green

Austin, Tex. Who does Richard Gephardt, the former Speaker of the House, look like to you?

A weatherman or a congressman in a movie, Gephardt said during a lunchtime speech at the Clean Energy Venture Forum taking place in Austin, Texas this week. Two women stopped him in an airport a while ago and one thought he was a weatherman from CNN. Another thought he was either a congressman or someone that played a congressman in a movie.

R. James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA and now a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, had his own encounter … Read more

Two billion people around the globe still depend on open wood fires for cooking. That method is 5 percent efficient in using energy. The smoke is unhealthy for all those who must breathe it. And in some areas it's depleting forests that can't grow fast enough.

Now the University of Nottingham is going to try to build a thermoacoustic kitchen. And that's my new word for the day. No, not "kitchen," but "thermoacoustic." Instead of using the usual wood fire, this device would generate "sound waves through the nonuniform heating of gas.&… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Have you ever wondered how much water an office park puts into its lawns each year?

About 1.8 million gallons for an average size (20 acre) property, according to Daniel Keelan, vice president of sales and marketing at AccuWater, which has developed a sensor/database system that more precisely controls water consumption. That comes to about $6,700 per acre per year, he said.

Keelan, speaking at the Clean Energy Venture Summit taking place this week in Austin, claims the company's system can reduce water consumption to about 890,000 gallons a year. As a result, AccuWater'… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--You can think of Green Building Studio (GBS) as a mashup between Autodesk and Google.

The Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company makes a computer automated design application for architects and builders that evaluates a building's energy efficiency. And after it does that, it pops up product recommendations for insulation, lighting and other products to increase efficiency. It makes money from the software as well as generating leads for product suppliers.

The company essentially exists to tackle two problems, according to CEO John Kennedy, who spoke at the Clean Energy Venture Summit taking place this week in Austin. First, … Read more

Today, Yahoo launched two new sites to get people motivated to be environmentally responsible. The sites complement Yahoo's previous green offering 18seconds.org, which tracks fluorescent light bulb usage in the continental United States. The sites are information tools, and part of a contest to help the greenest city in the U.S. get greener.

The first of the new sites is Yahoo Green, which helps people create their own plans to go green, using a drag-and-drop building tool. Yahoo provides lifestyle actions in four categories, which range from air drying your clothes all the way up to buying … Read more

Clean tech venture capitalists, known as a sunny, optimistic bunch, are finding a lot to like in solar.

A survey done by legal firm Cooley Godward Kronish found that clean tech investors believe that solar has the most long-term profit potential over the next five years, followed by "energy intelligence," or smart grid technologies. After that came biofuels and wind in terms of economic attractiveness.

Initial public offerings--which have been few and far between in IT for several years--do not appear to be the most common route to cash in.

Only 10 percent of the 75 Silicon Valley … Read more

Slooh is a do-it-yourself stargazing service that puts you behind powerful telescopes in real time. With Slooh's help, you can see a disco-ball-like cluster of stars, a sunflower galaxy, Comet Lovejoy, and other wonders from an observatory atop a Canary Island mountain--all from the comfort of your chair at home.

I found the most dazzling views by following Slooh's suggested astronomical points of interest. Guided missions happen at 9:00 p.m. (Universal Time) nightly. The longer you hang out, the riper the images get. Impressed by the blood-red Trifid Nebula, 5,500 light-years away in the Sagittarius … Read more

Unplugging your phone after it's done charging could save a bundle of electricity, which is why Nokia is launching a new feature encouraging users to do just that.

The Finnish cell-phone maker announced Thursday that three of its mass-market phones--the Nokia 1200, 1208 and 1650--will alert users when the handset is done charging and suggest it be unplugged. The feature will eventually be rolled out to all of Nokia's products.

The move to be more energy-conscious is part of a larger agreement mobile phone manufacturers made in September 2006.

Biofuel. Hybrid cars. Electric cars. Hydrogen. Those are some of the bright ideas in the future of car tech. Many proponents of the hydrogen fuel cell gathered in Vancouver, Canada, recently to discuss their problems and the promises.

This video from that conference shows hydrogen cars on the road. Models from four manufacturers made a 150-mile round trip during the meeting. DaimlerChrysler predicts that by 2015 there'll be millions of hydrogen cars on the road. The company claims that's not just a lot of hot air.