Green Tech

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--Twelve other states are examining ways to implement the strategy adopted by California in getting utilities to separate profits from energy production, according to Terry Tamminen, the Cullinan Senior Fellow at the New America foundation and the former secretary of California's EPA.

California implemented regulations that encourage utilities to conserve energy by tying profits to conservation rather than selling power years ago, he said during a presentation at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here this week.

And the results are fairly dramatic. The average Californian consumes about 6,700 kilowatt hours of electricity a … Read more

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--Tesla Motors is contemplating selling the drivetrains and software components necessary to build electric cars to other companies.

The company will probably come out with an announcement on this initiative in the second quarter of this year, and parts and software from Tesla could start shipping to other carmakers by 2010 or earlier, said Tesla Chairman Elon Musk during an interview at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place this week in Indian Wells, near Palm Springs. Of course, any third-party deals will depend on Tesla's success in getting its own cars on the road. The … Read more

Year-and-a-half-old ethanol company Coskata made its public debut at the North American international Auto Show in Detroit in January, where it announced a partnership with General Motors.

On Wednesday, Coskata said it has signed a deal with ICM to manufacture a cellulosic ethanol plant that will be up and running by 2010.

ICM is an ethanol plant design and engineering firm responsible for about half of North American ethanol production, according to the companies.

When he announced the GM deal, Coskata President and CEO Bill Roe said that the company will be signed on to many partnerships to commercialize its … Read more

WASHINGTON--Dell chief Michael Dell and other high-profile technology company CEOs descended on the nation's capital Wednesday with a message for policymakers: do more to encourage energy-efficient practices, but don't spell out specific standards for the products that companies like theirs build.

On behalf of a lobby group known as the Technology CEO Council, Dell, EMC chief Joe Tucci, and Applied Materials head Mike Splinter suggested the government should do more to "lead by example." They said it can do that by reevaluating its own power consumption, setting "high goals" for energy efficiency, awarding presidential … Read more

When Benjamin Brown, the CEO of Web start-up MakeMeSustainable.com, hands you his business card, it's got "green" written all over it.

Rather than bleached white, it's the color of a supermarket bag and has a green fingerprint printed on the back.

Brown's not the only Web entrepreneur going with the recycled paper look. A growing number of tech and media entrepreneurs are trying to enter the booming green-tech industry via the Web.

Over the past five years, many IT professionals have made the jump to energy-related companies. Former Microsoftie Martin Tobias, for example, was … Read more

Atlanta-based Suniva said on Tuesday that it has raised $50 million to commercialize its solar-cell technology, which it says will be as cheap as conventional electricity.

Investors are New Enterprise Associations and H.I.G. Ventures, according to the company's Web site.

Suniva has licensed technology from Georgia Tech's University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics (UCEP) to make very thin solar cells--less than 100 microns.

Using monocrystalline silicon, it said it can improve the efficiency of cells to about 20 percent, which is the high range of traditional panels. SunPower has a panel with 22 percent efficiency.

Its … Read more

Admit it: When you buy a smartphone, laptop, or any of a zillion types of consumer electronics devices, you're usually not thinking about what effect you're going to have on the environment. Maybe it's time you should.

Certainly, there are a growing number of eco-friendly options out there, whether in the gadgets themselves or in the accessories and services that go along with them. Some of that was on display last week at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York.

Solar energy was a recurrent theme amid the gadgetry. Nokia, for instance, showed off a concept for … Read more

Tesla Motors, the people who put the all-electric car on the map, are going to work with gas too.

The San Carlos, Calif.-based company will produce two basic types of its Whitestar sedan, due toward the end of 2009. One will run completely on batteries. The other will be a range-extended vehicle, or REV, CEO Ze'ev Drori said in an interview. In an REV, a small gas motor recharges the battery pack while the car is being driven. The battery pack on these types of cars only goes about 40 to 50 miles on a charge, but because … Read more

The coal industry isn't happy with the Department of Energy's cancellation of an ambitious clean coal project, and has issued a bulletin to correct what it considers inaccurate statements about the cost of the project.

Earlier this week, the DOE said it was pulling out of the FutureGen Alliance, a coalition of coal and oil companies banded together to create a coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Ill., that injects carbon dioxide emissions underground. The cost, the DOE claimed, had become prohibitive. The budget for the 300-megawatt demonstration plant had ballooned to $1.8 billion because of price increases … Read more