Green IT

Rapid recent solar and wind price falls are likely to bring new markets and mass adoption a step closer over the next decade and raise the prospects of mergers.

The financial crisis coupled with a ramp-up in China, which now leads the world wind and solar manufacturing, have led to over-capacity and pressured prices in the past three years.

Natural gas is the main fossil fuel rival and still wins on price after U.S. shale gas finds created a global glut.

But wind and solar are now competitive in niche markets after prices of turbines fell by a fifth … Read more

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.--President Barack Obama announced a new clean energy program in Pennsylvania on Thursday, seeking to show he remains focused on jobs in a state that may be essential to his 2012 re-election prospects.

Obama outlined a plan in his State of the Union address last month to encourage clean energy technologies and to double by 2035 the U.S. share of electricity from clean energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear and "clean" coal.

As part of that program, Obama announced a plan to improve energy efficiency in U.S. commercial buildings by offering businesses … Read more

Scientists from Stanford University and the University of California at Davis have crunched the numbers and come up with a plan for how the world might economically and feasibly make the move to renewable energy in the next 20 to 40 years.

In a two-part paper (Part 1 PDF, Part 2 PDF) published in the journal Energy Policy, Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi show in great detail the who, what, where, and how of implementing a renewable energy-run world. It includes solutions to economic, material, and transport issues.

Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist and professor of civil and environmental … Read more

The high-powered schmoozing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has yielded a project to install solar-powered cell phone towers in India.

Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) and lithium ion battery maker Boston Power today announced that VNL will test the small-scale telecom stations with Boston Power's batteries. VNL had originally developed the system with lead acid batteries.

The communications-based stations, called WorldGSM, are designed to operate entirely from a few solar panels and are not connected to the grid. The Boston Power batteries can power the tower, which can be set up in half a day, for up … Read more

Scientific Conservation, a company that specializes in energy consumption forecasting, has received $15.65 million in Series B funding, the start-up announced Tuesday.

The company is just one example of the way traditional IT is now intersecting with green tech.

Scientific Conservation offers software as a service (SaaS) that allows the company to monitor a building's energy consumption in real-time, apply that data to energy management diagnostics and analytics, and then use that created knowledge to predict the building's energy consumption in the future.

The result is a customized energy plan for a building that is always being … Read more

It's time to digitize power supplies to make them smart enough to work with multiple devices and draw only the power that electronics need, according to start-up Green Plug.

Green Plug today at the Consumer Electronics Show introduced its Green Power Processor, which it said will be available in the second quarter.

The Green Power Processor is a chip designed for digital power supplies, which are meant to be more versatile and efficient than existing analog power adapters.

When built into a power supply, the processor can detect how much voltage and power a device, such as a PC … Read more

analysis DETROIT--Major automakers are scrambling to strip hundreds of pounds off future pickup trucks in an effort to meet new U.S. standards for fuel economy without sacrificing strength or towing capability.

The new mandates take effect in 2016, giving automakers such as Ford and General Motors just one design cycle to make significant changes that will require costly steel substitutes including aluminum, new steel alloys, and magnesium.

Automakers are faced with having to pass on those higher costs to consumers who have come to associate mass with performance.

"There is a lot of hand-wringing in the industry right … Read more

Active Power is offering an updated version of its flywheel generator specifically designed for backing up microprocessor-based equipment, the company announced today.

Its CleanSource UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system is available in 480-volt (300 kVA and 600 kVA) and 400-volt (250 kVA and 500 kVA) configurations.

"Designed based on customer feedback, the G-Series is an enhancement to our current generation of UPS technology and is a cost and feature optimized solution for the 300 to 600 kVA power range," Active Power CTO Uwe Schrader-Hausmann said in a statement.

A flywheel generator uses electricity from the electric grid to … Read more

As more companies realize the savings involved in running large commercial buildings more efficiently when it comes to energy, sales of automated building energy management systems are poised to soar.

The U.S. market for such systems will grow to $2.4 billion annually by 2016 compared to seeing $900 million in revenue for 2010, according to the "Building Energy Management Systems" report released today by Pike Research.

Products include optimization software for a particular building's needs, as well as analytics that tap in to smart grids to predict peak supply and demand scenarios and adjust internal … Read more