Perry Reed is back with Tablet PC Show #37 on TPN and it is a good show worth a listen.  Perry details the trials and tribulations of buying a used Tablet PC secondhand (like eBay) and tells his story of what hoops he had to jump […] Read more »

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Update: A few things are a constant in life – taxes, death, broken hearts and of course Microsoft waking from some kinda slumber, finding an upstart to hate and then crushing them. The IE7 drama that is currently being played out today should be dubbed The […] Read more »

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