Green Consumer Habits in the Recession: American consumers, with their tendency to make green purchasing choices based on personal self-interest, have more in common with their counterparts in developing economies than one might ever have imagined. — Joel Makower’s Two Steps Forward Building the EV Ecosystem: […] Read more »
Chip equipment maker Applied Materials announced this afternoon that it is acquiring 7-year-old startup Advent Solar. Applied’s solar acquisition investments now total more than $1 billion, including $330 million for Italy’s Baccini and $483 million for Swiss solar wafer equipment company HCT Shaping Systems. But today’s […] Read more »
One year ago, two key trends dominated the solar industry: economic uncertainty and scarce credit. If solar companies were to survive, they needed to scramble to adapt their strategies to both. Today, the economy is more stable and credit is freer, and so the industry faces […] Read more »
{"source":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/tag\/solar\/page\/9\/wijax\/b959f4af7e82222223ac4cb50ea2d81d","varname":"wijax_b6e69ca4678496476d10bdab6140501a","title_element":"h2","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Ch2%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fh2%3E"}
Senate Panel Green Lights Climate Bill, Sans GOP: Sen. Barbara Boxer has moved the energy and climate bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee and onto the Senate floor, despite a Republican boycott of the debate. But that doesn’t get the bill any closer […] Read more »
Updated with additional comments from Ausra and First Solar: Ausra, the solar thermal startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures, said today it is selling its Carrizo Energy Solar Farm project, a proposed 177MW project still under development, to industry giant First Solar. Sale of […] Read more »
Fisker Automotive Picks EU Distributor: Plug-in hybrid car startup Fisker Automotive has picked a large distributor to sell its vehicles in Europe and is looking for similar deals in China. The European retailer will be announced tomorrow. — Reuters Ampulse Raises $8M: Ampulse Corp., which is […] Read more »
Jordan Hoffner will leave his position as head of content partnerships at YouTube to join Ben Silverman’s new content endeavor at IAC. The announcement was made yesterday at YouTube, and paidContent was the first to report it. Coming from NBC, Hoffner was an injection of big […] Read more »
“Inventing disruptive manufacturing innovations is every bit as hard as inventing new materials,” says Frank van Mierlo, President and co-founder of 1366 Technologies. Solar power, if it’s going to compete on cost with coal and other fossil fuels, needs both. It’s on that premise that 1366, […] Read more »
Welcome to the Technosphere: “Having mastered indoor ski slopes and mass desalination, Dubai just unveiled its massive Technosphere, a biological bubble oddly similar to Disney’s Epcot Center (or the Death Star), meant to simulate future climates and test sustainable technology.” — VentureBeat Winners and Losers of […] Read more »
Its looking like the solar industry may be heading back into a not-so-sunny period, at least as far as corporate earnings are concerned. First, SunPower indicated last week that its 2009 revenue would be weaker than many investors had expected, sparking a selloff that has since […] Read more »
{"source":"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/wijax\/a206c64880c8215b985ab24ebe90eafd","varname":"wijax_d269eebc26af5b39ec3c65bb7948e7ce","title_element":"h2","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Ch2%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fh2%3E"}
We’ve talked a lot on WWD recently about the tech-savvy of our clients, our site’s users, the public, and, well, everyone … except ourselves! We might like to think we know it all, and many of us spend innumerable hours reading, researching and learning so that […] Read more »
Here’s a quick note on my Toshiba NB205 netbook which is dual-booting Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 7 Ultimate. Now that the Toshiba fully supports Microsoft’s newest operating system, I plan to run a battery test on each operating system. I had hoped to do that […] Read more »
Skyline Solar wouldn’t seem to have the best timing. The startup, which makes concentrating photovoltaic systems, launched out of stealth mode in the midst of a solar shakeout. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup is finding the silver lining of the economic downturn: reduced demand in […] Read more »
Research In Motion today makes the next BlackBerry Bold version official. The Blackberry Bold 9700 runs OS 5.0, keeps the stunning 360 x 480 display, adds touch-sensitive trackpad and supports calls over Wi-Fi. Some folks have said this is the first BlackBerry with the Wi-Fi calling […] Read more »
Climate-Security Connection: National security fears loom large for politicians who might otherwise oppose carbon legislation. That’s why John Kerry, rather than Barbara Boxer, has become the face of the Senate climate bill and why environmentalists are hitching up with veterans groups. — TNR’s The Vine Redox […] Read more »
Solar thermal power company Solel Solar Systems has found an exit. Less than a year after Solel raised a gigantic $105 million investment from London-based firm Ecofin to help finance a plant in California’s Mojave Desert, Siemens has announced today that it is buying the Israeli […] Read more »
Green jobs have become a sort of mantra of late among the political left, with supporters looking to clean-energy sectors to produce companies hungry for new hires and help ease the pain of the economic downturn. Today research firm Clean Edge, known among other things for […] Read more »
GE is upping its stake in technologies designed to make and use electricity more efficiently. The company’s investment arm, GE Energy Financial Services, today announced it has invested in three startups: SolarEdge, which has developed electronics to monitor solar panels and maximize their production, Tendril, which […] Read more »
As we were recording our podcast this morning, Matt Miller said that the HTC Hero has him thinking about a Sprint plan. The only problem is that Matt lives in an area with limited Sprint coverage. The carrier does have a roaming agreement with Verizon Wireless, […] Read more »
EU Clean Energy Growth, Now Tracked Online: “The European Commission this week launched an open-access online tool to monitor the development of about a dozen low-carbon technologies in the trade bloc.” — NYT’s Green Inc. Chamber Credits/Blames Environmentalists for Resignations: Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue […] Read more »
It is the end of another week and that can only mean it is time to share my week at Mobile Tech Manor with you. It is by far my favorite time of week, no doubt that it always occurs on Friday plays a role. This […] Read more »
Solar panels are getting cheaper, and as prices decline, companies are looking for ways to reduce manufacturing costs to stay competitive. Here’s the latest innovation from Applied Materials: on Monday the chip and solar equipment maker announced two new technologies that it claims can reduce the […] Read more »
Web forms can be complicated or they can be easy. For a while now, FormSpring has been in the business of making it easier for those of us who might not have a programming background or the patience to take on the daunting task of coding […] Read more »
You know the viral “Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years“? Well, what if Noah took a 4-second video of himself instead? And what if everyone else did, too? That’s kind of the effect you get from the new Robo.to TV service, […] Read more »
Outright and Expensify, web apps that we’ve covered previously on WWD, are joining forces to make expenses management even simpler. As Jennifer reports over on GigaOM, bookkeeping app Outright today releases a beta version of the site that uses Expensify’s API, meaning that credit card expense […] Read more »
If California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, utilities in the state will get at least a third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020 — and they’ll have free reign to import it from out of the state. The move, which has been under […] Read more »
An idle 320-acre Ford Motor Co. plant, which during its 52 years of operation assembled 6.6 million Lincoln Continentals, Ford Thunderbirds and other vehicles before halting operations two years ago, is getting reincarnated as a renewable energy equipment manufacturing park. In a symbolic win for those […] Read more »
Toyota Details Plug-in Prius Range: Toyota says the Prius Plug-in Hybrid that it plans to unveil at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show will support an all-electric driving range of just over 12 miles at speeds of up to 62 MPH. For longer distances and higher speeds […] Read more »
Epic Fail: International climate talks taking place in Copenhagen this December are in danger of collapse as a result of the economic recession, complexity of the issues at hand, and “suspicion” between developed and developing countries. — Wall Street Journal Health Care Tactics Needed for Climate […] Read more »
UPDATED Solar startup Solyndra, which makes tube-shaped thin-film solar panels, already managed to break new ground this year — snagging the first loan guarantee under a long-delayed Department of Energy program. This morning, however, the groundbreaking is literal. Just up the freeway from its headquarters in […] Read more »
I am constantly analyzing the way I use mobile technology, and as a result, I often change the way I do things. I am in the fortunate position where I get exposed to lots of technology and that exposure keeps me looking at how I use […] Read more »
A dozen wind and solar projects have just snagged hefty grants from the Department of Energy — not enough to cover the entirety of their projects, but enough, the agency hopes, to get investors to pony up more capital. Among today’s big winners is Spain’s Iberdrola […] Read more »
You may have heard of Spotify, the European music streaming app whose mystique has only deepened due to its unavailability in the U.S. The Stockholm-based peer-to-peer song streaming service offers ad-supported and paid versions, with a large library of licensed tracks. Well, it seems Stockholm also […] Read more »
Start your satellite launchers, folks — the solar space race is on. The idea of capturing sunlight with satellite solar arrays in space and beaming electricity down to Earth has gained fresh legs in recent months, and this morning word comes from Japan that the technology […] Read more »
Most solar panels are strung together like Christmas tree lights, so that if one panel stops working, performs poorly or ends up in the shade, the whole string is affected. To address this problem, 2-year-old startup eIQ Energy came out of stealth mode Monday night and […] Read more »
Biofuels Go Bust: “The wave of biodiesel failures,” combined with the inability of Khosla-backed Cello Energy “to produce even a fraction of what it expected have spooked private investors, which could further delay technology breakthroughs and derail the government’s green energy objectives.” — Wall Street Journal […] Read more »
We’ve followed the travails of Nina Paley, whose beautiful, animated film, Sita Sings the Blues, was hamstrung by sticky copyright restrictions (more here). But Paley persevered and during a recent talk at the Workbook Project’s DIY DAYS in Philadelphia, she did what so many other web […] Read more »
New Life for Cadillac Converj?: General Motors’ plans for the Cadillac Converj, a concept for a luxury vehicle using the Voltec drive system deployed in the Chevy Volt, were shelved when some members of top management and the federal auto task force questioned the economics of […] Read more »
My obsession with portable solar energy continues — in the past I’ve written about Suntrica’s portable chargers, Reware’s Juice Bags and Noon Solar’s range of bags. Suntrica’s chargers, though difficult to purchase outside Finland, currently offer the most elegant and practical solution for cheap, mobile and […] Read more »
Pour enough cash into greentech startups and environmental efforts, and sooner or later a couple of your investments might cross paths — especially in a time when large-scale solar projects planned for the Mojave Desert are coming under fire from environmental groups concerned about desert species […] Read more »
Follow @gigaom for more stories like this.
You're subscribed to our newsletter. If you'd like, you can update your settings
