green

DAVIS, Calif.--UPDATE: John Melo, CEO of alternative fuel (and medicine) maker Amyris Technologies, told an audience at the GoingGreen conference that when he worked at BP two years ago, he was part of a project to determine if hydrogen made sense as an auto fuel.

The answer was yes, decades from now.

"We determined that it would take 40 to 50 years to get hydrogen at scale," he said."It will be a reality. It will just be further out."

In the meantime, there will be a biofuel boom that will go for 20 to … Read more

Reporters on the front lines of climate change ate locally grown food from biodegradable tableware at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference held at Stanford University last week .

Yet, they also boarded gas-guzzling, air-conditioned buses to tour Google's solar headquarters, green buildings in San Francisco and area ecosystems. The nonprofit Environmental Defense handed out folders about safeguarding the oceans. These came inside vinyl shoulder bags that stank of the same toxic chemicals that poison waterways. Most of some 900 attendees flew to the event in petroleum-powered planes to discuss how to report about imperiled ecosystems, from the big … Read more

Serious Materials plans to build a big, multimillion dollar factory that's going to be powered by solar panels.

The company is currently scouting out a site for a factory that will be capable of churning out 400 million square feet of drywall a year, said CEO Kevin Surace. The factory, however, will only require a 100-kilowatt solar system to provide its power. The relatively low power requirements come from how Serious makes drywall.

One hundred kilowatts is enough to power about 33 homes. For industrial manufacturing, that's not a low of power. Google put a solar system in … Read more

Ever fling fast-food wrappers from the window of your speeding Prius? True Green Confessions invites you to tell the tale. Unlike so many other green social networking websites that encourage you to practice bicycling, recycling and other planet-friendly habits, here you can share the shame of not doing enough or not caring enough about your fat carbon footprint.

There are many confessions about driving, like taking the SUV to the organic grocery store, as well as rants against "self-righteous" vegans. Other posts are a bit more twisted. One mother-to-be wrote: "I dont (sic) think I am contributing … Read more

It looks like the futuristic power system for electric cars promised by EEStor could be a little late.

EEStor CEO Richard Weir told CNET News.com in a brief phone interview that commercial production of its energy storage system--a device that holds electricity and functions somewhat like a battery--will be sometime in the next 10 months or so. The unit is also referred to as an "ultracapacitor."

"We intend to be in production on or before the middle of next year," he said.

Although that means that the company could be in production by tomorrow, the … Read more

SolFocus, a solar technology company that was incubated at the Palo Alto Research Center (now an offshoot of Xerox), has raised $52 million more dollars to help it launch in Europe.

The company, which had previously raised $27 million, specializes in solar concentrators, which direct more sunlight onto solar cells that would ordinarily fall on them. The more sunlight, the more electricity the solar cell can generate. The more electricity a cell can generate, the more economical solar energy--which generally still costs about twice as much as regular grid power--becomes.

SolFocus' concentrators magnify the light 500 times. Several companies make … Read more

The explosion in clean tech investing has been a boon to material scientists and engineers from the semiconductor industry. Sources at Intel tell me that many of them have seen co-workers depart for solar start-ups or companies working on new types of batteries.

But software experts shouldn't feel left out, notes Warren Weiss, a general partner at venture capital firm Foundation Partners in a stopover at the firm's offices last week (They are right next to Sunset Magazine in Menlo Park, Calif.). In clean tech, one of the bigger opportunities, he says, is with companies that want to … Read more

A group in Dessau, Germany, has received funds and famed architect Rem Koolhaas as an adviser in its quest to build the world's largest structure.

Dubbed a "monument for all of us" the new "Great Pyramid," which is estimated would take about 30 years to complete, would be about 1,900 feet tall and 10 times larger than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, according to the Great Pyramid's Web site.

Instead of being a monument to only a few individuals, Germany's Great Pyramid would be a communal tomb open to anyone regardless of … Read more

Green homes come from factories.

It sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. By building a home in a factory, builders can cut down on the amount of wood that gets thrown out and trips back and forth to the lumberyard. Plus, building in a factory lets the contractors get tighter seals on everything, which leads to better insulation and less chance of mold getting into the walls. (The home also gets done in much less time and costs a little less, if you live in an area where construction costs are high.)

Michelle Kaufmann Designs is currently building … Read more