Earth2Tech Week in Review

Will the Smart Grid Be Made of Dumb Pipes?: Utility executives at the Clean Energy Venture Summit in Austin, Tex. this week debated whether utilities should focus on adding value-added services on top of the power network (like phone companies have rushed to do on their data networks), or remain content to provide the basic energy pipes.

Google SketchUp Plus Energy Data = Open Source Green Building (Cool!): Green building geeks now have a more powerful tool for developing next-gen building designs with minimal environmental impact: an updated plug-in from the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab for Google SketchUp.

The 15 Hottest Hubs for Cleantech Jobs and What They Pay: Report: A new report from Clean Edge finds “the cleantech revolution is a highly dispersed phenomenon” and that no single place or region will control any one cleantech sector, but some “centers of expertise” will emerge with more cleantech job activity.

How “Smart Grid” Can Be A Dirty Word, Plus 5 Alternatives: Some in the utility industry see the term “smart grid” as suggesting that the current power grid is dumb, which some find insulting. If you’re a newcomer trying to sell into that business, you might consider alternatives in your initial meetings.

Clean Energy Investing Goes Mainstream, Soros Pledges $1 Billion: Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros told a conference in Copenhagen that he plans to invest more than $1 billion of his own money into clean energy technology, joining a growing list of big wig celebrity investors that haven’t traditionally been connected to cleantech.

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