While new fuel sources are being sought out amid the amber waves of grain, a less-glamorous but equally lucrative search is taking place — in decomposing landfills. Landfills are carbon-rich methane factories, and waste-to-energy systems have, for years, been used to capture that carbon. Energy Investors Funds and Enpower Corp. said yesterday that they’ve [...]

  The Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) role is one of our favorite classic venture jobs: Get on a venture firm’s payroll and struggle for a good nine months to try to build a startup in which your firm can invest. The Department of Energy wants to mine the EIR magic for themselves and announced an EIR program this [...]

  Chinese solar cell maker Suntech Power Holdings (STP) officially opened its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco this week — we like that because the office is not too far from Earth2Tech, GigaOM headquarters. SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, never one to shy away from green-themed media attention, held a press conference with Suntech CEO Dr. Zhengrong [...]

  Google Funds Algae In Space: Google has committed $3 million to support 15 researchers at NASA/Ames who are working on capturing methane emitted by algae to use as energy source — San Jose Mercury News.Plug-In Prius On It’s Way?: Popular Mechanics takes a ride in a plug-in Prius prototype and says, “Toyota may be the [...]

  While BP is renewing its focus on non-renewable resources, the company has posted a 29 percent drop in third-quarter net income, to $4.4 billion from $6.23 billion in the same period last year. Citing problems in its U.S. refineries, oil and gas production in the latest three-month period fell to 3.65 million from 3.8 million [...]

  The surge of venture investments in cleantech has been surprising some industry watchers — the total figure climbed 80 percent in the third quarter to $844 million, according to a recent MoneyTree report. But one look at GE’s investments in clean technology R&D, and suddenly those venture numbers don’t seem all that staggering.GE said this [...]

  Want to be friends with Academy Award-winning movie star Tom Hanks? You could just friend him on MySpace. Or you could buy one of the electric retrofitted cars he’s touting on his profile. Hanks, in a low-budget video series distributed through MySpace (NWS), is promoting the eBox, the latest offering from Los [...]

  Cleantech is all about top scientists making breakthroughs, high-up execs greening business strategies, and venture capitalist funding the next greatest greenest thing. But a huge amount of economic growth lies at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum as well. With the creation of a clean energy economy, huge numbersof “green-collar jobs” [...]

  Organized by the Council of Science Editors, 235 scientific journals from 37 countries around the world published articles on poverty and human development yesterday. We thought we’d do our part here at Earth2Tech and talk about five companies working on projects that could form part of the green solution for developing countries outside of North [...]

  When a company is developing battery technology for eco-chic plug-in hybrid vehicles (including work on converted plug-in Priuses), it’s not hard to become a well-known name in the cleantech industry. And being high-profile is helpful when it comes to raising funding — this afternoon the six-year-old Watertown Mass.-based company A123Systems said it’s raised another round [...]