SunRun teams with Virgance to finance solar for consumers

Hard economic times mean fewer consumers will shell out for expensive solar panels. Also hard hit are startups that offer no-money-down programs to lease panels or buy their power but can’t find banks to partner with. So, teaming with SunRun — one of the few outfits that still has a healthy line of financing — is a minor coup for Virgance, a company that plans to sign up thousands of new solar users.

I’ve written … Continue Reading

Ethanol's a bust, so move to chemicals, says Genomatica

Genomatica, a bioengineering startup that says its scientific approach can rapidly find alternatives to fossil fuel-based chemicals, has some advice for the beleaguered ethanol industry: Don’t make ethanol.

The company has bred a new microorganism capable of going through the same distiller’s process that makes ethanol, but instead producing methyl ethyl ketone, a common industrial solvent also known as butanone or MEK. Chief executive Chris Gann says existing ethanol plants can use the microorganism without … Continue Reading

Virgance gets funding, deal to install solar for businesses

Virgance, a San Francisco startup with multiple business lines all focusing on social activism, has scored $750,000 in seed funding and is also unveiling a new deal that should help it install more solar panels on roofs around the Bay Area.

We’ve covered Virgance before, although it’s a difficult company to track given that it has several founder teams, each focused on different ideas. There’s Carrotmob, which just soft-launched today; it organizes groups of consumers … Continue Reading

Worio adds tag-based discovery to Google

One of the latest attempts to break into the search market is Worio, a Vancouver, B.C. startup that uses tagging to augment results from Google and other big engines. The company went into beta last July, and today is announcing that it has indexed 100 million pages.

New search companies usually fall in one of two categories. First are blockbuster attempts to “beat” Google with a better technology. The last of these to try its … Continue Reading

PowerMeter: Proof positive Google wants to run your life

Joining Google’s Android, Calendar, Docs, Mail, Maps, Reader and a few dozen other products today is a new application, PowerMeter. It’s not launched yet, but when it is, it’ll help you keep track of your home power usage by tapping into information sent from your devices to your electrical meter, and from there on to the “smart grid”.

What Google is showing of PowerMeter looks a bit like a line graph, with the X-axis representing … Continue Reading

Inaction in IT means computing still ain't green

If you were reading VentureBeat a couple of 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 … Continue Reading

Twine, explosively growing, is an early success

It hasn’t been long since Twine, a semi-intelligent bookmarking service, launched last October. That means it’s too early to call the company a surefire success. On the other hand, all signs so far are pointing that way: A casual check I recently made revealed that Twine’s traffic has been growing far more rapidly than the vast majority of its startup peers.

That may not sound exciting to some disillusioned readers. Twine, if you’ll recall, was … Continue Reading

Solar Power Partners takes on $32M for solar panel sales

Add another solar-as-a-service company to the list of those unfazed by the recession. Solar Power Partners, a Mill Valley, Calif. company that installs panels for commercial customers but retains ownership in order to sell the electricity from them, has taken on $32 million more in funding.

The money was reported this morning by peHUB. SPP also took money less than six months ago, which at the time was enough to put it over the $100 … Continue Reading

Borrego Solar gets $14M for the boring side of solar

Solar power offers plenty of exciting technological advances to talk about. If those advances were all that mattered, nobody would have to worry about whether the business is profitable or efficient. Yet those nasty little details persist, making or breaking companies like Borrego Solar, an installation outfit that just received a $14 million investment.

Borrego is a veteran California company that puts solar racks on homes and businesses. It and its peers have flourished over … Continue Reading

VC-backed Cash4Gold attracts complaints (updated)

[Updated: Cash4Gold representative Weronika Cwir has responded, and vehemently denied many of the allegations made in this article. She said the main source VentureBeat quoted was a short-term employee terminated by the company who has malicious intent. Below is her response in italics:]

Virtually every point made by the author of the posting is false or misleading. Following is a list of some of those statements:

1) It is false to claim there … Continue Reading

News flash: Nobody gives a damn about global warming

An overlooked item from the world of cleantech reporting: The ever-fickle light of public attention is fading from the problem of global warming, in favor of, well, everything else. A Pew Center report from last week suggests that there are few things people care about less than whether the sea comes creeping over their doorstep in a few decades.

The report isn’t an anomaly, either. Despite plenty of media attention, a growing number of data … Continue Reading

BrightView picks up $6M for improved solar manufacturing

BrightView, a solar tech firm that hopes to improve the production of photovoltaic solar cells, has raised $6 million in a first round of funding. (The company is not to be confused with BrightView Technologies, an optics company in North Carolina.)

Rather than manufacturing its own cells, BrightView plans to work with other companies to optimize its manufacturing and lower costs. Due to its proximity to Europe, the company plans to work there; one of … Continue Reading

Personal rapid transit gets another chance at life

Beneath the tall buildings and alleys of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City, in a hidden, vault-like space, a unique transportation system may one day whisk passengers back and forth to their destinations, faster than any bus system and more accurately than rail. Instead, it will use small, driverless pods that bear as much resemblance to taxis as public transit.

The scheme is called personal rapid transit (PRT), and it’s an idea that’s been floating around for … Continue Reading

Aptera sets October delivery date for three-wheeled electric vehicle

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 … Continue Reading