Boston-based demand response firm EnerNOC wants to expand its energy efficiency business — and it has just acquired a 30-person company called Cogent Energy, based in Concord, Calif., to accelerate the effort. In particular, EnerNOC says in a release this morning that Cogent’s tech and experience in monitoring-based commissioning services, or MBCx — essentially analyzing a building’s energy use and then helping a customer fine-tune it for maximum efficiency – will allow the firm to serve smaller facilities that have less sophisticated control systems than its current network of industrial, commercial and institutional power users.
By Josie Garthwaite, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 13:42 PST
One of the largest smart grid infrastructure players and one of the largest U.S. phone companies are linking up. AT&T and Silver Spring Networks, a 7-year-old company that sells smart grid networking gear to utilities, have announced a deal this morning by which Silver Spring will be able use AT&T’s network to connect its smart grid gear to the utility back office (in geek terms that’s called backhaul). The financials of the deal were not disclosed.
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Tuesday, December 8, 2009 09:10 PST
The grand ambitions and the business model of Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure startup Better Place are nothing if not controversial, but the man himself has the speaking skills of Steve Jobs. And in his description of why Copenhagen is important, in this video clip made by Found Object Films, the UN Foundation and TckTckTck, I think he’s basically right. Agassi says that no matter what happens at the summit, its importance is in creating a high level of public awareness about the climate crisis, and showing governments that the public stands behind action against climate change (hat tip Triple Pundit).
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Friday, December 4, 2009 11:04 PST
Getting the standards worked out for smart appliances — dishwashers, microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology — could be one of the biggest challenges facing the smart grid today. For the official in charge of coordinating the standards process at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), George Arnold (one of our Top 15 Smart Grid Influencers), getting the standards established for connecting smart appliances in homes is key and something he’s hard at work on. “It’s a serious problem,” Arnold told us in a phone interview about the variety of conflicting standards currently in the works for connecting smart appliances in homes.
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Thursday, December 3, 2009 12:11 PST
The story General Motors wants to tell today is about the Chevy Volt — the extended-range electric vehicle that symbolizes the company’s efforts to emphasize innovation, advanced technology, fuel efficiency and a new culture for the Detroit automaker in a post-bailout world.
By Josie Garthwaite, Wednesday, December 2, 2009 13:00 PST
The solar PV industry is currently dominated by silicon-based cell technology, but modules made of organic solar cells are seen as one of the most promising emerging technologies that could eventually become a serious competitor. That’s the hope of Heliatek, a German startup developing solar cells using organic dyes that are chemically synthesized from hydrocarbons. The company, formed in 2006 as a spin-off from the Universities of Dresden and Ulm, announced late last week that is has raised a $27 million second round of financing led by the pan-European venture firm Wellington Partners.
By Justin Moresco, Monday, November 30, 2009 15:00 PST
The Department of Energy earlier this week announced $18 million in funding grants from the recovery act to support innovation coming from small clean energy businesses. Here’s a look at three of the recipients focused on the green building industry: Chelix, KaZaK and Trinity Thermal Systems. The technologies developed could find ready customers in the growing U.S. green building retrofit market, which is expected to reach $2.1 billion-$3.7 billion on an annual basis by 2014.
By Justin Moresco, Friday, November 27, 2009 03:00 PST
President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao this week launched a joint effort to “reduce oil dependency, cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote economic growth” through accelerated deployment of electric vehicles — an effort that needn’t exist in opposition to “green mobility efforts.” Nor should it overplay the role of personal vehicles as a solution to the challenges of fast-growing urban centers, warns energy and transportation scholar Lee Schipper in the Dot Earth blog today.
By Josie Garthwaite, Thursday, November 19, 2009 17:12 PST
Step aside “Cash for Clunkers,” and make way for “Cash for Caulkers.” The White House is reportedly considering rolling out a two-year, $23 billion program to encourage homeowners to undertake weatherization projects such as adding air sealing, insulation and energy-saving light bulbs. The program would be called Home Star -– playing off the name Energy Star, the Environmental Protection Agency’s widely recognized energy efficiency program. The New York Times, in a story published last night, reported Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, as saying that it’s one of the “top things he’s looking at.”
By Justin Moresco, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 12:58 PST
The co-founders of Aptera Motors, Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony, did not leave the three-wheeled electric car startup by choice, according to a report this morning over at Wired’s Autopia. Rather, unnamed sources tell the blog that Fambro and Anthony were pushed out in “a boardroom confrontation between the original founders and the auto industry veterans” brought onto the Aptera executive team last year.
By Josie Garthwaite, Monday, November 16, 2009 13:00 PST
Data center managers aren’t the only ones suddenly charmed by solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing storage needs. A growing number of VCs are also warming to the green, high-performance potential of the storage technology (GigaOM Pro Research, subscription required).
By Pedro Hernandez, Saturday, November 14, 2009 09:00 PST
People Power, the latest Silicon Valley venture focused on the home energy management space, will officially launch today, hoping its consumer-friendly product design and open-source home area network platform will make it stand out in an increasingly crowded industry. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup has raised an undisclosed amount in its first venture round from New Cycle Capital and several angel investors to support the commercialization of the company’s product launch. “We think we can build something that is significantly better than what we’ve seen on the market so far,” founder and CEO Gene Wang told us.
By Justin Moresco, Monday, November 9, 2009 03:00 PST
RecycleBank, which partners with cities to provide incentives for residential recycling, has just put another $28.25 million in the bank, according to a filing with the SEC. Separately this morning, the company announced a new partnership with Kashless.org, the re-commerce company founded by former Imperium Renewables CEO and serial entrepreneur Martin Tobias.
By Josie Garthwaite, Tuesday, November 3, 2009 12:41 PST
As utilities start to build large solar projects and solar power makes up an increasingly larger portion of the electricity mix, integrating this energy into the grid will be a challenge. Solar, like wind, is intermittent — power from the sun fluctuates when clouds pass overhead and wind doesn’t blow consistently. Now General Electric, which has been a major player in helping to integrate wind into the world’s power grids, wants to do the same for solar.
By Jennifer Kho, Friday, October 30, 2009 14:55 PST
The Department of Energy this week announced the first round of grants under its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program, which was created to back risky but potentially breakthrough technologies. Out of the 37 projects awarded grants, three are focused on improving building energy efficiency and could help spur what Secretary of Energy Steven Chu hopes will be “the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies.”…
By Justin Moresco, Friday, October 30, 2009 00:01 PST
Of the $151 million in grants announced this week under ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), the Department of Energy’s highly competitive program for high-risk, early-stage energy technologies, more than a fifth — some $33 million — has been allocated for green vehicle projects. Since the program is meant to support work on tech that other investors consider too risky, each of the projects — from boosting the fuel economy of gas-powered cars to replacing lithium-ion batteries as the technology of choice for electric vehicles — represent something of a gamble. So when it comes to choosing ideas for transforming the auto industry and cleaning up transportation, how wisely is the DOE placing its chips?
By Josie Garthwaite, Wednesday, October 28, 2009 09:00 PST
What can software do for hybrid fuel economy? Ford Motor and researchers at the University of Michigan plan to find out in a new project meant to speed development of more fuel-efficient hybrid systems. According to an announcement from Ford yesterday, the pair will run up to 175,000 computer design simulations of hybrid control systems, with the goal of eventually developing a software system that would allow drivers to select from several performance settings based on fuel efficiency and other driving preferences.
By Josie Garthwaite, Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:27 PST
Apple’s iPhone has apps for Car 2.0, for home energy management and for fuel efficiency. Now here’s one for clean power that I wasn’t expecting to see: a wind speed tester courtesy of small wind turbine maker Mariah Power. Todd Woody profiles the app in the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog this morning, and says the application uses the iPhone’s microphone to capture the sound of the wind and then utilizes an algorithm to tune out the surrounding noise and calculate the wind decibel speed.
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Thursday, October 22, 2009 08:44 PST
We don’t usually see recycling as much of a money saver for big ticket consumer electronics. Some electronics makers still charge a premium for devices that count ease of recycling among their green credentials, and some companies charge to reclaim their equipment for recycling. (For example, I’d have to pay $30 for Apple to take back my laptop for recycling unless I buy a new Mac to replace it). But for plug-in cars — overgrown consumer electronics in many ways — recycling the battery could be one of the keys to reducing cost.
By Josie Garthwaite, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 05:00 PST
Hundreds of bills escaped California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto power last night ahead of a midnight deadline to act on a mountain of legislation — but not a pair of long-debated clean energy bills. As expected, the governor killed two items, which would have required utilities in California to get at least a third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, but with limits for how much of that goal they could meet with power generated out of state (at an Arizona solar farm, for example).
By Josie Garthwaite, Monday, October 12, 2009 08:57 PST
If it seems like it’s been twice as hard to raise money for renewable projects this year compared with 2007, that’s because it has been. At the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, John Eber, managing director at investment bank JP Morgan, said tax-equity financing for renewable energy is expected to total $2.5-$2.6 billion this year, down from $3.6 billion last year and $6 billion in 2007. Tax-equity financing is based on the exchange of tax credits, so it’s no wonder it has plummeted in a market where profits — and therefore taxes high enough to make use of tax credits for renewable-energy projects — are harder to come by.
By Jennifer Kho, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 00:00 PST
In the rush to grow energy crops for producing alternative fuels, jatropha has often been heralded as the most promising because it can be grown on marginal land. But so far jatropha hasn’t lived up to the hype — requiring too much water and producing too little yield — prompting some early investors, like oil giant BP, to give up on the crop. But a young Encinitas, Calif.-based startup, SG Biofuels, says the problem with these early efforts was that they put the cart before the horse.
By Justin Moresco, Friday, September 25, 2009 10:00 PST
LS9, a company which is using a genetically modified version of e.coli bacteria to make diesel from biomass, on Thursday announced it has raised $25 million in its third round of funding. Chevron Technology Ventures’ venture capital arm, CTTV Investments, participated in the round, making this the latest biofuel project from the big oil company. In 2008, Chevron announced a development deal with algae-based fuel company Solazyme, and has been working on a cellulosic ethanol joint venture, called Catchlight Energy, with forest-product company Weyerhaeuser.
By Jennifer Kho, Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:22 PST
Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn Motors has been stating its grand vision for a while: to supply a range of automakers and grid operators with energy storage technology created with partner EEStor. That’s what Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told us at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference earlier this year. But this week, Clifford seems to have accelerated those plans and told Reuters and GM-Volt that Zenn no longer plans to sell its own higher-speed electric vehicle (the cityZENN car), and will also “shift focus away” from the low-speed electric it currently sells.
By Katie Fehrenbacher, Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:47 PST
EnerNOC Buys Cogent Energy to Build Up Efficiency Biz
War Room
Broadsheet
Glenn Greenwald
