Given Tesla’s first electric car model won’t reach customers until next year, the hundreds of its eco-conscious sports car-loving (occasional celebrity) customers that have actually made it onto the waiting list are likely getting a bit antsy. And they probably wouldn’t like to watch the six or seven “million-dollar” crash tests that Tesla’s Roadster has [...]
Paul Dickerson, the COO of the federal government’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), says he has two goals: One, show industry and the venture capital worlds that his department is a friend to business – not isolated and bureaucratic, like government divisions tend to be. And two, educate the world that Americans [...]
There’s a lot of talk about how many jobs the cleantech revolution is going to create. If you think about all the various sectors — solar, biofuels, water, to name a few — one would think the number of jobs created would be in the millions. And if you’re an American, it’s important that [...]
Solar Thermal Trend: Ausra’s John O’Donnell leads us through the trend in utility-scale solar thermal plants — BusinessWeek.Grid Gear: Utilities are checking out battery options to beef up the power grid — MIT Tech Review.Power grid watchdog, we need power lines: The group that oversees North America’s power grid, the North American Electric Reliability Corp, [...]
There’s a lot of obvious costs of climate change — you know, like making the Earth uninhabitable. Some of the lesser known costs to industry can be quantified and the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Environmental Research put out a report recently looking into some of these economic effects. Here’s 5 economic losses to [...]
One day, the old-skool electricity grid will have the smart network capabilities of the Internet — distributed, self-healing, maybe even peer-to-peer. It’s a huge future business opportunity that’s prompting investors to put money into startups like GridPoint, which this morning said it closed a $48.5 million Series D round that was led by Goldman Sachs [...]
A Princeton professor is proposing that coal be combined with biomass to create what’s called synfuels — high-performance, low-emission jet fuel. Combined with a carbon capture and sequestration system, the process could produce “near-zero greenhouse gas emissions.” The announcement came as Richard Branson told a conference that Virgin would be test-flying jets with biofuels in [...]
Climate change means we’ll be facing more unpredictable weather — and if you’re in a weather-sensitive business like farming or owning a ski resort, unexpected weather can mean a significant loss of sales. San Francisco startup WeatherBill, founded by former Google (GOOG) exec David Friedberg, offers businesses financial protection against unexpected weather — basically weather [...]
Ztek to Bloom Energy, Stop Infringing: Fuel-cell company Ztek has accused competitor Bloom Energy of patent infringement, according to a Calif. government document reported by Greentech Media.Branson’s BioJetFuel: Richard Branson said Virgin Group wants to make biofuels at the beginning of the next decade and will test a jet plane on biofuel early next year [...]
When Bill Joy was hired by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Paul Kedrosky wondered if Joy would be a Bob Metcalfe (a high-profile person that moved to VC late and fits the job) or a Stewart Alsop (a high-profile person that moved to VC late and doesn’t fit the job). We’re not ready [...]
