Opinion: Why Venture Capital Needs to Back More “Now” Innovations: The current pace of progress won’t help us reach the emission reduction levels needed to avoid the serious climate change impacts forecast for 2050. The solution? Pump as much venture capital into “Now” innovations as we do into new technology.EcoFactor: Finally a Smart Way to [...]
Facebook’s 300 million users, logging 8 billion minutes per day on the site, leave the social network with a massive — and growing — appetite for data center real estate, and energy bills to match. According to Richard Miller at Data Center Knowledge, Facebook has just leased more data center space at Fortune Data Centers’ [...]
Chip equipment maker Applied Materials announced this afternoon that it is acquiring 7-year-old startup Advent Solar. Applied’s solar acquisition investments now total more than $1 billion, including $330 million for Italy’s Baccini and $483 million for Swiss solar wafer equipment company HCT Shaping Systems. But today’s announcement probably doesn’t represent a big uptick in total [...]
The smart grid rollout is gaining momentum, spurred recently by the announcement of $3.4 billion in stimulus funding for 100 U.S. utilities and cities. Swiss meter maker Landis+Gyr has already benefited from this smart grid activity, but the firm has still grander ambitions and announced yesterday that it raised $100 million from existing private investors to [...]
About 16 miles down the turnpike in Delaware from the old General Motors where startup Fisker Automotive plans to build an upcoming plug-in hybrid vehicle, Elon Musk, CEO of rival Tesla Motors, yesterday told an audience at the University of Delaware (and more joining via Second Life) that he has “some reservations about the feasibility [...]
One thing is sure: The hybrid, tandem-seat 3-wheeler in the works at Oregon-based startup Green Lite Motors is no Prius. Less certain is whether there’s a market for the 4-feet-by-8-feet vehicle, which features “smart standup” technology that Green Lite President and CEO Tim Miller says will let the vehicle lean smoothly into turns and automatically [...]
One year ago, two key trends dominated the solar industry: economic uncertainty and scarce credit. If solar companies were to survive, they needed to scramble to adapt their strategies to both. Today, the economy is more stable and credit is freer, and so the industry faces two different trends. The first — a supply glut [...]
Updated with clarification and additional information about the utilities’ stimulus funding: Two major California utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison — were noticeably absent from the $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus grants announced last week, despite both being widely recognized as leaders in the adoption of technologies to upgrade their [...]
Senate Panel Green Lights Climate Bill, Sans GOP: Sen. Barbara Boxer has moved the energy and climate bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee and onto the Senate floor, despite a Republican boycott of the debate. But that doesn’t get the bill any closer to garnering 60 votes. — WSJ’s Environmental CapitalSmart, Sure [...]
The rate of innovation in clean tech, next-generation transportation, green products and sustainable business initiatives has never been higher. This year, nearly $4 billion in venture capital investment has been poured into green innovation, making it the most active sector of VC investment today. Pushing these new technologies into the market will most [...]
The White House wants to see the home energy retrofit market surge, and a new report announced today predicts a growing appetite for energy-efficient heaters, air conditioners and roofing materials, part of a larger trend in the growth of green home renovations. Overall, the U.S. home energy retrofit market will grow about 15 percent per [...]
Energy baron T. Boone Pickens wants to see delivery trucks and just about any other vehicle that “returns to the ‘barn’ each night” running on natural gas. A relative newcomer to the U.S. market, Electric Vehicles International, has just moved to Stockton, Calif., from its former Toluca, Mexico, headquarters and office in Texas (T. Boone’s [...]
It’s no secret that the French government wants to get homegrown electric cars zipping along the country’s roads — or that the Renault-Nissan Alliance wants to dominate the market for those cars not only in France, but also worldwide. The latest move in those two efforts comes today with the announcement that Renault and Nissan [...]
Tendril Networks, which makes energy-management technology for consumers and utilities, is partnering with an unnamed “major computer game manufacturer” to build a new computer game whose main character, an “eco-warrior,” will gain power as users reduce their energy consumption in their homes. Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck, who hinted at the partnership during a panel discussion [...]
