Lora Kolodny is a technology journalist. As of 2012 she works as a reporter for Dow Jones covering startups and venture capital. Her writing is also syndicated to the Dow Jones owned Wall Street Journal.
Lora 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.
Another app to help electric vehicle (EV) drivers find a place to power up? Yep. This one, Recargo, was made by the founder of Dictionary.com, Brian Kariger, and launched stealthily in July last 2010. So far, the app has attracted hundreds of users, Kariger told TechCrunch. The company added new features and is pushing for wider adoption today, with a version 1.5 release.
New features on Recargo… → Read More
On Wednesday, SolarCity added $158 million to the pool of funds that it uses to finance, design, develop and install commercial or residential solar power projects in the U.S. The latest fund came through a partnership with U.S. Bancorp (a subsidiary of U.S. Bank) and gives SolarCity more than $1 billion in financing capacity… → Read More
Shares in Solazyme, the makers of algae biofuels and algae-based oils and chemicals used in health and beauty products, began trading on Nasdaq under the symbol SZYM.O on Friday. The business set an initial public offering price at $18, but its stock opened at $20 and traded between $19.60 and $22.00 throughout the day, with 10.98 million shares sold, raising about $197.6 million for the… → Read More
The chief executive officers of two very different clean tech startups, Brammo and EcoMotors, discussed the relative merits and limitations of clean vehicle technology, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on Wednesday. Oregon-based Brammo designs and manufactures all-electric motorcycles and the battery technology and software that powers them, while Michigan-based EcoMotors designs and makes more… → Read More
Harvest Power, a company that makes energy and fertilizer products from organic waste, added $6 million to its series B, $51.7 million round, with Rabobank’s SAM Private Equity group, which focuses on sustainability investing and is based in Zurich, Switzerland, joined the company’s other backers: Generation Investment Management, DAG Ventures, Keating Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Waste Management… → Read More
In the early hours of Hackathon day two, bleary-eyed hax0rz roamed the conference hall, checking out each others’ apps. TCTV caught up with a few who were still standing to see how they fared after twenty-four hours, heads down in the code and design… (video) → Read More
Talent scouting at the 2011 Hackathon in Manhattan today, TCTV caught up with three alumni hax0rz and one n00b, who gave us a sneak peek of their apps and ideas. They included: a couple of dating sites, one with a hyper local twist, a mobile web application that lets you see nearby job opportunities using data from your Foursquare network and… → Read More
Toshiba — the diversified tech company best known for its consumer electronics, lighting and HVAC systems — is coming after the smart grid market in Europe and the U.S. with the acquisition of a Swiss smart grid tech firm, Landis+Gyr. Toshiba announced a commitment to acquire Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion today.
The company makes power distribution, metering and smart home software and systems… → Read More
WaterSmart Software, a green tech startup that’s frequently compared to the energy management startup OPower has closed a $900,000 round of seed financing led by Menlo Incubator and joined by Sand Hill Angels, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Physic Ventures.
The company’s co-founder Peter Yolles explained the concept of the technology in an interview with TechCrunch ahead of the funding… → Read More
Through new official partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and NY-based startups Foursquare and Tumblr, New York aims to become America’s next, top digital city.
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the city’s first, chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne, presented their Road Map for the Digital City, today.
Before formulating the plan, Sterne led a comprehensive 90-day review of the city’s… → Read More
Networks and wireless sensors have been used for years — by companies like Lighting Science Group, Arch Rock (acquired by Cisco) and D-Link — in a variety of smart building, smart grid and security applications. Their systems can sense occupancy, control lighting and temperatures, and make energy-sucking devices a little more efficient, or make buildings a little easier to patrol and keep… → Read More
A New York research firm that turns massive amounts of data into streamlined information, CUBRC (pronounced “coo-brick”) invested $1.2 million in seed finance, and established a strategic partnership with GridGlo — a smart grid technology startup from Delray Beach, Florida, the companies revealed today.
GridGlo sells software and services that help utilities see how and why their customers… → Read More
America’s first pipeline-fed, retail hydrogen fueling station opened in Torrance, California, within Los Angeles county on Tuesday. The station will provide hydrogen for fuel cell and hybrid vehicles in the area. It was built through a joint effort by Toyota, Air Products and Shell alternative energies, with funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the U.S. → Read More
America’s first pipeline-fed, retail hydrogen fueling station opened in Torrance, California, within Los Angeles county on Tuesday. The station will provide hydrogen for fuel cell and hybrid vehicles in the area. It was built through a joint effort by Toyota, Air Products and Shell alternative energies, with funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and the U.S. → Read More
TNG Pharmaceuticals, developers of a vaccine to keep cattle free of blood-sucking horn flies, took top prize at the “Moot Corp.” business competition this weekend.
Formally renamed the Venture Labs Investment Competition(VLIC) in 2010, but still widely referred to as “Moot Corp.,” the annual event began in 1984 at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.
TNG… → Read More
The U.S. solar industry is banding together to fend off an onslaught of global competition, and to lower the cost of manufacturing solar technology domestically. To make it happen, the newly formed U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC) secured a $57.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative, along with financial commitments totaling $400 million from… → Read More
Today, electric motorcycle makers Brammo revealed that the company will add new electronic transmission technology, and a redesigned motor, clutch and gear shift to its lineup, that will make its motorcycles perform more like their gas-powered predecessors.
The first incorporation of this technology into the company’s product lines will be into Brammo’s new, not-yet-in-production Engage and… → Read More
Today, electric motorcycle makers Brammo revealed that the company will add new electronic transmission technology, and a redesigned motor, clutch and gear shift to its lineup, that will make its motorcycles perform more like their gas-powered predecessors.
The first incorporation of this technology into the company’s product lines will be into Brammo’s new, not-yet-in-production Engage and… → Read More
A Cambridge, England cleantech company, Enecsys, closed a £25 million ($41 million) series B round which the company plans to use to take its solar microinverter technology to more international markets including Canada and the U.S.
Solar microinverters convert the DC power that’s produced by solar panels into AC power, that can be either be used on-site, or sent back to the electrical grid. The… → Read More
Cobalt Technologies, a cleantech startup in Mountain View that develops and makes biobutanol, closed a $20 million series D funding round, the company revealed today. The investment arm of Parsons & Whittemore (the Whittemore Collection) led the round, joined by all of Cobalt’s earlier venture backers: Pinnacle Ventures, Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund, VantagePoint Capital Partners, Life… → Read More
According to a report out today from Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureSource, American venture capitalists invested 54 percent more, by dollar amount, in cleantech companies for the first quarter in 2011 versus the same period last year. The sector attracted $1.14 billion for the quarter up from $743.3 million in Q1 2010. The number of deals attracting venture capital in the sector declined… → Read More
This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for large vat commercial fryers. These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants— to make french fries, hush puppies and anything else Paula Deen would promote, in bulk.
Encouraging the industry to upgrade to more… → Read More
One of the largest chemical companies in Asia, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. in Japan, has formed a partnership with San Diego, Calif.-based Genomatica, a sustainable chemicals startup, the companies revealed today.
Genomatica converts sugar from corn wet mills, sugar cane and sugar beet — among other sources — into butanediol (BDO), a chemical used to make everything from the plastics in… → Read More
How many apps does it take to recharge a vehicle? Apparently, one is not enough. Several companies offering mobile apps to drivers — to help them find a place to charge up or refuel in an environmentally sustainable way — made product and milestone announcements around Earth Day. Here’s the run down.
ECOtality (NASDAQ: ECTY) — a San Francisco company that’s building electric vehicle (EV)… → Read More
Everyone’s favorite under-estimator of social media, Malcolm Gladwell, might get a chuckle out of Amazon’s EC2 problems this week. First, they took out Foursquare, Reddit and Quora service, as TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher reported yesterday. The disaster in the cloud also put a stop to those who would Tweet the revolution via Act.ly, a site that gets petitions going virally, online.
The site and… → Read More
On Thursday, Greenpeace published a study on energy consumption and choices made by IT companies including Akamai, Amazon.com (Amazon Web Services), Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, entitled “How Dirty Is Your Data?”. The study roundly criticizes the sector, especially Facebook, for using “dirty energy” — power produced from hydrocarbon based sources, especially… → Read More
Social and mobile gaming startup Playmatics attained a $1 million investment from several Swiss-based angel investors to develop a “real world game” franchise calledShadow Government the company revealed today.
Initially a Facebook platform game, Shadow Government will use economic and sustainability data, and government-modeling software from the Millennium Institute to give players a chance to… → Read More
Google Inc.’s putting another $100 million into large-scale, renewable energy projects. The company’s director of green business operations, Rick Needham, revealed Monday in a post to the corporate blog:
[Google] invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm…currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore. When completed in 2012 [the plant] will produce 845 MW of… → Read More
On Thursday, Raj Atluru announced that he was stepping down as a managing director with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where he served as a key cleantech investor since 2001. He will join a private equity group that invests in later-stage clean energy companies, Silver Lake Kraftwerk, which was formed earlier in 2011 by Silver Lake Partners and Soros Fund Management, led by Adam Grosser.
Atluru took… → Read More
A New York-based clean tech startup, Ioxus, raised a $21 million investment from Energy Technology Ventures (a GE-NRG Energy-ConocoPhillips joint fund), Northwater Capital, Aster Capital and their previous backers Braemar Energy Ventures, the companies announced today.
Ioxus makes lithium-ion hybrid capacitors, and ultracapacitors, which are (often alongside other battery technology) used to… → Read More
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