Green tech news harvest: Twittering energy usage, biofuels blues

Off the green wire: price drop for solar; more biofuels backlash; First Solar looks to utilities; private equity does 'green business;' start-up makes biodiesel from biomass; and transmission wires for renewables pits clean energy versus nature lovers.

by Martin LaMonica

May 1, 2008 7:24 AM PDT Follow @mlamonica

A sampling of green tech news, from California to Malyasia.

The House That Twitters Its Energy Use ? Earth2Tech - Where a house twitters what its meter reads. A great use of Twitter.

Technology Review: A Price Drop for Solar Panels - Check in on the solar price/silicon shortage balance: Travis Bradford of the Prometheus Institute predicts prices for panels to drop in half in the next few years.

Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Biofuels Backlash: Asian Palm-Oil Producers Shut Plants - On the biofuels blues beat, WSJ reports that Asian biodiesel producers are shelving tens of millions of dollars worth of plants while European plants have shut down. U.S. biodiesel producers are shutting down, too. Asian cancellation may be a good thing, environmentally.

First Solar poised to enter utility market - The darling of public solar companies, First Solar, has an application in California to build a solar power plant with its cadmium telluride panels. This year it expects to top $1 billion in revenue.

Prominent Green Group to Help Buyout Firm - New York Times - The big daddy of private equity--Kohlberg Kravis Roberts--will put the squeeze on companies to become more 'green' by working with Environmental Defense Fund. Another case of business working with environmentalists.

Watertown Daily Times | SMALL TECHNOLOGY A BIG DEAL - Distributed gasification of biomass to make bidiesel. Small company in upstate New York is developing technology that could have impact around the world.

Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Green Line: California Transmission Battle Divides Environmentalists - Transmission lines are becoming a fault line in the battle between enviros and clean energy advocates. California struggles with plan to put transmission lines from solar power plants through state park