The software that 3-year-old startup EcoFactor has developed to intelligently manage connected thermostats is one of those game-changing technologies that makes you think: Wait, the industry doesn’t already do it that way? It’s just so obvious. EcoFactor, which is officially launching and announcing its first customer (Texas utility Oncor) this morning, has developed a service [...]

  “Inventing disruptive manufacturing innovations is every bit as hard as inventing new materials,” says Frank van Mierlo, President and co-founder of 1366 Technologies. Solar power, if it’s going to compete on cost with coal and other fossil fuels, needs both. It’s on that premise that 1366, a developer of new machines and processes that can [...]

  Building materials typically don’t arise as examples of high technology. In the green building sector, energy management systems and building-integrated renewable power generation have drawn much of the attention from tech-oriented innovators, with less activity around green building materials. But the authors of a new report on green building innovation from San Francisco, Calif.-based venture [...]

  Concentrating photovoltaic technologies, which magnify sunlight and direct it onto solar cells, hold potential to increase the efficiency of a solar-power system. But several analysts — including Jenny Chase, head of solar research at New Energy Finance — say that CPV is likely to be more expensive than conventional solar-panel systems, which have been rapidly [...]

  Waste Management, one of the country’s largest landfill operators, today is opening what it says it the world’s largest facility to convert landfill gas to liquefied natural gas (LNG). Once at full capacity, the $13.5 million facility, located at Waste Management’s landfill site near Livermore, Calif., will purify and liquefy up to 4 million gallons [...]

  Welcome to the Technosphere: “Having mastered indoor ski slopes and mass desalination, Dubai just unveiled its massive Technosphere, a biological bubble oddly similar to Disney’s Epcot Center (or the Death Star), meant to simulate future climates and test sustainable technology.” — VentureBeatWinners and Losers of Cap and Trade: A new analysis from Point Carbon finds [...]

  The $10 million in winnings for the Automotive X Prize competition can provide a welcome influx of cash for the DIY garage-based team, startup or even a more established automaker that builds the best 100 MPG car with a minimum 200-mile range, based on a number of tests and road trials. Today the competition itself [...]

  Automakers based in China are investing heavily in electric vehicle technology these days, but some car companies see a troublesome hole in the set of policies China has put together to spur adoption of plug-in cars: direct consumer incentives, such as subsidies or rebates for electric car buyers. The Wall Street Journal reports an emerging [...]

  ZETA Communities, a San Francisco-based green prefab builder, has been quietly developing an energy management system that it says will be ready to be installed in all the startup’s projects starting next year. The system, called zTherm, automatically opens vents, draws heat from thermal mass, and takes other low-cost measures to cool or heat a house without cranking up [...]

  The smart grid buildout could be one of the largest creators of wealth in the decade, smart grid analyst Jesse Berst has said. The installation of more than 250 million smart meters — electricity meters that provide real-time information about energy consumption and enable two-way communication between a utility and a consumer — will contribute [...]

  The Winners and Losers in the Smart Grid Stimulus Funds: The $3.4 billion in smart grid stimulus fund awards were announced this week and close to 100 recipients woke up today to the equivalent of Christmas morning — here’s a chart showing 13 of the biggest winners.What the ARPA-E Bets Mean for the Future of [...]

  As utilities start to build large solar projects and solar power makes up an increasingly larger portion of the electricity mix, integrating this energy into the grid will be a challenge. Solar, like wind, is intermittent — power from the sun fluctuates when clouds pass overhead and wind doesn’t blow consistently. Now General Electric, which [...]

  Well, that didn’t last long. Less than a year after Ford Motor and Smith Electric Vehicles announced plans to collaborate on an electric version of the Detroit automaker’s Transit Connect commercial van for the U.S. market, the two companies have called it quits on the deal.Ford and Smith, which have both received multimillion-dollar awards from [...]

  Climate change, corporate carbon footprints and policies in the works to address them present real risk for businesses and their investors. But can shareholders demand disclosure of that risk? As of this week, thanks to a new ruling from the Securities and Exchange Commission, now they can.Prior to this decision, handed down on Tuesday, the [...]