"Venture investment in energy technology firms reached new highs this year, more than tripling the investment recorded for 2005, according to data released Wednesday by Thomson Financial and the National Venture Capital Association." states an article in Fortune Small Business.
Straight.com has an article about investment in clean energy companies north of the border in British Columbia. Read the article here.
From the Red Herring comes a story about the World Economic Forum naming "startup technology companies that the international organization said have demonstrated visionary leadership and proven technology that could change business and society." See the World Economic Forum list here.
The Fresno Bee is reporting on the opening of a new test facility on the campus of Fresno State. The facility, a $4 million incubator is run as a partnership between Fresno State and the Central Valley Business Incubator. The facility will research technologies to meet the region's "present and future needs." A number of companies are working at the facility on products that range from using solar energy to move water (an amazing stat from the article is that "about 10% of the state's peak energy loads are tied up in delivering water from the state's massive aqueduct systems to the pumping stations that deliver water to homeowners' taps"); a company that uses technology to measure soil moisture levels using wireless sensors; a steam distillation warer purification system; a diesel fuel extender to supplement diesel fuel with vegetable oil and make it burn cleaner. An interesting facility that one hopes will lead to more innovations here in California. Read the entire article here
.BusinessWeek's has a piece about how "going green" in one's residence, through the use of renewable energy, has a rising cachet.
Is green the new black? Over one million U.S. households now warm their homes in the winter with heat from the earth instead of using furnaces or fuel lines. Elton John, Richard Branson—the chief executive of Virgin Airlines—and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft (MSFT), use ground-source energy in their homes too.Even George W. Bush has a geothermal system in his vacation home in Crawford, Tex. Designed by architect David Heymann, Prairie Chapel Ranch captures solar energy and has a cistern that gathers rainwater and wastewater, purifies it, and then uses it to irrigate the greenery around the Presidential vacation home.
"...'We have this myopic vision in Vermont that it’s cloudy and solar doesn’t work in Vermont,' said Wolfe.
The two countries that are investing the most in solar power are Germany and Japan, he noted. And, Vermont receives 30 percent more sun than Germany. In fact, it receives 80 percent of the sun that Florida does.
'Too often people compare any given region’s solar resource to that of Southern California, and that’s problematic,' Wolfe said. 'There are only six places in the world that have the solar resource of Southern California.'
As with oil and coal resources, Wolfe said the United States has more solar resources than many countries. But, it is not yet fully utilizing its potential...
DORSET [VT]— A local energy crusader has taken his passion for renewable energy to the national level while still maintaining connections to his home community."...Thomas Hand of Dorset, a recent graduate of Middlebury College, has joined the staff of NativeEnergy, a Charlotte-based nonprofit that works with Native American and Alaska Native villages, as well as individual clients, to create projects that will have sustainable economic benefits for those populations. Most recently, Hand, 22, helped manage a project with his alma mater's ski team to help them go carbon-neutral. He's also helped lead the family business, Hand Motors in Manchester, to the cutting edge of renewable energy use.
Hand's interest in sustainability and environmental issues has a long history. While still a student at Middlebury, he worked on numerous energy efficiency initiatives. The most successful and well-known of these was Project BioBus...."
The inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter, Dean Kamen was interviewed in a CNET.com article. While the article is light on renewable energy news, the article states that Kamen is working on "...an offgrid source of electricity in dishwasher-size boxes, throughout the developing world through microfinancing..." Kamen discusses the device,
"...The energy source is very environmentally friendly. Many of its big advantages include not needing extra maintenance or a power grid. It'll burn any fuel. We ran for 24 weeks two units in two separate villages in Bangladesh, and the only fuel that went into them was cow dung sitting in a pit next to them, going through a natural decomposition process. Yet they ran perfectly and gave these villages electricity..."This device sounds like a smaller version of what already is being done in Vermont. The Cow Power program encourages dairy farmers to use generators that run on methane from cow manure ("cow patties") to produce electricity that is used on their farms and sold to the local utility's customers who opt in to pay a higher rate to cover costs of installation. Despite Kamen's stellar record of inventions, with all the hype and hoopla that surrounded the Segway, before it was introduced, one has to wonder if the device will live up to its promise.
A number of California cities have decided not to renew energy contracts with a coal fired plant in Utah.
"In an abrupt about-face, Burbank and several other Southern California cities are joining with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in abandoning plans to renew long-term contracts for coal-fired electricity from a Utah power plant.In forsaking their largest power source, the cities will be gambling on the availability of adequate alternative energy from cleaner sources by 2027, after their current contracts with the Utah facility expire.
"It's a huge change," Burbank Mayor Todd Campbell cheerfully admitted. Campbell and the City Council had voted unanimously last month to extend their contract with the Intermountain Power Agency in Delta, Utah, to 2044, seeking to beat the clock on a landmark greenhouse-gas state law that takes effect Jan. 1 prohibiting such contract renewals...."
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