Volkswagen, the German car giant, will participate in a joint venture with Phoenix Motorcars to build electric vehicles for Latin America and India.

The plant for the venture, called Pristine International, will be built in Puebla, Mexico. It is unclear what kind of vehicles these cars will be. Phoenix, though, specializes in all-electric SUVs and Trucks. The company has taken orders for over 500 electric vehicles and hopes to start delivering some to customers in 2008. Earlier, it had hoped to get cars out in 2007.

Phoenix plans to insert batteries from Reno's Altair Nanotechnologies into its cars. Altair'… Read more

SolFocus has now raised a total of $63.6 million in series B funding to move into production of its solar power plants.

An extra $11.6 million in funding, announced Tuesday, complements the $52 million in series B funding the company announced in September. Altogether, the company has raised $95 million in venture capital.

SolFocus, which was spun out of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is perhaps the most high-profile company to pursue solar concentrators, where mirrors and lenses magnify light in order to squeeze more electricity from very efficient solar cells.

These solar installations--usually ground-mounted machines, are typically … Read more

Printer companies are under attack as more people become concerned about global warming and toxic pollution.

The solution? "Printer Vendors Need to Greenwash Their Image."

That unfortunate headline was the theme of an e-mail newsletter this morning from Lyra Research, a well-respected firm that tracks the digital imaging industry.

Apparently the writer didn't realize or care that "greenwashing" is a negative term. It describes how companies aiming to appeal to treehuggers are painting a green face, without necessarily cleaning up their act.

Picky consumers detest this trend, which makes it nearly impossible to tell which … Read more

After two years of studying the economic impact of climate change, asset management firm AllianceBernstein has come to a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: one of the dirtiest fuels around--coal--has a bright future.

Its findings, released Friday, are one of several reports issued by investment firms over the past two years which explore how industries can benefit or be harmed by climate change.

Apart from growing consumer demand for clean energy and green products, one of the most significant economic drivers is regulation over greenhouse gases.

Like many people following regulatory activity, AllianceBernstein analysts figure mandatory limits on emissions will happen--it's … Read more

Environmental marketing firm TerraChoice found that many retail products overstate their environmental attributes, a practice which risks causing skepticism among consumers.

The company sent people to big-box retail stores to find products labeled as green. In the process, it found that almost all of them committed at least one of what it calls "sins of greenwashing."

Most common was the "Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off," where manufacturers claim a product has a green feature, such as recycled paper content, but don't pay attention to potentially more important issues, such as global warming or water use. … Read more

Scientists are starting to consider planet-scale engineering projects to slow the pace of climate change--anything from causing massive plankton growth in the ocean to putting a giant mirror in space above Greenland to stop ice from melting.

These ideas to alter the earth's environment at large scale, called "geoengineering," are increasingly being articulated and seriously evaluated even though they are likely to be controversial.

Earlier this month, climate scientists held a conference in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss the importance of geoengineering projects. The overall consensus was that geoengineering deserves further study, according to one of the organizers … Read more

A serving of green tech news from around the Web.

Kleiner to invest in Indian clean-tech firms. In India, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers expects a majority of its investments to come from solar power and distributed generation (which includes bio-fuels) companies. Livemint.com

Be an Eco Sinner or Saint in the New SimCity. The latest version of the popular video game Sim City lets players play out the climate change experiment, says environment reporter Andrew Revkin. New York Times Dot Earth blog

Carbon Capture Moves Ahead. Blue Source demonstrates a remediation system that could capture carbon … Read more

Clean tech company M2E Power on Friday said it has raised money to commercialize battery technology that converts motion to electrical energy.

The $8 million series A round was led by OVP Venture Partners and included money from @Ventures, Highway 12 Ventures, and existing investors. The investment will be used to expand research and development and build initial products.

The company's mission, in essence, is to apply the long-understood Faraday Principle--that putting a conductor near a magnetic field will produce voltage--to 21st century applications.

Its initial target is to create a D-size battery for the military and then … Read more

CalStar Cement says it will tackle one of the unrecognized sources of greenhouse gases: cement.

The company, which is still operating in stealth mode, hopes to later this year unveil its plans for bringing a high-quality cement to market that requires far less energy to manufacture than the conventional stuff, according to sources close to the company. Consuming less energy directly results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

And cement takes a lot of energy. Making cement involves a mixture of burning limestone and clay together at very high temperatures ranging from 1,400 to 1,600 degrees Celsius. Many factories … Read more