One of my friends, John Moore. the CEO of Acorn Energy (NASDAQ:ACFN), recently sold off their rapidly growing CoaLogix investment for a quick return. I caught up with John to get the story. So John, who the hell is Acorn Energy anyways? Acorn Energy (NASDAQ:ACFN) is the Sun Studios of the energy sector. We have [...]
Last night while watching Office reruns, I realized I’d been remiss, and a lot’s had been happening in the public equities end of the cleantech sector. Not to mention yesterday’s billion dollar BK broiler announcement by the one-time Next Greatest Thing, Solyndra. So, with my usual aplomb, I thought I’d simply peanut gallery what’s “Hot or [...]
Cleantech has a very short history, and an even shorter memory. I’ve written over and over again about how it’s all about policy, and that there is no disruptive technology in cleantech. Now I’m telling you that’s not quite true, the exception proves the rule. I’d like to ask you to do some reading on [...]
GreentechMedia and Cleantech Group this quarter reported near record levels of cleantech venture capital investment. Nearly $2.6 Billion in deals. No, quantitative easing hasn’t made the dollar slide that much yet, the numbers are real – mainly as the solar and transport deals vintage 2004-07 are getting deep into their capital intensive cycles. But a [...]
By Andrew Longenecker, guest contributor The TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy’s “Grid Integration of Renewables” conference, which took place at Stanford University’s Jen-Hsun Engineering Center on January 13, 2011, brought together professionals and students to discuss various aspects of the integration of intermittent sources of power to the grid. The conference facilitated the discussion on [...]
by Jason Barkeloo, CEO of Pilus Energy My business partners and I discovered an innovative way to unlock energy stored in carbon compounds. After a little back-slapping and “atta-boys,” we sought to raise the capital to launch a pilot. This led to another discovery; the destructive impact the economic crisis is having upon the capital [...]
I am struggling to find a single function in our society that is not impacted by the electron. The electron is a negatively charged particle that fuels digital work. It makes software work on hardware. It powers motors and manufacturing. It lights our bulbs and amplifies our sound. In my opinion, the electron is the [...]
Progress is never without a price. What we gain on one hand we lose on another. The hope is that when the dust has settled the gains outweigh the losses. The manufacturers of buggy whips didn’t want to go out of business when the automobile arrived on the market. They fought to maintain their market [...]
I have seen, with growing frustration, an increasing number of comments on blogs and news sites deriding Ontario’s feed-in tariff (FIT) program and similar government incentives that encourage the use of renewable energy and create green jobs in the province. Comments like this anonymous post continue to stand out in my mind, “…‘greens’ only want [...]
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Volume 2 is one of my favorite movies. It penultimate scene – a final confrontation of vengeance from the wronged Beatrice Kiddo (aka, The Bride, aka, Black Mamba, aka Uma Thurman) and the evil, yet oddly amiable and ambiguous, title character (aka, the great David Carradine) is perhaps the finest in [...]
Like it or not, solar is still the crown jewel in cleantech. Whither goes solar, there goes cleantech. So I got to thinking about the next decade in solar, and what will determine which companies achieve primacy. I think there are three races in solar technology to watch these days. Call it the Solar Triple Crown. [...]
Bill O, the Art of Journalism and Me.By Tom Rooney, CEO of SPG Solar Journalism, says the wag, is the art of speaking with absolute authority about something you know nothing about. Earlier this week, America’s most dominant cable TV news host, Bill O’Reilly, of course, took that definition to a new level when he [...]
My good friends over at Cleantech Group put out their 10 for 2010 cleantech predictions after Thanskgiving, and after our usual “webside” chats on the future of the sector, chastened me into responding with a set of counter predictions. What’s in store for cleantech 2010? 1. Private capital recovers. Nick Parker predicts that private capital [...]
Short and sweet. Boone Pickens announced this week that his mega wind farm was icing an eventual 4,000 MW windfarm this week. Apparently he’s looking for buyers for $2 Bill in turbines. A far cry from a year ago when your credibility as a wind developer hung in part on whether or not you had [...]
The solar market is still going strong, despite the financial crisis, and turmoil in some of its key markets. But that doesn’t mean all is well on the venture financing end. As a number of longtime Silicon Valley solar darlings start to demand even more serious money to build plants for commercialization, the financing picture [...]
by Cristina Foung My favorite green product of the week: the EarthLED ZetaLux 7 Watt LED What is it?The EarthLED ZetaLux is a 7 watt LED light bulb. With a standard medium base, the bulb is a replacement for any incandescent light bulb. EarthLED estimates that it will cost as little as $2.00 to run [...]
by Cristina Foung My favorite green product of the week: Electric Motorsport GPR-S Electric Motorcycle What is it?The GPR-S from Electric Motorsport is an all-electric motorcycle with lithium batteries and a light weight frame (250 pounds or so). The bike has a 14.2 kilowatt electric drive system and has a top speed of 70 miles [...]
by Cristina Foung My favorite green product of the week: the GeoBulb LED Light Bulb from C. Crane What is it?The GeoBulb is an LED light bulb that uses less than 8 watts of electricity to produce 14% more light than the average 60 watt incandescent bulb. It’s roughly the same size and shape as [...]
by Cristina Foung My favorite green product of the week: Zimride’s Carpool Community What is it?Zimride is a carpooling community. It lets you find and share rides, figure out whose route is on your way, and intelligently pick who you get in a car with (whether or not you know them before hand). You can [...]
