Ministers from France, Germany and the UK are calling for the EU to cut its carbon emissions by 30% on 1990 levels by 2020, arguing that failure to reach the goal will have long-term economic consequences. The current target is a 20% reduction from 1990 levels.
The officials say increasing the target will help create jobs in clean energy sectors and help keep the EU competitive with China, Japan and the US, each of which is investing in green technology and sustainable energy. The US has set a goal of reducing 2005 greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020. → Read More
Kermit the Frog once sang about the woes of being green, but the tune could be different for businesses. One simple way to be green is to pay employees using direct deposit.
A company with 300 employees issuing paychecks every other week only via direct deposit would save 121 pounds of paper, 1,159 gallons of wastewater and 45 gallons of gas annually. Getting rid of paper paychecks would translate to a $19,000 annual savings for a company employing 100 people. → Read More
Brammo‘s electric motorcyle, the Enertia, is about to get some faster, stronger siblings. The company’s new Empulse Trio line will feature bikes that can take you an average of 60, 80 or 100 miles on a full charge at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. The Enertia, in comparison, can only travel about 40 miles on a full charge.
“We found there was a range anxiety issue with the 40-mile range,” says Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher. → Read More
Trilliant, a California-based provider of smart grid solutions that enhance energy efficiency, utility operations, and renewable resource integration, this morning announced that it has secured a whopping $106 million in funding from a global syndicate of industry and financial big-names.
The round was led by Investor Growth Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, ABB and GE and will reportedly by used to ramp up growth in North America and abroad. → Read More
Green data geeks now have another tool for controlling their energy consumption. Enphase Energy‘s new Environ Smart Thermostat lets you control your home’s temperature and monitor your solar installations remotely.
The company is known for its microinverter system, which turns solar-generated DC power into home energy friendly AC power. A microinverter is attached to every solar module, and the unit also monitors the module’s performance and sends out an alert if there is a problem with the module, be it debris or a tree branch that grew large enough to shade the solar panel.
All of the data is transmitted to a website where you can analyze your energy consumption and, with the new thermostat, control your home’s temperature from afar. → Read More
Tesla Motors Founder and CEO Elon Musk isn’t a man that backs down when facing the press. When the New York Times wrote an error-filled article, Musk lashed out at the author, saying “What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you’ve got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?” He added “He’s a huge douchebag…and an idiot.”And that was just when a journalist was poking at Tesla. Get into Musk’s personal life and he’ll take off the kid gloves.
Valleywag’s Owen Thomas, now writing for VentureBeat, has for some reason become fascinated with Musk’s personal life and continues to write about the man’s marital woes. He’s called Musk a liar on multiple occasions and seems delighted to get into the sordid details of Musk’s divorce. Musk wrote his side of things on the Huffington Post. Thomas hit him again.
Musk is now responding yet again, below. What bothers me about this exchange is that Silicon Valley press, VentureBeat in particular, is so focused on an entrepreneur’s personal life. A divorce isn’t anything that our readers want to know about. This isn’t Hollywood and these individuals aren’t out there trying to get lots of press about their personal lives. If they were, they’d hire agents and publicists and make the best of it. Instead they are focused on imagining and building the future. There’s no place in our community for these kinds of attacks. VentureBeat should apologize and move on, and let Tesla continue to disrupt the car industry.
Below is Musk’s response: → Read More
It’s not news that cargo planes aren’t the greenest way to transport heavy loads, but some companies are working on other ways to send goods through the air. Could blimps make a comeback as a greener cargo carrier? Speaking to an audience at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England, scientist David King recently predicted that helium-powered ships could be carrying freight within a decade.
It is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been developing blimps for some time, both for cargo transport and for military operations. → Read More
Smart Grid management software producer eMeter announced a $12.5 million Series F round of funding today. The investment comes from Sequoia Capital and Foundation Capital, who have both invested in the company previously, along with Northgate Capital.
The company was founded in 1999 and has raised nearly $70 million in funding. eMeter works with more than a dozen electric, gas and water utility companies which use it to provide detailed usage data to their customers. eMeter is not new to the space and other companies like OPOWER, Silver Spring Networks and Google are also working to secure similar utility company deals. → Read More
After a better-than-expected pop on the first day of its IPO, Tesla’s stock (under the ticker symbol TSLA) started to slide a few days after. It is now hanging 7 percent below its initial pricing of $17, closing at $15.80 per share today.
Only a week on the market, Tesla’s stock has fluctuated greatly, trading at a high of $30.42 and dropping to a low of $14.98. While some hoped Tesla would provide the “Netscape moment” for clean tech IPOs, Tesla seems to have the same struggles other greentech IPOs have experienced. Just last month, commercial rooftop panel maker Solyndra canceled its IPO plans. → Read More
Steve Lewis wants to use data for good. His company, Living PlanIT, works with hundreds of partners to create sustainable cities and improve business and construction efficiency.
Living PlanIT aims to bring high tech tools to the construction industry to help create sustainable, data-driven cities. We wrote about one such city in Portugal, where each building within the city will be able to plug into the network, tracking everything from water usage to traffic congestion.
Lewis was inspired when he noticed that while many large-scale manufacturing industries like aerospace and automotive had begun using technology to streamline manufacturing efficiencies, the construction industry seemed more focused on design aesthetics.
“We’re a classic tech company,” he says, “we just happen to be building a city.” → Read More
In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama announced the Department of Energy will loan almost $2 billion to two solar energy companies: Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing. The loans will go towards developing solar energy plants.
With the funding, Abengoa will build a solar plant in Arizona that can power 70,000 homes. When completed in 2013, the plant will be one of the largest in the world. It will also store part of the energy it produces, becoming the first plant in the U.S. to do so. → Read More
Today, IBM delivered its first Aquasar supercomputer, which is cooled by water, to a Swiss technology institute. The system needs 40% less energy to run than air-cooled machines, and the waste heat it produces can be used to warm buildings.
The system works thanks to micro-channel liquid coolers that are attached directly to processors, one of the biggest culprits of computer heat generation. IBM says water is 4,000 times more efficient at removing heat than air. In the past, water was commonly used to cool mainframes and other large computing systems, but typically that water was kept at low temperatures. → Read More
Tesla unveiled its newest electric sports car today, the Roadster 2.5, just two days after its IPO. The Roadster 2.0 was released only a year ago, and existing customers will be able to buy upgrades to 2.5 features where feasible.
Pricing starts at $101,500 after a federal tax credit of $7,500.
The company says most of the updates are based on customer feedback. → Read More
Clean technology remains one of the hottest areas of venture funding. In the second quarter, cleantech venture investments worldwide totaled $2.02 billion across 140 companies, according to market research firm Cleantech Group and Deloitte. The numbers are in line with last quarter’s $2.04 billion, but 43% higher than one year ago.
Exits for the quarter totaled more than $8 billion globally, with $6 billion in cleantech M&A and $2.3 billion in cleantech IPOs. Tesla‘s $202 million IPO has been in the spotlight recently, but globally, the cleantech IPO market is concentrated in China, which grabbed $1.7 billion, 75 percent of the $2.3 billion raised worldwide in the past three months, and 12 of the 19 IPOs, though not all of those are venture backed. The biggest IPO of the quarter was China’s Origin Water on the Shenzen Stock Exchange, which raised $330 million. As a point of comparison, in the U.S. alone, IPOs across all sectors totaled $900 million in the second quarter. → Read More
Networking equipment maker Cisco intends to build a sustainable city in Portugal. The company will work with Living PlanIT, a startup focused on developing large-scale sustainable technologies.
What will this city look like? For one thing, it’ll be wired with tens of millions of sensors providing real-time data to help manage common urban issues like traffic and crime. The 11-square-mile city will host 225,000 residents at a site in Paredes near the less sustainable city of Porto. → Read More
Electric car manufacturer Tesla is pricing its IPO at $17 per share, according to a release issued this evening. We just wrote today that one day before its scheduled IPO, Tesla Motors increased the allotment of shares that will be sold to the public from 11.1 million to 13.3 million, according to an amendment to its S1 filing. → Read More
Toyota and Tesla announced a new partnership at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto today, the auto makers will collaborate on technology, the development of new electric vehicles and Toyota will purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock. The press conference featured the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk and TMC President, Akio Toyoda.
Calling it an “explosion” for California (I think he meant this in the positive sense, not the Terminator sense) Schwarzenegger framed it as a victory for California’s environmental agenda and the economy. He predicts it will create 1,000 jobs for the state’s embattled economy. → Read More
After eight years of operating in quasi-stealth, Bloom Energy came out with a bang today at an event in Silicon Valley attended by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, Larry Page, John Doerr, and executives from eBay, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and FedEx. All of the big-name companies, including Google, are beta customers of Bloom’s distributed energy fuel cell technology (which was the subject of a 60 Minutes profile on Sunday and various other stories since then).
Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins VC who backed both Bloom and Google, said today: “This Is Like The Google IPO.” Except without the IPO part. Doerr was referring to the fact that, like Google, Bloom has kept its business close to its vest until it actually could show some progress in terms of customers and products. Five Bloom energy boxes about the size of a parking space each now provide 15 percent of the power at eBay’s campus. Walmart is testing the boxes in two locations where it is carrying 60 to 80 percent of the energy load of an entire store. Google co-founder Larry Page calls the technology a “very big deal” and looks forward to the day that it can expand the number of Bloom boxes Google uses to the point where it can power one of its data centers. → Read More
Over the past several years, there’s been no shortage of talk about alternative energy, and its potential to change the world. The problem is that most of it is just that — talk. But tonight, a report that aired on 60 Minutes showed one alternative that is not only real, it’s already being tested by companies such as Google and eBay. You simply have to watch this.
Bloom Energy are producing tiny fuel cell boxes they call “Bloom Boxes.” Two of these can apparently power a U.S. home (and only one for homes in countries that use less power). So how small are they? Look at the picture above, each device isn’t much bigger than a standard brick. Of course, they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas). But still, these units look to be about the size of a refrigerator and can easily fit outside of a home, providing it with clean, cheap energy. → Read More
Right off the heels of filing for a $100 million IPO, electric car company Tesla Motors this morning announced that it has hired former Toyota production engineering GM Gilbert Passin to lead the company’s vehicle manufacturing operations as Vice President of Manufacturing.
Passin has 23 years of international automotive experience under his belt, most recently serving as general manager of production engineering for Toyota in North America. Previously, Passin was vice president of manufacturing at Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario, which produces over 200,000 automobiles per year. → Read More
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