Lora Kolodny began reporting on business, technology and entertainment in 2002. She has worked as greentech writer and editor at TechCrunch, and as a staff reporter for Inc. magazine and The Hollywood Reporter. Her New York Times blog, “The Prize,” covered the winners, losers, innovation and deal-making of business competitions.
A Colorado cleantech venture, Luca Technologies, filed an S-1 today revealing its intention to go public, and raise up to $125 million (though that number could vary with the receptivity of the market by the time they actually go public).
The company stimulates microbes with a “proprietary formulation of nutrients,” in already-drilled natural gas wells, which enables the wells to produce more methane, the primary component of natural gas. Luca Technologies owns and operates wells and infrastructure, then sells natural gas into existing markets. Its end users include power utilities, and government entities that use natural gas for power production.
Today, Luca’s chief executive Bob Cavnar explained… → Read More
SoloPower— a manufacturer of flexible, thin film solar cells and modules— has raised another $43.7 million in an equity round this month, according to a new SEC filing. Investors in the round include: Greentech Capital in New York, and Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco. Earlier investors in the company include: Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Crosslink Capital, Convexa, and Firsthand.
In February this year, SoloPower locked a $197 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office to build a “facility that, when completed and at full capacity, is expected to produce approximately 400MW of thin film Photovoltaic (PV) modules annually,” according to a company press statement. → Read More
According to an official company blog post today, Google is increasing its investment into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) by $102 million, bringing its total investment in the renewable energy facility to $157 million.
The AWEC is being developed by Terra-Gen Power, primarily. The first development within the massive facility is the Alta-Oak Creek Mojave Project. Google’s latest funding commitment would go to build an extension at the facility. The AWEC has a transmission line, the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, dedicated to it which makes it distinct from many, large-scale renewable energy projects that have been proposed in the U.S. → Read More
A French software company, Enablon, has raised a series A round of $15 million from the Environmental Technology Fund (ETF) in the U.K. Enablon’s enterprise software helps companies understand how much water, energy, chemicals and other resources they use, and how much they waste or pollute so that ultimately they can defray costs— financial and otherwise— associated with their environmental footprint.
In April, Enablon gained accreditation from the Carbon Disclosure Project, an independent not-for-profit organization that collects climate change data from thousands of companies. → Read More
A San Francisco-based renewable energy fund, CleanPath Ventures, announced plans today to invest $800 million over a period of about five years into the development and construction of large-scale, solar photovoltaic projects. The company’s chief executive and co-founder, Mike Cheney spoke at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in New York, today revealing a goal to help bring more than 1,000 megawatts of clean energy to the U.S.
A managing director with CleanPath Ventures, John Balbach (formerly a managing partner at The Cleantech Group) told TechCrunch in a phone interview on Tuesday: “We’re in a new era in cleantech investment where it’s less about innovation and more about financial solutions to put things in the ground at scale…” → Read More
A Los Angeles startup that’s trying to become a cleantech mashup of AngelList, LinkedIn and Intellectual Ventures, OnGreen, today announced it has hired ex-Hulu, ex-Myspace vice president Mark Richards as chief technology officer.
According to OnGreen’s founder and chief executive officer, Nikhil Jain, while the site is currently running in English by the end of 2011 it will also launch in Chinese. → Read More
A New York City startup that helps brands connect with and reward their fans via Facebook, Crowdtap, recently crossed the $1 million revenue mark for 2011, with 115,000 active members and about 50 major brand clients, chief executive officer Brandon Evans reported today.
Crowdtap members earn redeemable points for taking “brand actions” like: completing “quick hit” surveys, voting in a poll, participating in a live-online discussions or sharing brand-related content with a few friends via social media and the Crowdtap platform. The points that Crowdtap gives its members can be redeemed for an array of real world incentives, among them: an Amazon.com gift card, or a cash donation to a charity chosen from the company’s list of approved organizations. These range from environmental non-profits like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy to The American Red Cross, Autism Speaks and Invisible Children. → Read More
Air travel promises to become cleaner, if industry actions ahead of the huge, annual Paris Airshow are any indication.
Virgin America— a company that’s been reporting on its own greenhouse gas emissions since 2009— ordered $1.4 billion worth of new, super fuel-efficient engines from CFM International the companies announced on Wednesday. The move should help keep energy costs down, and reduce the negative environmental impacts of air travel by Virgin America as the company triples the size of its fleets, as promised back in January.
According to a joint press statement from the companies, CFM’s LEAP Engine will power 30, brand new Airbus A320 aircraft slated for delivery to Virgin America in 2016, and CFM’s 56-5B engines will power 30 of Virgin America’s current-edition Airbus A320-line aircraft. → Read More
EcoMotors struck a parntership with Generac (NYSE: GNRC) this week to jointly develop fuel-efficient, backup power generators.
Generac is a large manufacturer of backup power generators for home, light commercial and industrial use. The company went public in February 2010. When natural disasters strike, Generac and other companies that make backup power generators (like Honda, GE and Kohler) tend to experience sales and stock price increases. → Read More
EcoFactor, an energy efficiency startup based in Redwood City, Calif. was named a winner at the Utility Technology Challenge today in Boston. The other two winners were Ideal Power Converters and Power Tagging, according to a press release from the event.
EcoFactor’s flagship software as a service (SaaS) helps electricity consumers and utilities to diagnose and curb energy waste related to heating and cooling. This technology works with any kind of grid-enabled, or two-way thermostat. According to Scott Hublou, a senior vice president of product and a co-founder of EcoFactor, here’s how it helps curb energy waste… → Read More
Total, the fossil fuels giant, just gave itself a renewable energy makeover by finishing up its $1.3 billion purchase of a majority stake in SunPower, the San Jose, Calif.-based designer and manufacturer of solar panels and systems.
Let’s put the scope of the Total-SunPower deal in perspective. According to research by the Cleantech Group and Deloitte, for all of 2010, venture investments in cleantech companies of any stripe worldwide totaled $7.7 billion across 715 deals and the solar segment attracted 24 percent of those dollars. → Read More
The founder of Efficiency 2.0, Tom Scarmellino, sat down with TechCrunchTV this week to talk about how his company motivates consumers to curb their power-hogging behavior at home, and what kind of impact that makes from an environmental perspective.
A New York City cleantech company, Efficiency 2.0 runs loyalty rewards programs on behalf of its clients, big electric companies that are legally required to convince customers to use energy more efficiently. → Read More
On Tuesday, ClearEdge Power— a cleantech startup that makes 5-kilowatt stationary fuel cells— announced that it won a $2.8 million grant from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to gets its technology out to the market more quickly.
Targeted customers for ClearEdge Power include the owners and operators of hotels, groceries, schools, medical centers and fast food restaurants. → Read More
Google today announced a new partnership with SolarCity, committing $280 million from its coffers to finance SolarCity installations, namely solar rooftops for homes in North America.
The partnership brings Google employees a discount on residential solar installations and services from SolarCity. On a worldwide basis, according to the company’s last quarterly earnings report, Google employs about 26,300 full-time.
Earlier this month, SolarCity locked a commitment from U.S. Bancorp that put them past the $1 billion mark in terms of financing capacity… → Read More
An energy technology incubator, ClarianLabs in Seattle, has published a patent for a device called the Rotary Piston Generator (RPG) which the company hopes will challenge the idea of what batteries are, and how they’re used, especially in vehicles.
The RPG is a mechanical rather than chemical approach to portable energy storage. Its energy capacity is potentially ten times greater than a typical battery, company representatives wrote in an email exchange with TechCrunch. That depends on the kind of fuel it uses— the invention is essentially a very tiny, highly efficient engine. → Read More
Golden, Colorado-based Proterra, Inc.— the makers of electric commercial vehicles, systems and charging stations for them— raised $30 million, the company announced today. The investment was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and joined by GM Ventures, Mitsui & Co., Vision Ridge Partners and 88 Green Ventures.
According to a press statement today, Proterra will use its new funding to: complete federal testing of its buses; supply vehicles and systems to pilot fleets; and increase the number of buses and systems its Greenville, South Carolina plant manufactures each year. The plant is supposed to have the capacity to produce 400 buses annually, when fully operational. → Read More
Maybe it’s just a biofuels thing this year, but it seems like the feds are giving cleantech grant money to companies and institutions that are based anywhere but in the nation’s capital of venture capital.
The U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced six recipients of $36 million in total grant funding via the Department of Energy’s Biomass Program on Friday. That non-dilutive funding went to organizations working to make the production of “drop-in” biofuels and plant-based chemicals better, and to ultimately bring affordable alternatives to petroleum-based products mainstream in the U.S.
Despite the region’s reputation as a cleantech hotbed, not one Bay Area organization or business scored a piece of this funding. They also missed out on a previous grants round from the same program, announced in May, which doled out $47 million to eight companies in the sector… → Read More
JouleX– an Atlanta tech startup promising a way to cut energy consumption and reduce costs at large data centers by about half– closed a $17 million round of financing, the company announced today. Investors included: Sigma Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners and Intel Capital, along with earlier investors Target Partners and TechOperators.
The U.S. EPA has not updated national statistics about how much power data centers are using in the country, in years. However, in 2007 the agency estimated that in a year, the nation’s servers and data centers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) or 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity, costing around $4.5 billion for electricity alone. The EPA at that time, predicted national energy consumption by servers and data centers would double by 2011 to more than 100 billion kWh, representing a $7.4 billion annual electricity cost.
A more recent survey by The Uptime Institute found 36 percent of data center operators and owners… → Read More
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