The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
Developers of renewable-energy projects frequently spend more time obtaining permits than the actual projects. Such delays — often unanticipated — pose serious financial risks. But several key steps will help developers navigate successfully through the thicket of nonuniform regulations, jurisdictions, and lawsuits that await them. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Data centers consume around 1.5 percent of total electricity demand, a figure that’s expected to increase significantly. To cut power and costs tech titans like Google, Apple, and Facebook are cutting electricity use by greening their data centers. But do energy-efficiency gains justify huge capital outlays? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Changes in the power market are rippling through the Internet industry, altering both the location of data centers and their sources of power. There are many factors in picking a data center location beyond the geographic location, such as how to procure energy and green-energy models. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
While wind power is one of the cheapest forms of clean power, it’s also one of the most fickle, and to combat that problem, utilities are experimenting with energy storage, and in particular batteries. Read more »
A new report out of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Labs says that the $9 billion clean power cash grant program (formally called the 1603 grant program), which expired at the end of 2011, was actually working and creating jobs and economic output. Read more »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Royal Dutch Shell CEO, Peter Voser, says energy efficiency technology is a must-have to help feed a world with a growing appetite for energy, but the same can’t be say for alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. Read more »
In the telecom and Internet worlds, it’s standard to re-route data over different lines when one path is overloaded. But not so much, when it comes to the power grid. However, a newly-emerged startup called Varentec, backed by Khosla Ventures, is looking to change all that. Read more »
While we take a stable electrical grid for granted in the developed world, that’s often not a certainty in the developing world, which can make running a business quite difficult. Airtel Nigeria has complained that 70 percent of its wireless downtime results from power supply issues. Read more »
eMeter’s Chris King explains that like any disruptive technology, the growing flocks of wind turbines and expanding acres of solar-equipped rooftops around the world are causing temporary growing pains for the energy industry. Good thing there are also solutions. Read more »
This weekend in the final leg of my trip to India with Geeks on a Plane, we stopped by GE’s research center in Bangalore. While GE works on a variety of technology at the center, I focused on the energy research that GE is conducting there. Read more »
If we adopt solar and wind as major components of our energy infrastructure, we have to solve the energy storage problem in a big way. Here, we will take a peek at pumped hydro and evaluate what it can do for us. Read more »
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 »
Facebook officially announced the data center that it’s building in the chilly climate of Lulea, Sweden, and it’s going to be powered “primarily from renewables.” No, not solar or wind but hydropower (water and dams), which is still the cheapest kind of clean power. Read more »
Is Oregon the next promised land for clean technology? The Beaver State has, in recent years, has been trying to position itself as a major player with regards to support for green energy, electric vehicle development and more. Read more »
The California Energy Commission on Wednesday filed a complaint against a wind turbine maker, contending that the company has exaggerated the performance of its equipment and caused the commission to overpay in rebates. Read more »
Aquion Energy, which is developing a low-cost battery for the power grid made from sodium and water, has closed $20 million of a planned $30 million round and has brought on investor Foundation Capital in addition to existing investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Read more »
The common thread in greentech is: China. The country, which has been the world’s key growth engine for clean energy and green technology over the past few years, has begun to see some weakness, and that’s causing ripple effects through the global green economy. Read more »
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 »
Startup EnerVault is getting closer to commercializing its flow battery, which uses large liquid tanks of chemicals to store energy. The Silicon Valley company will be building a demonstration project next year to help launch the technology into the market in 2013. Read more »
After a week of announcing five loan guarantees for solar projects, the Department of Energy is turning the spotlight on wind energy, on Tuesday, announcing the backing of a $135.76 million loan for a wind farm in New Hampshire. Read more »
The East Coast offshore wind farm backbone that made headlines when Google announced it had become an investor, has now passed a key regulatory hurdle, though there are many more hurdles ahead. Read more »
Google announced that it has made its second deal via its subsidiary Google Energy, and the search engine giant plans to buy 100 MW of power from a wind farm that’s under construction in Oklahoma. Read more »
Is the greentech industry headed for a breakout year or is it retrenching for hard times to come? The first three months of 2011 provided evidence that could support both assertions, with a big rise in venture capital investment and a big drop-off in global energy financing. Solar power remained the largest green technology sector in terms of venture capital investment, while in the world of electric vehicles, GM’s Chevy Volt hybrid and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf — the first two mainstream plug-in vehicles — hit the showroom floors in significant numbers. Meanwhile the smart grid sector’s relative dearth of VC investment was more than made up for by the massive round of acquisitions. Companies mentioned in this report include NRG Energy, Microsoft, Silver Spring Networks, Tesla and BrightSource Energy. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google’s investments in clean power are now rivaling that of stand alone clean energy investors. The search engine giant has invested $100 million in the world’s largest wind farm under construction in Oregon. With this investment, Google has put more than $350 million into clean power. Read more »
Global clean energy investment fell to $31.1 billion in the first three months of this year, its lowest quarterly total in two years, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported Friday. That contrasts with an uptick in greentech venture capital investing in Q1. Read more »
Battery startup Xtreme Power just landed its biggest grid energy storage deal yet, a 36-megawatt battery for Duke Energy. Could its secretive, solid-state energy storage technology challenge sodium sulfur and lithium ion for reigning grid champion? Read more »
California’s new Renewable Auction Mechanism (RAM) represents an important new move for the state into a feed-in tariff model for solar, wind and other renewable power — but with some critical twists. What are the advantages, and the potential drawbacks, of this reverse auction FiT model? ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Energy Secretary Steven Chu stopped by Google headquarters on Friday to talk about green technology. He would like China to invest in America’s green future, not own it. To challenge China’s growing lead, the U.S. may have to boost its support of homegrown technologies. Read more »
