Green Tech

WASHINGTON--The world is in the early days of an energy revolution for clean technology, a shift the United States is committed to for economic, political, and environmental reasons, President George Bush said in a speech here Wednesday.

The president spoke to delegates from more than 120 countries at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) 2008, where he described what the United States has done to promote biofuels, fuel efficiency, and renewable power sources like wind.

"America has to change its habits. It has to get off oil. Until we change our habits, we are going to be dependent … Read more

Climos, a start-up that plans to mitigate climate change by stimulating plankton growth, said on Wednesday that it has raised a series A venture capital round of $3.5 million.

Braemar Energy Ventures led the round, which also included participation from investor Elon Musk, now chairman of Tesla Motors.

As previously reported, the funding will be used to develop and test Climos' ocean iron fertilization technique, in which an iron compound is put into the sea to stimulate the growth of plankton.

As the plankton grow, they take the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Over time, some … Read more

Plastic contamination in the world's oceans is worse than previously imagined and no amount of technology can clean it up, according to Charles Moore. The oceanographer returned February 23 from a five-week odyssey in the Pacific Ocean with samples showing 48 parts plastic for every part of plankton.

"We are damned to a future of pollution by plastic," said Moore, who has spent more than a decade investigating Pacific plastic pollution. "There's no evidence it will end in a millennium."

A plastic "graveyard" double the size of Texas swirls in the Pacific … Read more

WASHINGTON--The last time tax incentives for renewable-energy projects dried up in the 1980s, energy investor Nancy Floyd got out of the wind business--something she fears other entrepreneurs may do without quick changes to U.S. policy.

Floyd, now the managing director of energy technology venture capital firm Nth Power, was one of a group of businesspeople who held a press conference here to lobby for the renewal of federal tax incentives set to expire this year.

The incentives, which provide a federal tax credit for renewable-energy investment, are set to expire at the end of 2008. But the impact is … Read more

There's nothing like 200-plus-year-old companies teaming up for the 22nd Century.

Oil giant Chevron and Weyerhauser, which has been in the lumber business since 1900, have formed a 50-50 joint venture called Catchlight Energy that will focus on developing fuels from cellulose-based biomass, like wood chips. Both companies have been working with various universities, such as Georgia Tech, on biofuel research, and this gives them a way to share information.

Chevron's Michael Burnside has been appointed CEO of the venture.

Some will no doubt boo and hiss this deal. Here we have two of the oldest companies focused … Read more

Update July 19, 2008: Escape from Berkeley is now scheduled for Oct. 10-13, 2008.

Now this is something that I wish I could see.

Over the coming Fourth of July weekend, the folks who organize the Power Tool Drag Races will be putting on an entirely new kind of competition: Escape from Berkeley (by any non-petroleum means necessary), a race of alternatively powered vehicles from the liberal Bay Area town to Sin City.

"This 4th of July weekend, NASA scientists and junkyard fabricators once again square off in the perennial battle of engineering prowess and creative excess, this time … Read more

WASHINGTON--Famed venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told energy and environmental ministers from around the world they greatly underestimate how rapidly energy is moving toward renewable sources.

Khosla was a speaker during the ministerial plenary at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) 2008 here on Tuesday, where he argued that the energy industry is undergoing a technology disruption, much the way that telecom and computing did decades ago.

The reason people don't appreciate the pace of change is faulty projections, he said. Government officials and businesspeople trust market forecasts which have consistently been far off-base.

People believed that it would … Read more

Right now, wave power is in the early experimental stages, but venture capitalists are lining up to be on the ground floor.

Orecon has lined up $24 million in funding from Advent Ventures, Venrock, Wellington Partners and Northzone Ventures to build a full scale prototype of its wave power machine and, if the results are positive, move toward commercial deployment.

The U.K.-based Orecon has devised a large-scale buoy for harvesting power from waves. In a nutshell, waves striking the device create pressure in a chamber, which is used to turn a turbine and create electricity. A single device … Read more

Updated 2:30 p.m. PST with funding amount.

Khosla Ventures, the venture capital firm of Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, has invested in Pax Streamline, maker of turbines, heating and air-conditioning systems, and aerospace technologies.

Khosla and Pax Streamline CEO Jay Harman did not disclose the amount of the investment, which was formally announced Friday, but Harman said the funding is "substantial." According to a source familiar with the deal, Khosla invested an estimated $6 million in a series A round of financing; and if the company meets certain business goals, the VC firm will put in … Read more