Chris Morrison | posted on February 9, 2009

If you were reading VentureBeat a couple weeks ago, you may have seen an article suggesting that most people don’t care about global warming — despite a recent deluge of media about climate change and renewable energy, many people aren’t convinced. Today a new study is suggesting that the geeky, forward-thinking information technology industry is also behind on becoming environmentally friendly.

The study by Think Ecological, a group owned by BPM Forum, Intel and Rackable Systems, says that while over 80 percent of companies are more sensitive to ecological issues than they were a year ago, about the same number give their own industry “failing grades” in carrying out ecological practices.

To simplify some of the study’s findings, the people who control the computing infrastructures of major corporations are behind the curve, spending their time hounding employees to not print out emails rather than tackling major issues like reducing the amount of energy that power-sucking server farms consume. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on January 23, 2009

 

 

One of the stranger-looking representatives of the electric car revolution is approaching its public debut. The Aptera 2e, an all-electric car that the company calls an “aerodynamic marvel,” has reached pre-production and is scheduled to start being manufactured in October of this year.

Aptera’s real claim to fame, aside from building electric vehicles in the first place, is its three-wheeled design that places two wheels at the front of the car and one in the back. This arrangement confers some steering and efficiency advantages, but is unknown in modern cars, which has prompted some (including me) to suggest that Aptera will have difficulty breaking into the market. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on January 14, 2009

 

 

The Detroit Auto Show is underway, and the world’s most famous vehicle brands are touting the next generation of cars. And although yesterday’s fervent promises of hydrogen-powered vehicleshave mostly fallen away, they’ve been replaced with new promises, this time centered around the idea of the electric car.

Don’t believe the hype. Although electric vehicles are almost certainly the way forward, much of the motion is really a show intended to sway the opinion of consumers and legislators in the short term. Startups hope to build an early niche, and America’s big auto makers are hoping their fervent hand-waving will bring accolades and government money — but in the near term, we’ll see little motion in the industry. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on January 9, 2009

 

 

SolFocus, the most heavily-funded concentrating solar startup around, has just drawn a bit further ahead of the pack with $47.5 million in fresh capital. With the money, the company has edged near $150 million in total funding, and with luck, widespread installation of a currently rare type of solar panel.

In the concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) arrays of SolFocus and similar companies, a tiny, highly-efficient solar cell becomes the focus of sunlight intensified many times over by lenses and mirrors. The technology’s creators claim it’s a better, cheaper way to harvest solar energy than a regular solar panel. But in the eyes of the energy industry, it’s still a young, unproven technology.

SolFocus has stood out by being one of the earliest founded, and most heavily supported, of the CPV outfits. The company was founded in 2005, and spent its early years at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where some of today’s most uniquitous technologies were first conceived.

Also of note is a deal the company struck in November of last year, a $103 million purchase of its panels by Spanish company EPME Solar. The agreement was the largest of its type so far and should help prove whether CPV is a worthwhile technology. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on December 29, 2008

 

 

Home heating and cooling has always been done by brute force. Vents blow regulated air throughout a house, and somewhere, a thermometer tells the entire system when to stop or start. But houses should be able to make smart decisions on when and how to run their heating or cooling systems, thinks a company called Suntulit; they just need technology to sense humans and predict when to start changing the temperature.

The main barrier to installing smart temperature control systems, of course, has always been the ease of setting up a dumb ones. It’s very simple to just build ventilation tubes throughout a house and push through cold or hot air depending on the direction of the central thermometer. Adding a little intelligence doesn’t just require careful planning, it also typically takes a lot more money, so the most common system controls are people physically opening and closing vents, and manually raising or lowering the temperature controls.

To do a better job, Suntulit’s setup thus has to involve devices that can open and close vents on their own, sensors to tell when people are around, and a computer brain with predictive abilities. And all of the above has to be done cheaply. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on December 8, 2008

 

A developing situation in South Africa may hint at what lies ahead for the world’s nations, a future holding no easy choices when it comes to making and using electricity.

State-owned utility Eskom has abandoned a plan for an $11.5 billion nuclear generator that would have boosted the country’s electrical capacity by about 10 percent. Eskom says the price was too high, in part because the global recession has made financing more difficult.

Unfortunately, the cancellation leaves a hole that must be filled. In general, the country is open to building new coal plants, and several are already slated, but the local energy mix is already heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

South Africa is also strained to the max when it comes to its energy supply, with several shortfalls already projected for the coming year. That makes building more cheap and easy coal or gas plants a tempting fix, especially with prices temporarily low. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on December 1, 2008

 

The entire world hopes to start driving electric cars soon, and Africa, despite its reputation for poor economies, is no exception. Luckily, a South African company called Optimal Energy is working to release a vehicle in 2010.

And unlike the many attempts to make electric cars as small and cheap as possible, the vehicle, called the Joule, will be a highway-speed, multi-passenger model aimed at the same people that buy full-priced four door vehicles, making it a good fit for Europe and the United States.

Optimal has the benefit of strong support from its government, which has put money into the company through a research investment fund. Having such backing gives Optimal the time to pay close attention to its engineering and design choices.

That has resulted in some some uncommon bonuses for buyers, like an optional solar panel integrated with the roof that will help charge the car, and varying seat designs — the standard model will have six seats, three front and three back, but North Americans would likely be more comfortable with four. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on November 26, 2008

A common idea for making solar cells more effective is to concentrate sunlight on them with lenses and mirrors. But for thin-film solar, which is made up of cheaper materials than typical silicon-based photovoltaic cells, these focusing techniques are hardly mentioned. Optony hopes it can bridge this gap with a new technology.

At first glance, the disadvantages to concentrating sunlight on thin-film seem to outnumber the advantages. Thin-film solar is not only dirt cheap, it is also fairly inefficient at converting sunlight to electricity. That means there’s little cost benefit to adding equipment like mirrors, which may well cost more than the thin-film itself. Also, known thin-film compositions tend to degrade under intense sunlight. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on November 24, 2008

Better Place (formerly Project Better Place) has scored a coup in the California Bay Area. The electric vehicle startup has struck a deal with the region, including the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, to set up a $1 billion charging network for electric cars, with car availability beginning in 2012.

Unlike its charging network in Israel, it looks like the Better Place network in the Bay Area is a plan to support electric car development throughout the state. The deal in Israel involved a tie-up with Nissan-Renault to make the small cars that work with the stations, which swap out depleted batteries for new ones. …read full discussion

Chris Morrison | posted on November 20, 2008

We may be in the depths of a credit crunch, but some banks still seem willing to give loans to renewable energy projects. This morning, solar services firm SunRun is announcing a $105 million commitment by U.S. Bancorp(USB) to buy about 2,000 of the residential projects it installs.

Keep in mind that this isn’t equity or debt money that SunRun itself will receive. Because the company leases out solar arrays that it installs on customers’ roofs, the financing is more like a guarantee that SunRun can keep working at full speed without worrying about how to pay for the installations. For USB, the investment will provide predictable returns over the next several years as customers pay for the power they receive from their solar panels.

To date, only a few companies like SunRun have brought in similar financing. “This is a specialty asset class,” says Nat Kreamer, the company’s chief operating officer. “It’s not like getting a home loan — it takes real expertise.” But as with any type of asset, if it supplies steady returns, experts will appear. The USB commitment is a significant show of confidence during hard times. …read full discussion