A lot of oil companies are dead set against bioplastics, according to Trellis Earth CEO Bill Collins. Since plastics are largely made out of petroleum, many of the oil companies that own bioplastic IP won’t bring the plant-based technology to market, Collins contends. And that creates an opportunity for the Portland, Ore.-based bioplastics startup. (Please [...]
Solar’s banner year on the stock market continued this week with thin-film solar cell manufacturer First Solar breaking the $200 barrier for the first time in its one-year stint on NASDAQ.First Solar (FSLR), which some have called the Google of solar, jumped more than 40 percent this week on the power of its third quarter [...]
Witness the jockeying between rival chipmakers Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) over whose chips are more energy-efficient, and it’s clear that power-saving chips are the future of the semiconductor industry. Intel is set to show off its latest line of 45-nanometer processors — code-named Penryn — on Monday. Its chip uses a new [...]
California filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday, seeking to force the agency to grant it a waiver so that it can enforce its own emissions standards. The Golden State plans to cut emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 — a 25 percent reduction from current levels — and 16 other states [...]
Wind energy company Iberdrola Renovables is slated to raise between $5.8 billion and $7.3 billion through its IPO on the Madrid Stock Exchange next month in what The Wall Street Journal calls “the world’s largest renewable-energy flotation.” Numbers like that are enough to make any energy investor pause, and the article concludes that demand for [...]
The nonprofit American Solar Energy Society (ASES) released a report today with high hopes for job growth in clean technologies. The report predicts that as many as one in four, or 40 million, American workers will be employed in the renewable energy and energy efficiency (RE&EE) industries by 2030.The 68-page report, whose full title is [...]
Wal-Mart’s Current and Former Green Guru Speak: TreeHugger interviews former Wal-Mart sustainability leader Andy Ruben, and the man that has replaced him Matt Kissler — TreeHugger.NYT’s Business of Green: If you have a chunk of time on your hands (the weekend?) read over the New York Time’s Business of Green special section with articles on [...]
Whether it is made using enzymes or thermochemicals, ethanol, the biofuel that has swiftly become a hot-button political issue, requires many steps to produce. And for each step of the process there are startups attempting to develop innovative technologies that bring down the cost of production.Mascoma, an ethanol producer backed by $39 million from a [...]
A Senate subcommittee has approved legislation to put in place a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide. The New York Times and AP have detailed writeups. The cap-and-trade system would attach a cost to carbon emissions, internalizing the great externality of fossil fuel energy production that is able to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere, [...]
Ballard has found a buyer. The nearly three-decades-old forefather of the fuel cell industry, Ballard Power Systems (BLDP), says it has agreed to sell its automotive fuel cell business to Daimler (DAI) and Ford (F). Earlier this week the Vancouver, B.C.-based hydrogen fuel cell developer confirmed it was shopping its auto fuel cell business [...]
