Cleantech

The story of Delhi’s natural gas vehicles

The Indian city Delhi has one of the largest compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicle fleets in the world. Walking around the streets of Delhi you can see buses and three-wheeled motorized rickshaws that run on CNG all around you. When did this all happen?

The 4 myths of selling a greentech company

Amidst a lot of the doom and gloom at a clean power financing conference this week, there was a bright spot for entrepreneurs and investors building: mergers and acquisitions have been good in 2011. Here are some myths and tips for selling a greentech firm:

The cleantech graveyard to start filling up

Silicon Valley’s so-called undertaker, Sherwood Partners, which specializes in shutting down startups, sees a major fallout coming for cleantech, according to an interview with PeHub. If the IPO window has really slammed shut for much of 2011, that prediction could come true.

G2x Hands On: Fastest Android Phone Yet?

I’ve been playing with a G2x, the first dual-core smartphone for T-Mobile, over the last few days and this phone simply flies! I’ll have a full review soon, but for now, here’s an overview of the device along with demos of the performance, 1080p video playback and gaming.

First Look at Acer’s $449 Honeycomb Tablet

Fresh out of the box is the Acer Iconia Tab A500, a Wi-Fi Google Honeycomb tablet. See how it compares to the iPad 2 in terms of size and ports. Plus I test the microSD card slot – but you have to watch the video to see how I carry memory expansion cards around.

Molycorp Shares Surge on European Acquisition

I didn’t think it was possible for the shares of rare earth mining company Molycorp to go much higher. But this morning, on news that Molycorp plans to buy 90 percent of European rare earth mining company AS Silmet, shares in Molycorp are surging.

For Greener Data Centers, Give Servers an Oil Bath

Dunking servers in a bath of oil sounds like the fastest way to break some very expensive hardware, but not for startup Green Revolution Cooling, which builds energy efficient liquid-cooled servers. Its first customer, collocation firm Midas Networks, will implement the technology later this year.

Quarterly Wrap-up

Cleantech Market Overview, Q1 2010

In the midst of an uncertain emergence from the worst global recession since the 1930s, clean technology was stronger than ever in the first quarter of 2010. Venture investment in the clean technology sector racked up its strongest first quarter of all time, according to preliminary reports from the Cleantech Group and Deloitte, with $1.9 billion invested, up 29 percent from the previous quarter and a whopping 83 percent improvement from the doldrums of first quarter 2009. In this report, we take a look at the big market events, financial trends and shifts over the last three months, with an eye on what second quarter may bring.

How Broadband Can Be the Backbone for a Green Economy

Networked digital technology can lead to energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions. That’s the underlying notion behind two sources this week, which are lauding broadband as the backbone for creating a green economy, and calling for more federal incentives to help boost broadband infrastructure.

Report

Cleantech Financing Trends: 2010 and Beyond

Clean technology — which accounted for the largest share of venture capital investment in the second half of 2009 — has fared better than many other sectors in the recession. And perhaps more than any other industry, cleantech has the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to thank. The act, better known as the stimulus, set aside billions for green technologies and projects and brought attention to the goal of creating green jobs. Despite the positive impact of the economy’s negative impacts are not to be understated. The recession has shuffled the deck for clean technologies — strengthening some companies’ hands while weakening others’ — and spurred new thinking about how to make progress, even when traditional financing is harder to come by. It’s not yet clear who the winners and losers will be, and whether the lessons learned during this time will leave the industry, as a whole, better or worse off. But it’s obvious that big changes are happening, and it’s become increasingly important to understand the new sources of capital — and the new challenges in raising money from traditional sources — for companies and technologies to succeed. Based on the most recent available data on venture capital investment, angel investment, private equity, project finance and federal stimulus funding, as well as in-depth interviews with dozens of sector experts, this report looks at what the year ahead holds for cleantech companies at all stages of their development.

Build It Green’s Next Step: Apartment Retrofits

U.S. green building rating systems have so far largely failed to address renovations of existing homes, in particular so-called multifamily dwellings like…

NxtGen Raises $15.4M to Clean Diesel Engines

Burnaby, British Columbia-based startup NxtGen Emission Controls said today it has raised $15.4 million to commercialize its first products for retrofitting diesel engines, which they say reduce emissions and fuel consumption.

Google to Soon Start Investing In Green Cars

[qi:_earth2tech]The Earth2Tech Team grabbed some camera time with Google.org’s director for climate change and energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, at Google’s conference in…

Revver CEO Starr Steps Back

Revver, which has seen the departure of many of its prominent founders, employees, and content producers, tonight announced its final remaining founder,…

GoFish Goes Public

Who says video-sharing sites can’t go public? GoFish (which has reshaped itself as destination instead of a search engine these days) said…

ISync Out of Sync

I have been trying to sync Nokia 6620 with my iCal and not much success. It seems the support on iSync is…

In defense of the cable guys

Yesterday, I did a quick summation of a report from ABI research on how broadband gateways were good for DSL guys. Well…