Green Tech

MIT launches contest to fire up energy entrepreneurs

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is kicking off a competition to award $200,000 to entrepreneurs in the green-energy field.

The MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize, announced Wednesday, combines two existing prizes and increases the prize money.

The revamped contest pulls in sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Energy and NStar, an electric and gas utility based in Massachusetts. In addition to receiving cash or services, competitors will also get mentoring from experts as they develop their business plans.

Sponsors hope the competition will accelerate the pace of innovation and energy.

"We want to help these entrepreneurs get … Read more

Greenpeace online poll gives humpback a whale of a name

Greenpeace might want to save the whales, but it's not above giving them silly names.

The legendary environmental organization, as part of its Great Whale Trail Expedition campaign, is tracking humpback whales in the South Pacific via satellite tags and hoping to gather data that will help protect them from hunting. To humanize the massive cetaceans a bit, Greenpeace International is also holding a whale-naming competition in the form of an online poll. It appears, looking at the site, that a number of "winning" names will go to the array of whales being tracked.

Among the 30 … Read more

HP invests big in solar and wind

Hewlett-Packard announced on Tuesday investments in renewable energy as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its operations.

The computing giant said it will install a 1-megawatt solar array in its San Diego facility.

SunPower will install its solar panels and sell the electricity the panels generate to HP at fixed rates under a power purchase agreement. The system will save HP $750,000 over 15 years and offset 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road each year.

The San Diego installation will be made up of 5,… Read more

Venture to make algae fuel from coal plant emissions

Two Australian firms have established a joint venture that intends to use emissions from coal power plants to grow algae that can be used as fuel.

Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal announced the creation of the company last week and said they would spend $1 million over the next year to build a prototype bioreactor.

The bioreactor will be designed to grow algae, using the carbon dioxide produced from processing coal for electricity as "food." That process should dramatically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, the company said.

The dried algae could be … Read more

Clean air, better living, good price

When I was in the UK a few weeks ago, one of my friends asked me to visit with Aerstream, a company where he is on the board of directors. Aerstream is a case in point of the many exciting cleantech companies coming out of the UK. I had a chance to chat with Jeremy Smyth, one of their executives. Backed by a group of UK angel investors, they are looking to bring their product into the US shortly, and he had asked me to do some brainstorming with Jeremy on his various strategy options.

I came away extremely impressed. … Read more

The tough task of finding oil--Thanksgiving green tech roundup

Oil officials see limit looming on production. It's not an oil peak; it's an oil plateau. The Wall Street Journal reports on impending restrictions on oil extraction. Now both oil industry skeptics and execs are seeing limits. Recently, Don Paul, CTO of Chevron (not the presidential candidate), told us that the world has consumed 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and will go to 1.5 trillion by 2012. The world only had 3 trillion barrels to begin with.

A deeply green city confronts its energy needs and nuclear worries. The New York Times reports on the struggle … Read more

A new source of water: Floating nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants have a lot of excess heat, so why not use that heat to make fresh water?

That's the idea of S.S. Verma, with the Department of Physics at the Sont Longowal Institute in Punjab, India. If located offshore near large population centers, the plants could provide cheap electricity as well as fresh water to megacities like Mumbai.

Some companies are already looking at developing desalination platforms that can be attached to nuclear plants, he said, according to the Indo-Asian News Service (via Earthtimes). (Verma's complete paper can be found here.)

The general and very … Read more

Carbon economics: Standard set for voluntary offsets

You would think a market projected to grow to $4 billion over the next five years would have a rock-solid way to measure its currency. Now, it has a least one standard.

The Voluntary Carbon Standard was released Monday, providing a much sought-after framework to account for voluntary carbon offsets.

Voluntary carbon offsets are a way for individuals or businesses to spend money to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Pollution reduction credits of various flavors are already being figured into the business plans of many green tech start-ups.

If a corporation wishes to be carbon neutral, for example, it will … Read more

OPEC nations create $750 million clean tech fund

Members of OPEC announced Tuesday that they will contribute $750 million to a fund to study clean energy and technologies, according to Cleantech.com

The fund will put a particular emphasis on carbon capture and storage.

Saudi Arabia coughed up $300 million for the fund while Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates each pledged $150 million. Abu Dhabi, a member of the United Arab Emirates, already participates in a clean technology venture fund.

In a statement, OPEC (according to Cleantech.com) said it would "stress the importance of cleaner and more efficient petroleum technologies for the protection of … Read more