Just a day after the company reported record sales and its first-ever quarterly profit, Consumer Reports announced that the electric vehicle manufacturer’s Model S has received the highest test rating of any car in its 2013 car ratings. And just to put a cherry on top, the notoriously tough Consumer Reports writers say that the $89,650 Tesla Model S comes close to, and just may be, the best car ever.

“This car performs better than anything we’ve ever tested before,” Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ director of testing says. “Not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really, really well.”

Wow.

Because the batteries are in the floor, the car’s center of gravity is very low, Consumer Reports says, giving it superb handling. The Model S, which seats 7 with an optional jump seat, has “impressive power” and uses half the energy of a Toyota Prius, for a 200-mile range.

Here’s Consumer Reports video report:

Tesla’s 17″ touchscreen, which drivers use to control the vehicle’s climate and other systems, is “like a giant iPad,” and almost as simple to use, the report states. And despite the fact that Tesla has only been building cars for a few years, the Model S performs better than vehicles made by manufacturers that have been building vehicles for over a hundred years, Consumer Reports says.

Tesla earned its first-ever profit of $15 million this past quarter on record sales of $562 million. In the earnings release, CEO Elon Musk said he anticipates demand of 30,000 cars a year in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. But with reviews like this, he may want to revise that number significantly upwards.

One note for those of us who don’t have $90,000 in loose change under the sofa seats: Musk promised that Tesla’s next model will be much more affordable.

“The Model S is priced substantially lower than the Roadster, and our third generation vehicle will again be priced much lower than the Model S,” he said yesterday in a statement.

Recycling is on the rise, and more consumers are going green, according to a new Earth Day-timed study from Bridgestone.

The company surveyed 4,000 Americans about their green habits and found that 86 percent of consumers recycle, and 52 percent recycle more than they did two years ago.  Bridgestone released these findings today as part of its Earth Day 2013 Consumer Recycling and Sustainability Survey.

The study revealed that 92 percent of consumers say a product or manufacturer’s environmental sustainability has some impact on their purchasing decisions. Respondents also indicated that the most important ways a company can show they are environmentally friendly are creating a product that minimizes energy and water use and that minimizes generated waste and carbon emissions tied to waste.

Seattle, Wash., and Minneapolis, Minn., are home to the most recyclers using curbside or recycling centers; and residents of Riverside, Calif., are the most committed to recycling anything and everything they can.

The infographic released with the study provides tips on how to recycle the most difficult items, including donating large items like refrigerators to local organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

This Earth Day, consumers are reminded to take care of our planet, and as 80 percent of the respondents noted, recycling will continue to grow in importance in the future.

Take a look at the full infographic below.

Photo Credit: Bridgestone America

But speed wasn’t the only issue.

Rather, the race for better, smaller, faster supercomputers now includes an adjective that wasn’t nearly as common five years ago: greener. In other words, more energy efficient. And, not incidentally, cheaper.

“I’ve been to Los Alamos,” Rob Clyde says. “In many cases it’s not just the cost of the electricity, it’s the fact that you just can’t get more.”

Clyde is the CEO of Adaptive Computing, which produces workload management software to make supercomputers and company’s private clouds more efficient — more green. I talked to him about what it takes to make super-computing super-efficient.

It’s a big problem.

One supercomputer that was the fastest in the world from 2010 to 2011, TH1, reached 2.566 petaflops. But to do so, it consumes over four megawatts of power, which at $0.10 per kilowatt/hour is $3.5 million a year. And four megawatts is about the electricity needed to power perhaps 3500 homes, which now need alternative energy sources.

So, how do you fix it?

Increased efficiency is, of course, key. But that increased efficiency can’t come at the cost of performance — not when supercomputers or major private clouds are running mission-critical applications for governments or companies. Clyde says Adaptive helps with both.

“We run on the fastest supercomputer in the world,” he told me. “And we run on the greenest supercomputer in the world.”

There are essentially three ways to improve efficiency.

The first is to minimize waste by consolidating workloads. In most private clouds and data centers, the average server utilization rate is a pitiful 8.5 percent. Supercomputers, which are intensively used by scientists, are better utilized, but some are still only in operation half the time. If you can drive the utilization rate up by consolidating workloads and scheduling computing jobs, you can achieve 3-4X energy savings alone, Clyde says. Especially when paired with the second strategy: green policies. When workloads are scheduled, there are times when the data center or supercomputer is not being used.

In those cases, Adaptive’s software, MOAB, simply powers down.

The third is to use more efficient processors, which is not so much about buying one particular type of processor as it is using the right kind of processor for the right kind of job. GPUs, or graphical processing units, are hyper-efficient at certain types of mathematical calculations. Intel’s Xeon chip is better at other operations. Using the right chips for the right job can yield another impressive slice of planet-friendly power.

All together, the changes add up. Bigtime.

“Today’s Beacon supercomputer is the top green system in the world,” Clyde told me. “It has the best gigaflops per watt rating at 2.5 gigaflops per watt, which is six times more efficient than RoadRunner.”

That’s impressive, considering that five years ago, RoadRunner was considered one of the most efficient supercomputers. And needed, as energy not only gets more expensive, but we get more aware of conserving and efficiently using the energy we produce.

That same approach works with what is currently the fastest supercomputer in the world, Titan, a hybrid machine that uses both GPUS and traditional CPUs to achieve more than 10 petaflops. And it also works with company’s internal clouds or data centers, which are growing at startling rates — and using massive amounts of energy.

“We run one of the largest private clouds in the world at a global bank,” Clyde told me. “They have 30-50,000 servers right now, and they tell us that by the end of the year, that will be close to 100,000. For a typical data center, we can provide 2-2.5X power savings, and for supercomputers, we can often come close to saving them half their energy costs.”

That’s green, clean … and fast.

photo credit: Argonne National Laboratory via photopin cc, Los Alamos National Laboratory via photopin cc, carrierdetect via photopin cc

Have you ever thought about installing solar panels? Or how your commute affects the environment and how you can lessen your impact?

This Earth Day, experts at the U.S. Department of Energy can answer your questions.

On April 22, the Energy Department is hosting a Google+ Hangout and is inviting the green-conscious community to participate and learn more about ways to save energy, learn more about efficiency, and share their own success stories.

The live discussion will answer questions from videos and emails submitted by April 16 and also answer questions in real-time from Twitter and Google+ using the hashtag #askEnergy.

You can submit questions via YouTube with the #askEnergy tag emailed to newmedia@hq.doe.gov or posted in the comments on the Energy Department’s Facebook page. A 30-second video length is suggested, to make it quick and easy for the Energy Department’s social team to answer inquiries.

Spend this Earth Day learning how you can save time and money. The discussion will be live-streamed by Google+, YouTube, and energy.gov/live.

The Earth Day Hangout is another way the Energy Department is engaging with users online. The Energy Saver website already provides tips and advice for saving energy and cash, complete with ways of making your own energy.

More detailed information will be posted on the Energy.gov website as the Hangout gets closer.

Image credit: Shutterstock

The result?

In prototype state, Fontcuberta’s nanowires capture light 10 percent more efficiently than traditional solar panels ever could. And to build these tiny solar collectors, she uses 1,000 times less material — specifically, gallium arsenide.

Here’s how:

The efficiency, as PhysOrg says, is due to nanowires’ incredible capability to funnel more light than expected — at only several hundred nanometres wide, the nanowires funnel as much light as if they were 12 times bigger. That translates to more light being captured and greater efficiency at turning an equivalent amount of sunlight into disproportionately more usable electrical energy.

“The enhanced light absorption is shown to be due to a light-concentrating property of the standing nanowire,” the team’s academic paper says.

A thousand times less material, of course, also translates into less cost and less waste. A modern house, Fontcuberta estimates, currently needs 40 kilograms (almost 90 pounds) of material for enough solar panels to supply its energy needs. However, with nanowire solar technology, it would require only 40 grams (1.4 ounces).

Larger solar initiatives become more possible as well, as projects that might have cost $100,000 in gallium arsenide alone can now potentially use only $100.

Fontcuberta is a researcher in the semiconductor lab at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Image credit: YouTube

This week, Everybody Solar funded the installation of a 13.5 kW system on the roof of the Redwood City-based  nonprofit organization, which will save Rebuilding Together Peninsula (RTP) about $100,000 over the course of its 20-year life-span.

“We want to help nonprofits free up their resources to fund their projects,” Everybody Solar representative Liz Oh told me today. “So we’re bringing them renewable energy to help them benefit from going solar and getting free and clean energy.”

Source: Everybody Solar

60 solar panels arrive for Rebuilding Together Peninsula

All together, Everybody Solar will be installing about 60 solar panels on RTP’s roof with the help of another nonprofit dedicated to renewable energy, SunWork Renewable Energy Projects. The panels themselves were donated by a NYSE-listed Chinese solar energy company, Jinko Solar, and will provide enough energy to power their building, appliances, computers, and lighting … basically everything RTP uses that needs electricity.

And when there’s more power than needed? RTP will be able to feed it into the electrical grid and sell it back to its local utility.

This sort of donation makes dollars and sense, Everybody Solar’s executive director Youness Scally says:

“For each dollar we raise, RTP will save $2.20, and each dollar RTP spends on home improvement makes a difference to a neighbor in need.”

This is just the start, according to Oh. Everybody Solar is looking for new projects, and is currently taking submissions via its website from nonprofit organizations that want to benefit from green energy, and reduce their carbon footprint. That will require extra funding, which Everybody Solar is raising in a variety of ways.

“We were considering using a Kickstarter-type model,” Oh told me. “But we have been successful at getting donations through other channels such as events, private donors, and public donations via our website.”

Everybody Solar’s next event will be in April in San Francisco, where they’ll enlist some star power to go with their sun powered principles. It’ll be Solar Rock Stars for a Cause, date to be determined.

photo credit: WagnerSolar via photopin cc

Yahoo is building a new customer care center and making big additions to an existing data center facility in Lockport, New York. The expansions will create 115 new jobs.

The Lockport data center, Yahoo says, is a flagship of its energy-efficient data center design. The facility first opened in 2010, and today’s news will add to the company’s commitment to developing environmentally conscious data centers.

“Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible company, and we thank New York state and local authorities for working with us to ensure we continue to power our data center with clean energy,” said Yahoo central technology EVP David Dibble in a statement to the company’s investors.

The data center will use low-cost hydropower from the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Plant as well as an outside-air cooling system to keep machines at optimal temperatures. All of this is part of the Yahoo! Compute Coop (YCC) architecture — what the company calls its hardware and infrastructure design.

Yahoo is one of a handful of large web companies placing more emphasis on efficient, innovative data center design. Google has long emphasized its green(er) data centers, and Facebook has taken the whole thing a step further with its Open Compute Project, a cooperative effort among some of the world’s biggest tech companies to create the best, cheapest, greenest data centers possible.

As part of Yahoo’s expansion into western New York State, the company will make a $3.5 million gift to the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo over the next seven years.

Ashok Kamal is cofounder and CEO of green social media marketing company Bennu.

When I told VentureBeat I wanted to write a piece about the rise of green gamification — the use of games to make sustainability fun and rewarding — they were skeptical. They’ve seen a lot of green-themed apps hit the market, but many are poorly designed and largely ignored attempts by brands to “greenwash” their image.

But amid these half-baked products, there’s actually some real, solid progress at the intersection of two of today’s most disruptive business forces: gamification and sustainability. And for those of us eager to see the masses go green – whether to save the planet, or just save money – it’s good news.

The growth of green gamification is being accelerated by forces ranging from the government’s Green Button promotion of energy-use data to the digital generation’s strong desire for smartphone apps that allow them to manage resource consumption.

Much as Nike+ Fuelband is turning exercise from a chore into a cool activity, a suite of green web and mobile apps are transforming the way people approach environmental stewardship. From startups such as Leafully to corporate alliances that increase energy efficiency, gamification is emerging as a powerful weapon to advance sustainability.

Whether working out or conserving water, actions become rewarding when they are measureable, engaging, and shared.

Not only are people driven to gain status and recognition by social sharing, but also there is positive peer pressure to avoid being a laggard. Do you want to be the house on the block with the worst recycling rate?

The Zynga of green gamification is Opower, a software player that processes big household energy data into a gamified interface that helps people reduce their power consumption and utility bills. The company partners with utilities to analyze data in over 50 million homes, and it closed out 2012 by saving users an estimated 2 terawatt hours of energy, or $200 million.

Greenbean Recycle is a Boston-based startup changing the attitude and behaviors about recycling on the campuses of some of the nation’s best colleges, including MIT, Harvard, and Tufts. [Disclosure: I'm an unpaid member of the company's advisory board.] Greenbean’s game mechanics, such as intercollegiate challenges and recycling lotteries, have resulted in up to a 40 percent increase of the recycling rate.

Moreover, Greenbean is cracking the code of one of recycling’s main hurdles: how to get people to recycle non-deposit bottles that don’t pay a redemption value. By posting leaderboards and rewarding the top recyclers, Greenbean’s collection is 30% non-deposit materials that would normally be destined for overcrowded landfills.

Other new green gaming companies that have raised millions of dollars in venture funding include My Energy and Practically Green, both of which use the social web to calculate environmental footprint metrics and reward users for their performance.

Even historically static sectors, such as academia, nonprofit, and small business, are embracing innovation through green gamification. Ocean explorer and activist Philippe Cousteau, in conjunction with Dr. Jeffrey Plank at the University of Virginia, have developed a massively multiplayer online game to simulate the impacts of human activity on the health of the Chesapeake Bay (the largest estuary in the U.S.). Players of the UVA Bay Game take on the role of key stakeholders – ranging from fisherman to regulators – to learn systems-thinking and collaboration.

Philippe, Dr. Plank and I spoke on a 2012 SXSW panel with Intel’s Carrie Freeman, who asserted that corporations can leverage the UVA Bay Game model to solve business challenges such as balancing company vs. community water needs. The UVA Bay Game developers recently announced a partnership with The Nature Conservancy to launch a new version of the simulation focused on a major Texas watershed.

While small business owners are often pressed for time and money, thousands across the country have joined the Green Business Bureau (GBB), which offers a gamified online sustainability tool that helps assess, manage, and report on a library of 400+ green initiatives. [Disclosure: The GBB is a client of my company.] One GBB member, NewMarket International, shaved $60,000 off its annual budget by following the adaptive survey’s recommendations and reducing packaging waste, among other green achievements.

The GBB’s technology also powers green business certification for nonprofit Green America and Intuit’s small business supplier network.

Gamification is still in its formative years, evolving to exhibit more purpose and tangible impact. As the sustainability movement also matures, stakeholders are realizing the potential of green gamification. In order to propel green into the mainstream, we need to make it enjoyable, accessible, and rewarding.

The main reason people play green games is that they are fun. A more sustainable world is the convenient — and welcome — by-product.

Ashok Kamal is cofounder and CEO of green social media marketing company Bennu. He has worked extensively with Fortune 500 clients and startups to develop game-based campaigns that promote sustainability while creating enterprise value. He is a frequent public speaker at events such as the White House’s GreenGov Symposium, South by Southwest, Gamification Summit, and Sustainable Brands. In February 2013 he will be presenting a workshop with Gabe Zichermann on “Green Gamification by Design” at the GreenBiz Forum in NYC.

photo credit: gadl via photopin cc

Google announced today that it closed an investment in Spinning Spur Wind Project, a West Texas wind farm than can generate enough power for, on the average, 60,000 U.S. homes.

Source: Siemens

A Siemens turbine

The 161 megawatt facility is 35 miles from Amarillo, Texas, and brings the total amount of renewable energy that Google has invested in to a fairly staggering 2 gigawatts. That’s enough, it says, to power 500,000 American homes for an entire year or for a car to travel around the world 190,000 times.

Spinning Spur is new, a facility EDF Renewable Energy finished before the end of 2012, with 70 2.3 megawatt Siemens wind turbines. If you’re wondering whether you’re going to be using any renewable energy from the project, SPS buys the the power from Spinning Spur. SPS is a subsidiary of Xcel Energy that primarily serves Texas and New Mexico.

Google says it invests in wind projects for ecological reasons as well as financial: They’re good investments. The company has invested over $1 billion in renewable energy projects and has a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy.

Its largest wind project is the Shepherds Flat wind farm, which is about four times the size of Spinning Spur, at 845 megawatts.

photo credit: Sebastiano Pitruzzello (aka gorillaradio) via photopin cc

Through his company Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett has acquired two solar power plant projects from solar panel manufacturer and developer SunPower for between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway’s energy subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy, has a stake in many of the largest US solar power plants, including two First Solar plants. Buffett has increasingly become an important ally for the renewable energy industry, which is struggling to survive without government financial support.

Read our analysis of Buffett’s efforts to spearhead billion-dollar clean-tech initiatives. 

The newly acquired plants are located in California, and they are the world’s largest photovoltaic solar developments, meaning they use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. SunPower will retain the three-year contract to build and maintain them in the counties of Los Angeles and Kern. The Antelope Valley projects will generate 579 megawatts for Southern California Edison, which is not far off the output of a large fossil fuel power plant.

SunPower, based in Silicon Valley, will operate the projects for MidAmerican Renewables, a division of MidAmerican Energy.

“We are excited about these projects because they support our core business principle of environmental respect,” Bill Fehrman, president of MidAmerican Renewables, said in a statement. “We are very proud to add SunPower technology to our portfolio of projects.”

As The Street reports, market leaders like SunPower and First Solar are winning contracts to maintain large plants with multi-decade purchase agreements over their lifespan. By acquiring the plants, MidAmerican Energy has become one of the biggest backers of such projects.

For those of us living on the digital edge, a paper-free office is a no-brainer, and being asked to print, copy, or fax a document will likely get a response of, “Suuuure chief, just let me go pop a couple Quaaludes and turn on the ol’ 8-track, and I’ll get right on that.”

Still, in the U.S. the average office worker will burn through around 10,000 pieces of 8-by-11 paper each year. So a bunch of companies that have a vested interest in getting us out of the paper habit have teamed up on a new campaign: Paperless 2013.

Paperless 2013 aims “to remove the need for paper” from all kinds of office work that would otherwise be called paperwork: billing, contracts, expense reports, collaboratively created documents and reports — you name it.

In addition to promoting its partners’ collection of paper-free work tools, the campaign will also start to introduce lifehacks and workhacks for paperless living via a monthly newsletter and a slate of social media accounts.

The campaign is being spearheaded by HelloFax, a Y Combinator company with a simple but ingenious product that lets you sign and send documents sans printer or fax machine. The startup launched its stupid-simple digital document-signing product, HelloSign, a few months ago; at that time, cofounder Joseph Walla told us that rather than being reluctant to go digital with their documents, enterprises were more than happy to jump aboard.

“If you look at a lot of corporations, there are really complex signature flows,” he said. “When we talk to corporations, they’re excited about this, and they’re willing to pay. Signatures are not a trivial technology to them, and they’re willing to invest.”

HelloFax had already partnered with Google Drive on the HelloSign launch, so teaming up with Drive again on the Paperless 2013 campaign wasn’t only a win-win for both products; it was also a no-brainer for two already linked companies.

Another Paperless partner is Fujitsu (promoting its ScanSnap scanner for the home office and small business); others include startups Xero (online accounting software), Manilla (web-based bill management), and Expensify (all-digital expense reports).

Image credit: 20th Century Fox

As we round the corner into 2013, we’re more excited than ever about green tech — and so are Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs.

Years and months past saw some dimming of the enthusiasm around green tech and clean tech — think Solyndra’s devastating 2011 shutdown, A123′s recalls, or the numerous horror stories of consumers accidentally “bricking” spendy electric cars like Tesla’s Roadster or the Fisker Karma.

But with smart business ideas, ample venture capital, important partnerships, and better predictions about the future, 2012′s crop of innovations seem better suited to wear well over the next few years. Here are 10 of our favorite green tech stories from 2012 in ascending order. We hope to bring you more and better eco-forward tech news in 2013.

Greener packaging

It bothers all of us every time we unbox a new tech toy: Why all the plastic and Styrofoam for one slender little phone or laptop? At least one company, logistics giant PCH International, is focusing on fixing that problem, starting with Silicon Valley’s gadget packaging.

The story: “The company’s Sustainable Packaging Design Centre of Excellence will include a material library and a structural design engineering and quality test lab, and it’ll be based in Shenzhen, China. The company will also open a showroom and material library in San Francisco early in 2013, placing its services in closer reach of Silicon Valley companies — those that still make hardware products, that is, rather than Facebook games or iPhone apps.”

Greener gatherings

With conscientious young folks more concerned about their own impact on the environment, more large-scale music festivals and similar-in-scope gatherings, such as Coachella and Burning Man and far beyond, are focusing on their ecological footprint.

The story: “For three days in August, 60,000-plus hipsters each day pour into a handful of meadows, as thick and viscous as the fog itself. … The air surges with amplified guitar fuzz and obscenities from the mouths of performers, and you can almost feel the ground shake from the trampling feet of a herd of humanity. Then, when the three-day rock orgy is over, Golden Gate Park is miraculously returned to its original state. Pristine. Clean. … As though nothing had ever happened.”

LED revolution

LED lights are getting on our nerves as they’re being hastily incorporated into holiday decorations, but as everyday substitutes for incandescent bulbs, they’re doing great things for the planet.

The story: “Just in time for Earth Day, Dutch electronics company Philips is unveiling a new super energy-efficient light bulb today with a shelf life that should last about 25 years. The catch? It costs about $60, but Philips is said to have forged deals with some stores to bring that cost down to about $20.”

Record-breaking car battery

Electric cars have long been the domain of short-range enthusiasts, but a new battery developer brought fresh hope to an exciting industry.

The story: “‘We have built 400 watt-per-kilogram batteries, which have been considered the holy grail of electric cars,’ said Envia’s chief executive Atul Kapadia said in an interview with VentureBeat, ‘This is a milestone that many car companies have wanted to reach.”‘

Tata Nano

The Smart Car and its ilk — tiny, highly efficient autos — are starting to pop up in urban areas in the U.S., and this super-cheap model from overseas finally announced its American debut in 2012.

The story: “Tata Nano’s top speed of 65 mph and its cramped interior definitely will not appeal to all in spite of the success of the Austin Mini, Smart Cars, and the Fiat 500. Nano is two feet shorter than the Mini and decidedly bare-bones inside. Currently, the heater is optional in the base model, and it has no options for A/C or heated seats.”

The war for data-center efficiency

The companies that control the Internet are in a sort of arms face for efficiency — not only so they can toot their horns to consumers about how green they are, but also so they can cut their own costs and increase their bottom line profits. But this is one case where corporate money-chasing is actually a win-win for the companies and the planet.

The story: “It’s a bit naïve, a bit ‘kumbaya,’ to expect two titans viciously warring for revenue to come to a round table and collaborate on issues like innovative mobile tech and greener data centers. But somehow, without striking a blow, Facebook has managed to give Google a black eye. Perhaps, if only for PR purposes, it’s time for Google to get its ‘kumbaya’ back.”

Research makes the world go ’round

Some of the most exciting advances in green tech this year happened on the formative research front, where scientists explored turning algae into gasoline, making batteries from garbage, producing fuel from seaweed and E. coli, or even making cheap solar panels out of rusted metal.

The story: “For example, cuprous oxide (Cu2O) is a highly abundant but hard-to-dope semiconductor. ‘It’s time we put bad materials to good use,’ said physicist Alex Zettl. ‘Our technology allows us to sidestep the difficulty in chemically tailoring many earth abundant, non-toxic semiconductors and instead tailor these materials simply by applying an electric field.’”

SolarCity’s IPO

In the wake of several high-profile, taxpayer-subsidized failures, SolarCity’s initial public offering was a welcome balm to a bruised industry.

The story: “Trading started at $9.25 and by midday surpassed $12. … The stock took off. This is partly attributable to SolarCity chairman Elon Musk, along with fellow board member Draper Fisher Jurveston, indicating their intent to buy a significant portion of the shares.”

Greener homes with Nest

One of the year’s best green tech stories didn’t take place in the chilly halls of a massive data center or the production lines of a hybrid car manufacturer. Nest is the greening gadget for consumers’ homes, and in spite of significant obstacles, it came through 2012 with flying colors.

The story: “The new Nest thermostat is 20 percent thinner. Under the hood, the Nest now has 10 wires to support more systems — the new unit adds support for two-stage cooling, three-stage heating, heat pump emergency heating, and whole home humidifier and dehumidifiers. As you can see in the images below, Nest Labs has also tweaked the wire orientation to be circular, which the company says will make it easier to install.”

Tesla’s turning point

The famous Silicon Valley electric car maker finally hit a crucial turning point in 2012. Not only did its Model S win some critical acclaim from Motor Trend, but the company made perhaps its most significant announcement to date when it told us last month it would be ready for mass production in 2013.

The story: “Tesla is confident it can reach a production rate of 400 cars per week next month. In other words, in 30 days it will be producing more cars in one week than it did in all of the last quarter. That rapid ramp-up is key to the company’s success. In three more months, Tesla will deliver another quarterly report, and then we’ll learn whether its optimism is justified or just an empty promise.”

Image credits: BONNINSTUDIO/Shutterstock, calonda/Flickr, Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat, Jolie O’Dell/Flickr, Zettl Research Group, jurvetson/Flickr

Green energy company SolarCity has just announced share prices for its upcoming IPO; at between $13 and $15 per share, the initial public offering should raise approximately $151 million for the company.

In an SEC filing, SolarCity said it would release 10 million shares in the offering, and shareholders would sell around 65,000 shares total.

Shares will debut on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SCTY. Underwriters for the deal include Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Needham & Company, and Roth Capital Partners.

Back in October, the company announced its IPO plans; at that time, SolarCity aimed to raise in excess of $200 million in the deal.

SolarCity is not a manufacturer of solar panels; rather, its business is based on financing and leasing rooftop solar panels for residential, government, and commercial use. Current clients include such entities as Stanford University, Walmart, Ebay, the U.S. Armed Forces, the Department of Homeland Security, and Intel.

Risks for the business include changing regulations and subsidies around utilities in general and green energy in particular, a beleaguered but important value of the current presidential administration’s platform. Also, the government has served SolarCity with a subpoena over some U.S. Treasury grants that were part of a solar panel program.

Prior to the IPO, SolarCity has raised a total of $455 million in venture capital from the likes of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and tech luminary Elon Musk.

Apple’s iPhone 5 fared a little better than Samsung’s S3, but all phones have eco-issues, according to a study by the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Ecology Center. In fact, mobile phones contain up to 40 elements, many of which are heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants. The results were released today at HealthyStuff.

“Even the best phones from our study are still loaded with chemical hazards,” Ecology Center research director Jeff Gearhart said in a statement.

The iPhone 5 ranked fifth best, appropriately enough, while the S3 was ninth. Apple’s most recent model, the 4S, ranked second, but top honors went to the Motorola Citrus — probably due to the fact that it is both small and cheap (hence containing fewer expensive elements).

Samsung, however, had the best average rating for all of its phones.

The most toxic phones are, thankfully, not huge sellers. The Palm Treo 750, released a digital eon ago in 2007, ranked worst of all, followed by a BlackBerry Storm released in 2008. So the trend seems to be toward greener, cleaner mobile devices.

The biggest offenders are chlorine, bromium, cadmium, mercury, and lead, which can cause birth defects, impaired learning and other serious health problems, according to Gearhart. And while using the phone may not expose consumers to the chemicals, the Ecology Center highlighted the fact that these toxicity levels at e-waste recycling plants — often in China — can be 10 times to 100 times higher than normal background levels.

Here’s a visual view of the best and worst phones. Where’s yours?

photo credit: ‘PixelPlacebo’ via photopin cc

It helps that GreenQloud is based in Iceland, where the only energy available is renewable energy. Iceland runs on 70 percent hydroelectric and 30 percent geothermal energy.

Pair that with three current high capacity data cables connecting Iceland, North America, and Europe — with a fourth scheduled to go live in 2013 — and you’ve got a recipe for a green cloud that can serve demanding clients in the two most data-heavy continents on the globe.

Source: GreenQloud

GreenQloud’s compute cloud dashboard

While the company is just coming out of public beta today at the DEMO Fall 2012 conference, it already has some significant traction:

“We launched our beta signup program in July 2011,” chief marketing officer Paula Gould told VentureBeat. “Since then, we’ve received accolades from top industry outlets such as Gartner … and Greenpeace. We have registered beta users from 61 countries, with the largest concentration of users hailing from the US.”

GreenQloud offers infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), including compute, network, and storage resources — all based on open source technologies and commodity hardware. The company has built partnerships with software, platform, and database vendors to also seamlessly provide Saas, Pass, and DBaaS services. And in addition, to ensure ease of use for eco-friendly clients transferring their data and/or computing from Amazon, GreenQloud says that it is Amazon-compatible.

The company is attractive to businesses, as well as investors, not only for its environmental benefits, but also for the cost-savings.

“Green energy matters a lot to some enterprises,” said Google’s developer advocate Dan Dodge. “I’m not sure how much it matters to others, but the thing about this one is it is actually lower cost. Just on cost, GreenQloud has an advantage, and adding green to it makes you feel good.”

There is a web-based management interface, but CTO Tryggvi Lárusson has goodies for developers as well as managers:

“Experienced or advanced users can even use GreenQloud’s APIs — compatible with the most widely used IaaS clouds on the market — with existing tools made for other cloud solutions, out of the box, without having to tailor them specifically for GreenQloud.”

Source: GreenQloud

GreenQloud dashboard

GreenQloud is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

On any given day, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is a shining example of more or less pristine green space in a densely packed urban area. Its trees tower, pulling up the blankets of fog from the ocean; its human-made bodies of water flow in intricate systems of streams, waterfalls, and lake chains; its wild blackberry bushes create a juicy bramble beside bike paths. Voles and foxes (and the occasional person) make their homes among the nasturium.

Then, for three days in August, 60,000+ hipsters each day pour into a handful of meadows, as thick and viscous as the fog itself, and the park is transformed into a raucous, wild music festival. Amps are stacked like ziggurats where last week a family was picnicking. An endless row of food vendor booths has taken up the bike trail. The air surges with amplified guitar fuzz and obscenities from the mouths of performers, and you can almost feel the ground shake from the trampling feet of a herd of humanity.

click to see full-size panorama

Then, when the three-day rock orgy is over, Golden Gate Park is miraculously returned to its original state. Pristine. Clean. Foxes and voles and nasturtium. There’s no wasteland of tumbleweeds and greasy napkins, no deep trenches created by band vans’ tires.

Somehow, Outside Lands takes Golden Gate Park from the city each year, turns it inside out for the love of rock & roll, then manages to return it in its original condition as though nothing had ever happened.

Such small miracles involve a lot of planning, a lot of volunteers, a lot of work.

During this year’s festival, VentureBeat took some time to meander around the festival grounds and talk to the many people who make up Outside Lands’ on-the-ground eco team. Here’s what we learned (read the captions for the rest of the story).

Of course, no efforts to “green” any event are going to be perfect. The roads leading into the park’s heart were still lined with gas-guzzling tour buses. Diesel generators still powered some of the main stage equipment. Drunken revelers still mistakenly tossed recyclables into the landfill-bound trash bins.

And yes, among the sincere efforts of volunteers and eco-focused groups, there were still a few greenwashing attempts — most notably by large corporations that had spent tens of thousands (or more) on Eco Lands booths to lure the young and impressionable toward the idea that any multinational gives a rat’s hind end about the planet more than it does about its own bottom line.

But overall, as we walked and biked through Golden Gate Park in the days after the festival, we were grateful and impressed by Outside Lands’ successful efforts to, minimally, return the place unharmed to those who love it year-round.

What happens to all those corporate computers that get turfed every three years? Or yesterday’s gadgets that are piled high in your spare closet? If you’re green — and community-minded — there are some good programs for others to re-use your electronics, which reduces landfill waste and helps your neighbor.

Studies have shown that PCs kept longer than three or four years can actually be counterproductive for businesses from a financial standpoint. The extra cost of virus protection and loss of service due to breakdowns can outweigh the financial benefits of not buying a new computer.

And all the shiny new gadgets we buy and love? They often lose our affection within six to 18 months as shinier, newer gadgets are released. The new doodads are faster, smaller, with more storage, better cameras … and we want the latest and greatest.

But that’s not a reason to trash the old-but-good stuff. Or to let it die a slow, dusty, electronic death in a closet. A good alternative to dumping or hoarding is donation.

And there are a lot of options …

One is Reconnect, a partnership between Dell and Goodwill. Reconnect takes just about any kind of computer or gadget, and they’ll re-use what’s appropriate, and recycle what has no useful lifespan left. Contact your local Goodwill to see what they accept, but chances are they’ll take what you have.

For computers that have a good amount of commercial value left, consider eBay Giving Works, which is eBay for charity. You get to sell your old stuff on eBay, giving your gadgets a new home with someone who can use them, and donate the proceeds to charity. eBay allows you to donate between 10-100 percent of the selling price to charity … and will reduce selling fees by exactly the percentage you’re donating to charity.

Freecycle is another option for electronics — or anything you’re looking to de-clutter out of your home. It’s a nonprofit movement for giving unwanted items to people in your own community. Check the search engine to find groups near you who will accept your old gear.

Companies that wish to help others while responsibly replacing older technology would do well to follow the JPMorgan Chase model. JPMorgan has partnered with Good360 to donated refurbished technology to nonprofits and schools, supporting Good360′s mission is to help nonprofits with non-cash donations.

JPMorgan Chase has committed to providing 3,000 PCs over the next year alone, all of which will get new hard drives (good security practice and good for the new owners). And since 2009, the company has redeployed about 75,000 desktops, laptops, monitors, and printers.

That’s good for the environment, and good for those who are not as financially fortunate as others.

Image credit: Lasse Kristensen/ShutterStock

The concept behind EcoScraps is simple: The company takes leftover food from retail stores, turns it into compost, and sells it. This approach solves multiple problems. It takes a wasted resource and transforms it into something useful, it provides an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical fertilizers, and it helps reduce the damage that rotting food in landfills has on the earth’s ecosystem.

The impact that vehicle and industrial emissions have on the atmosphere is well known, as is the methane output of livestock. However, the USDA found that roughly 30 million tons (over a quarter of America’s food) is thrown away every year. Furthermore, this waste generates around 8-9% of pollution in the US, following closely on the heels of car pollution at 12%. As if this wasn’t enough, the EPA estimates that it costs around $1 billion a year to dispose of all this waste.

Before shelling out for a Prius, it’s wise to pay closer attention to how much food you throw in the trash. This does not mean eating all of it (obesity is whole other barrel of fish) but rather only buying what you can consume. Founder Dan Blake was inspired to build the company when he realized his eyes were bigger than his stomach.

“I was student who just finished finals and decided to treat myself to an all-you-can-eat French toast buffet,” he said in an interview. “I went back for seconds, filled up my plate, and realized I was no longer hungry, so I threw it all away. When I looked in the trash can, it was filled up. I was surprised about how wasteful I was, and also how wasteful everyone else was.”

Blake delved deeper into the issue and saw a potential business opportunity. He started dumpster diving and experimented with creating nutrient-rich organic fertilizer from wasted food. Once he had the whole composting thing down, he began approaching big box retailers to form partnerships. A cold call to Costco yielded a pilot program where a Costco store gave EcoScraps all its leftovers, EcoScraps turned it into compost, then EcoScraps sold it back to Costco to sell in the garden department. This is the ultimate, closed loop transaction. Corporations are actually paying for their own garbage. Brilliant.

The company currently collects food from 96 different stores. Its products are for sale in over 400 retailers, including Costco, Home Depot, and local and independent grocery stores, nurseries, and garden centers. EcoScraps mostly works in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and California but will use the recent funding to expand nationally. Dan also wants to open up additional markets and facilities and broaden the product line to include dry fertilizers, liquid composts, and potted soil.

The money came from KickStart Seed Fund, DBL Investors, and Peterson Ventures. EcoScraps is based in Utah and has 34 employees. Its compost facilities receive 100 tons of food waste everyday. That’s a lot of uneaten hot dogs.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple products will no longer bear the EPEAT seal of approval that adorns environmentally friendly tech products.

The iDevice maker has backed away from EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) because Apple products such as the new Retina display MacBook Pro are no longer designed to be recyclable or otherwise environmentally friendly by EPEAT standards and would be ineligible for certification.

“Apple has notified EPEAT that it is withdrawing its products from the EPEAT registry and will no longer be submitting its products to EPEAT for environmental rating,” reads an official statement from the environmental organization.

“EPEAT is more than simply a product rating – it is also a community effort by all interested stakeholders to define and maintain best practice in environmental sustainability for electronics. We regret that Apple will no longer be registering its products in EPEAT. We hope that they will decide to do so again at some point in future.”

While Apple does offer its own recycling programs, the Environmental Protection Agency-funded EPEAT requires that products be easy to disassemble so recyclable components can be recycled and toxic components can be properly disposed of.

Since Apple products are increasingly difficult to tear down, due to glued-in batteries and glass displays, EPEAT certification was at odds with how the products are designed — and how Apple is designed to turn a profit.

“If the battery is glued to the case, it means you can’t recycle the case and you can’t recycle the battery,” EPEAT CEO Robert Frisbee told the Wall Street Journal.

“They said their design direction was no longer consistent with the EPEAT requirements. … They were important supporters and we are disappointed that they don’t want their products measured by this standard anymore.”

To give an idea of how important EPEAT certification is, in 2009, President Obama signed an executive order mandating that the EPEAT seal appear on at least 95 percent of the electronics in federal and contractor purchases.

Also, many other major computer and smartphone manufacturers, including Asus, Dell, Samsung, LG, HP, and many others, are well on board with EPEAT and support the organization’s mission.

Still, Apple’s environmentally focused company page states it is the only company that can claim “every single… product not only meets but exceeds the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s strict ENERGY STAR guidelines for efficiency.”

And as for recycling, the company states, “Apple’s approach to recycling begins in the design stage, where we create compact, efficient products that require less material to produce… Apple has instituted recycling programs in cities and college campuses in 95 percent of the countries where our products are sold, diverting more than 115,504 metric tons of equipment from landfills since 1994. Our goal in 2010 was to achieve a worldwide recycling rate of 70 percent.”

[ UPDATED ]

Sorry, NASCAR fans. Probably the most important motorsport event in the world is 24 Hours of Le Mans. It’s the world’s oldest continually-running car race, and somewhat surprisingly this year, four of the top six contenders are hybrid cars.

Audi R18

Two are from perennial all-star team Audi, and two are from a team that’s been absent for a decade: Toyota.

Car technology is often tested and perfected in the racing world. The list of innovations that moved from race cars to street cars is long: rear view mirrors, crumple zones for crash safety, paddle shifters for automatic-like manual transmissions, crash recorders, turbo chargers, seat belts, and more.

That’s why it’s important that hybrid cars are appearing — and performing — in the most demanding automotive conditions imaginable. Technologies developed here are making their way to the daily driver car, and the research and development costs are borne by high-profile racing teams.

Both the Audi and Toyota teams are using regenerative braking systems to achieve the hybrid designation. During hard braking before a turn, the cars capture some of the energy used to decelerate and then apply that energy to the wheels to help the car speed up again after the curve.

Toyota TS030

The Audi hybrid system is partially mechanical: as the R-18 e-Tron hybrid quattro slows, a flywheel spins up, grabbing some of that energy, which is converted into electricity and then applied to electric motors driving the front wheels. The Toyota system is a little different — it stores power in a capacitor and then applies energy to the rear wheels.

Early results for the hybrids have been good: As of hour eight, one of the hybrid Audis is leading, and until a crash caused by another driver, one of the Toyotas was in third place. The other Toyota briefly held the lead until a mechanical issue dropped it into the pits.

Few cars survive Le Mans unscathed. The race is known as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency for a reason. But it’s encouraging for people who appreciate breathable air that the hybrids are starting and running well.

[ Updated: 5:15 ]

This is the crash that took the first Toyota hybrid out of the race. As you can see, it is in no way the Toyota drivers’ fault:

Image credits: Audi, Toyota, esbobeldijk / Shutterstock.com

The U.S. Department of Energy wants normal Americans to start using solar energy in their everyday lives. To that end, it’s just granted $2 million to Solar Mosaic, a sort of Kickstarter for solar projects.

Solar Mosaic is still in a quiet pre-launch period, but its projects have so far collected more than $350,000 in interest-free investments from 400 individuals, and the first five projects have together generated 73kW of clean solar energy (that’s more than half a million dollars’ worth of energy) and added more than 2,700 job hours for workers in areas such as Oakland, Calif., and the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The startup has a special focus on projects that are created and maintained by a community for that community’s own benefit.

“Polls have shown that the vast majority of Americans want to go solar,” states a Solar Mosaic rep on the company blog. At the same time, a number of trends—from dramatic declines in the physical costs of solar equipment to new financing models—are making solar financially competitive with fossil fuel-based sources of energy. So why do so many roofs still lack solar panels?”

“Financing is a major part of getting the cost of solar down,” said DOE Secretary Steven Chu at the solar energy summit where the grant was announced, noting that the department aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with other types of energy by the end of the decade. The DOE wants to slide the cost of solar energy down to less than $1 per watt by 2020.

Solar Mosaic also recently raised a $2.7 million round of funding from VCs. Together with the $2 million grant, the startup’s cash on hand will be used to expand and scale their clean-energy-crowdfunding model. Expanding beyond the sunny southwest and the Bay Area, Mosaic wants to get millions of Americans to fund solar projects (and create new jobs) in areas around the United States.

Solar Mosaic is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., and was founded in May 2009 by energy activists Billy Parish and Daniel Rosen, hacker/designer Arthur Coulston, and serial entrepreneur Steve Richmond.

If simple common sense can’t curb energy usage, perhaps a little peer pressure from Facebook friends will do the trick.

Facebook has joined forces with energy efficiency startup Opower and the National Resources Defense Council to release a social energy application that encourages people to track, and ultimately reduce, energy use in the home.

The simple application invites Facebook members to log in and automatically track monthly energy use by connecting the app to their utility account. The friendly, non-threatening conservation-themed app encourages competition, highlights rankings among friends and groups, provides national benchmarks, and offers energy-saving tips.

“People can connect their utility account directly to the app to track progress and share energy saving accomplishments with friends,” Facebook said in a memo on the news.

The social network estimates that it can reach 20 million households at launch, although not all utility providers (SDG&E, for one) are supported.

Facebook’s app partner, Opower, has been in the business of consumerizing energy use data since 2007. The Arlington, VA-based company has raised upwards of $65 million in venture funding, including a $50 million round from Accel and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

We appreciate the gesture, but we’re not yet sold on the idea of Facebook and gamification tactics making a sizable dent in energy use. We’re open to being proven wrong, of course. What say you, Dear Reader?

Photo credit: Jake Mates/Flickr

eMeter, which is led by Veritas CEO and former Oracle executive Gary Bloom, gathers information from two-way meters. The data then travels to utility companies and allows them to make better business decisions, to understand peaks in demand and to read meters automatically.

Consumers can also use the information to find ways to use less energy and lower their bills.

Collectively, the practice of gathering and disseminating energy usage information for greater efficiency and sustainability is known as the smart grid, and it’s been a focus at Siemens of late.

“The acquisition of eMeter will allow Siemens to expand its reach globally in the energy information and meter data management space,” said Jan Mrosik, CEO of the Smart Grid Division of the Siemens Infrastructure & Cities Sector, in a statement today.

While Siemens has its own energy division, eMeter’s staff and technology will be part of the company’s Smart Grid division within the Infrastructure & Cities Sector. (As an interesting footnote illustrating Siemens’ scope, this sector alone has 87,000 employees worldwide.)

eMeter has taken a total of $68.8 million over six rounds of institutional funding. JP Morgan advised eMeter in the acquisition.

Proving that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, 82 percent of Americans have good green intentions, but only 16 percent are dedicated to fulfilling these intentions and over half feel guilty about their lack of action.

The study puts this down, at least in part, to the way in which green products and activities are marketed. Marketeers still focus mainly on what the study calls the “Super Greens”; essentially preaching to the converted. 16 percent of American are considered to be Super Greens in that they are committed to a green lifestyle and are often motivated by altruism. Green Rejecters are cynical about the green movement and make up 18 percent of the population.

So the vast majority of 66 percent, or Middle Greens, fall somewhere in between. This is the group that green marketing needs to target, according to OgilvyEarth, in order to turn a green lifestyle from niche into normal. To put this in context globally, the study also surveyed Chinese consumers. 48 percent of Chinese are Super Greens. Only 2 percent see themselves as Green Rejecters. Of course “normal” also varies between areas within the U.S. San Francisco, in particular, was highlighted as a city where a green lifestyle is more mainstream.

Green marketing is alienating to many Americans. According to the responses in the study, half of Americans think the green and environmentally friendly products are marketed to “Crunchy Granola Hippies” or “Rich Elitist Snobs”. Most Americans would prefer to buy a green product from a mainstream brand rather than a company which specializes in being green. Another major obstacle is the consistently higher cost of green products.

82 percent of the participants in the study also said that going green is “more feminine than masculine.” The ranks of the Super Greens are dominated by women. This is changing amongst the young. 70 percent of teenagers cite “caring about the environment” as the top trending issue amongst their peers regardless of gender.

So how to make green products more attractive to the majority? Green marketing needs to change from being about polar bears to being about people. Make it personal. Marketing messages should focus less on guilt and more on enjoyment. Even the altruistic Super Greens got pleasure out of their positive green actions.

The study also advises targeting male customers with marketing that strikes a chord with them. Tesla, for example, has done a brilliant job of changing the image of electric vehicles from worthy to racy by emphasizing speed and design.

Everyone wants to belong. Making a green lifestyle seem like the norm, rather than a niche, seems to be the best motivator of them all.

The game will test whether a social game can become more viral if it has links to Hollywood and a green cause. The whole point is to make people feel good and do good while they’re playing a fun game, said Chris Swain, founder of Talkie and director of the video game design study program at the University of Southern California Games Institute.

Ecotopia is a city-building game that starts in a fairly pathetic city that needs your help. You can start cleaning it up little by little, turning polluted tracts into sustainable plots. You can do tasks such as converting a power plant into a wind farm. Swain said in an interview that the game has much more story than a typical social game, even as it respects the fact that social game players don’t want an extremely deep and time-consuming game.

But the story does introduce villains into the mix. The story takes into account the fact that people may play it for a short time every day. Rather, the point of the story — such as tracking down a new species of frog in the rainforest — is to keep players challenged enough to make them come back every day. One new feature lets you earn rewards in the game by doing good green deeds in the real world, like switching to rechargeable batteries or carpooling.

Swain said the company hopes that Ecotopia will be a next-generation social game. He says that while games such as Zynga’s FarmVille and CityVille have accumulated huge audiences, they have barely scratched the surface when it comes to challenging gamers with imaginative game play.

“We are just at the beginning of socially enabled games,” Swain said. “The question is, how do you tell stories in this new media? How do you take what works well on TV and put it into a light interactivity with short play sessions?”

The Los Angeles company got started a year ago building its platform and started work on Ecotopia in the past few months. Swain said the team knew it wouldn’t beat Zynga if it created just a clone of CityVille.

Actor Harrison Ford is involved because he is also vice chairman of the nonprofit Conservation International. You can expect Talkie to take advantage of those relationships to help Ecotopia take off. Talkie has an in-game television channel (pictured right) that features videos from Conservation International, Best of the Green Web, and user uploaded contest videos.

Swain has assembled a team of 35 game developers around the country to work on the game. Many of them are his former students. He will continue to work at USC even as he tries to get Talkie off the ground. After Ecotopia launches, Talkie hopes to launch a couple of more games this year.

The name Talkie refers to the transition of films from silent films to sound, and it suggest that games are becoming more social.

It’s not going to be easy getting attention. Green-themed games are getting to be common. MiniMonos is debuting a kids’ virtual world with green missions today. RockYou recently acquired TirNua, which was making a 3D social game where the theme was “play green, live green.”

Swain recognizes there is lots of competition out there, but he says the audience is huge and the market is likely going to sustain a number of successful game companies. He thinks he will have the upper hand because players will want to associate with a good cause while playing a game.

Talkie won’t just take your word for it when you say you did a good deed in the real world. Rather, it will use a verification system called “social proofing” that has friends verify that the user performed some kind of good act.

Swain said the company hopes to sustain interest in the game by releasing monthly content packs such as a new story, contest, and new real world green acts.

The company has angel investors from Los Angeles and Hong Kong but it has not identified them or disclosed the amount raised. Its chairman is Larry Bond, who is chairman of the privately held investment firm Bond Companies, which has more than $2 billion in projects.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Your exclusive $50 discount on this year’s conference is available now! Click here to purchase your discounted ticket.

One of the most exciting best practices gleaned from this year’s conference was our partnership with FORA.tv. The company was able to capture some of the agenda’s best material on video. You can find all the footage on http://fora.tv/partner/VentureBeat. But we’ve embedded the videos for you below. FORA.tv was the service we used to livecast GreenBeat while it was happening, for those of you had a chance to check the stream out.

John Doerr opening keynote and Q&A session

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers in conversation with Matter Network’s John Gartner

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

Vinod Khosla expressing his skepticism of the Smart Grid

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

Ed Lu discussing how Google plans to get in on the Smart Grid trend

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

Laura Ipsen laying out Cisco Systems’ strategy for becoming a Smart Grid leader

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

We’ve also posted the PowerPoint presentations fielded from the program on the event’s web site, http://www.greenbeat2009.com, but here they are again in case you want to download them for reference:

Green Beat 09 Visions of the Smart Grid Panel http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863599&access_key=key-10gkysz16jgz9c1f7y4d&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Green Beat 09 Utility Experiences With Smart Energy http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863595&access_key=key-1q4zsrg1md0rus4usrdi&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Green Beat 09 Innovation Competition Set1 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863583&access_key=key-1td7oe2uuvloahy64ed7&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Green Beat 09 Innovation Competition Set2 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863592&access_key=key-1nh1apw5wmfj9903shrk&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Green Beat 09 Executive Cliimate Change Survey http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863574&access_key=key-g1nd7qxf8sun4e63r1e&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

Green Beat 09 Consumers and Efficiency Panel http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=22863568&access_key=key-2hasahp8bt987ypxwsq1&page=1&version=1&viewMode=list

One of the major reasons we host big industry events like GreenBeat is to bring all the right stakeholders into the same room. We’re pleased to hear that valuable relationships were forged and potential deals kickstarted at the conference. To give you an idea of who was there, and what you can expect from future green VentureBeat productions, here are some choice photos taken by our staff of photographers.

(Photo credit: Alexa Lee)
GreenBeat 2009 opening fireside chat with John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins takes note of a smart grid question from the GreenBeat 2009 audience.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Katie Fehrenbacher of Earth2Tech moderates the Consumers and Efficiency Panel at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: Alexa Lee)
Executive Climate Change Survey presented by Accenture executive Sharon Allan.

(Photo credit: Alexa Lee)
Duke Energy’s James Roberts is interviewed by Matter Network’s John Gartner.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Kicking off day two of GreenBeat 2009, Jesse Berst of Global Smart Energy moderates the Utility Experiences with Smart Energy panel.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Andreas Carvallo of Austin Energy on the Utility Experiences with Smart Energy panel at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
OPower CEO Daniel Yates with Southern California Edison’s Paul De Martini on GreenBeat 2009′s Utility Experiences with Smart Energy panel.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Edward Lu of Google in a fireside chat with Matt Marshall at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Navin Chaddha of the Mayfield Fund hosts the GreenBeat 2009 Innovation Competition.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
GreenBeat 2009 Innovation Competition co-winners Seth Georgion of Locust Storage and Gary Fromer of CPower.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Greentech Media editor in chief Michael Kanellos (center) speaks with GreenBeat 2009 conference attendees between sessions.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Technologist and environmentalist Mary Vincent (far right) meets with other GreenBeat 2009 attendees over drinks.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Follow the Money breakout session moderated by Camille Ricketts, GreenBeat writer.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Bryce Lee of Credit Suisse and Don Wood from Draper Fisher Jurvetson discuss where private capital will flow in the Smart Grid business at GreenBeat.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media moderates the Standards and Security panel at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Bradley Williams of Oracle on the Standards and Security panel at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: Cheng Saechao)
Eric Wesoff of Greentech Media presents data collected on venture capital investment in the Smart Grid at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures explains to Matt Marshall at GreenBeat 2009 why he hasn’t found a good investment in the Smart Grid business yet.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Sheeraj Haji (right) of the Cleantech Group and Steve Westly (left) at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Laura Ipsen of Cisco speaks with VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Rich Counihan of EnerNOC, Katherine Hamilton of GridWise Alliance, Robert Gee of Gee Strategies, and Pamela Lesh of Graceful Systems speak with moderator Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media on the Politics and Policy panel at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
GreenBeat 2009′s closing panel “Visions of a Smart Grid” featured Andrew Tang of PG&E, Philip Mezey of Itron North America, David Pacyna of Siemens Energy, Sharon Allan of Accenture’s North American Smart Grid Practice, and Matt Marshall of VentureBeat as moderator.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore delivers the closing keynote on November 19, 2009 at GreenBeat.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
The audience listens with rapt attention to Al Gore’s closing keynote at GreenBeat 2009.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Cisco Systems Smart Grid guru Laura Ipsen met with conference attendees during the Southern California Edison-sponsored GreenBeat cocktail reception on Thursday night.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
GreenBeat 2009 conference attendees enjoying themselves at the cocktail reception.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Conference attendees networking at the GreenBeat 2009 post-event reception.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
VentureBeat writer Kim-Mai Cutler at the GreenBeat reception with Stefano Zanello of National Semiconductor.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Panel moderator and VentureBeat writer Camille Ricketts (center) at the Southern California Edison-sponsored networking reception.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
Green Star Solution’s Mary Vincent (far left) with GreenBeat 2009 conference attendees, including Sonalee Henriette (far right) of GreenSPHERE Energy.

(Photo credit: David Lin)
See you next year at GreenBeat 2010!

We were thrilled with the turnout, and couldn’t be more grateful for all the support we received from attendees, speakers, sponsors and the press. It’s clear that the Smart Grid has gained the momentum it needs for serious work to be done, and we are excited to play a big role in this conversation going forward.

With Al Gore, and several of the biggest utilities and brightest entrepreneurs leading the charge, 2010 should be a big year for smart metering initiatives, regulatory reform and consumer conservation education. Whether or not these efforts will result in a cleaner, more efficient grid, or a population more committed to saving power (even if it’s only to trim their bills) still hinges on policy and money.

Stationed in the most progressive state for environmental legislation, and at the heart of the venture capital community, VentureBeat is ideally situated to report on how this unfolds. We’re already looking forward to future events on the power grid that will pick up where GreenBeat 2009 left off.

Once again, we’d like to thank all of our event sponsors and strategic partners for making this week’s event possible: Accenture, Southern California Edison, Accel Partners, Mayfield Fund, Oracle Utilities, Schwartz Communications, Cisco Systems, CPower, CSC, S&C Electric Company, KPMG, Vantage Communications, DEMO, Matter Network and Fora.TV.

We were also honored to have so many of our colleagues from the press in attendance during the event. To thank them for their coverage, and give our readers a more holistic sense of the Smart Grid dialogue sparked by GreenBeat, here’s a roundup of articles from the last several days:

GreenBeat in the New York Times:

Google says it doesn’t want to be a utility
In Pursuit of a Smarter Grid

On Al Gore:

Al Gore: Super grid is critical to combating the climate crisis, Cleantech Group
Gore: White House shooting for climate bill by spring, Greentech Media
Al Gore: The Smart Grid is Key, Earth2Tech
Al Gore: Our next power grid will be like the Net, CNet

On Innovation Competition and winners Locust and CPower:

Data storage startup, energy manager, win GreenBeat Innovation Contest, TriplePundit
3 Next-Gen Applications for Smart Grid 2.0, Earth2Tech
Data centers that feed power to the grid?, Greentech Media
Xtreme Power named a Smart Grid innovator in VentureBeat’s Innovation Competition

Related news:
Google PowerMeter: It’s our gift to humanity, really, Greentech Media
Cisco seeks smart grid CTO, EE Times
Viridity Energy poised to make next generation of Smart Grid a reality, TMCNet
Current CEO Casey talks about SGIG, GreenBeat 2009 Award, Smart Grid Today

Here are some photos from the event — look for more media, including an image and video gallery, in the next few days.

[Photo credits: Alexa Lee, David Lin and Cheng Saechao]

Perhaps the most significant point: That energy efficiency is “the single largest solution to the climate crisis,” and the Smart Grid will “play a crucial role” in achieving that efficiency.

The Smart Grid will have a number of advantages, Gore said. It will reduce the carbon emissions that accelerate global warming.  It will give us more access to alternative energy sources like solar and wind, and will equip us to cope with the inconsistency of those sources. It will create jobs. And it will be cost-effective, eventually paying for itself by preventing grid failures and blackouts.

“The analogy to the internet is close to exact and very relevant,” Gore added. Like the internet, the Smart Grid is moving from a centralized to a distributed model, and it will spur the creation of new devices and applications.

Gore also talked about the obstacles facing the Smart Grid and other efforts to fight global warming. Those obstacles involve politics, economics, and short-term thinking. But those challenges must be overcome — because he said members of the next generation will ask one of two questions.

If the climate crisis has come to a devastating head, they’ll ask, “‘What were you thinking? Were you watching Dancing with the Stars? Didn’t you hear the scientists? Didn’t you care?’” Or they may see that we’ve taken the political, economic, and technological steps necessary to create “a new renewable energy platform and sustainable environment,” and they’ll ask, “‘How did you find the moral courage to rise and solve a crisis that so many people said was impossible to solve?’”

[photo:David Lin]

Laura Ipsen, Cisco Systems’ smart grid guru is introducing Al Gore right now, highlighting his many achievements and awards. He’s been a mentor for Cisco in linking climate change to good business. Cisco will be launching its telepresence system at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December. (Incidentally, Gore will be making another cameo on 30 Rock tonight. Don’t miss it.)

He starts by acknowledging his partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, including yesterday’s keynote speaker John Doerr.

- “I am Al Gore I used to be the next president of the United States.” A good opening…

- “Thanks for mentioning my new book, Laura, Our Choice.” All of the profits from the book will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

- I was advised before coming on stage that the legislation haven’t been discussed in detail at GreenBeat yet.

- Expectations for Copenhagen have been scaled back because negotiators aren’t going to be able to reach agreement on a legally-binding treaty, but the heads of state that are gathering there agree they will seek a binding political agreement with as much specificity as they can muster. To provide a set of guidelines for negotiators to complete their work in the first part of the year.

- They are trying to get this done so it can be announced before Copenhagen to give more impetus to the talks there — the window for passing serious legislation in 2010 will close around the time the spring ends, or even before that, but there is a determined effort by the White House and Congress to get that done and then resolve the international treaty’s details during a conference in June in Mexico City.

- Because the Senate requires 60 out of 100 votes and has grown sclerotic in its approach to anything like reform, it has become a challenge. There is good news, though: Some Republicans led by Senator Lindsay Graham have joined with Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer to arrive at consensus around a bill that will probably add some subsidies for nuclear and some provisions on natural gas.

- There is a chicken and egg relationship between Copenhagen and the legislation working its way through the Senate in the U.S. The climate bill isn’t as strong as I would have wanted but could achieve real reductions in emissions.

- I remember a story when I was a young congressman, 30 years old, I used to do townhall meetings all the time and most weekends I’d do lots. One Saturday I finished my fifth meeting and was driving home in Tennessee listening to the Grand Old Opry. Back in those days there was a famous comedienne named Sarah Cannon — she told a story as I was driving and I almost ran off the road. She told of a farmer in an accident who sued for damages and the driver of the other vehicle hired a lawyer that cross examined the farmer. He asked the farmer, isn’t it true that you said you felt fine after the accident? The farmer says he was driving his cow home and the other vehicle crossed the meridian. The lawyer cut him off and restated the question. The farmer starts over saying the truck hit him right on, throwing his cow out of the car. The cow was immediately shot in front of the farmer. So when he was asked how he felt, of course he said “I feel fine” — at least in comparison to the cow. This got big laughs…

- This relates to the global climate change conversation because it’s not as bad as it could be.

- The ice and snowy regions are in the process of melting — they are definitely beginning to melt at a more rapid rate. If that process crosses a tipping point then the sea level will reach a catastrophic rate. The other impacts, I won’t go through here, but more storms, deeper droughts, famine, tropical disease, a disruption of the basis for the conditions that have been favorable to the rise of human civilization. We really have to act.

- One of the reasons for rapid movement toward a need to act is that in our country, for example, there is a sense that solutions to the climate crisis will help with the economic crisis as well. A set of solutions that also enhance our national security by making us less dependent on the international oil market, controlled by sovereign states in the Persian Gulf which are not transparent about their operations.

- There are a lot of reasons to get very serious about solving the climate crisis. The book discusses in detail all the solutions to deal with the crisis — there is wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, I’m not going to go through all of them and you can come to your own conclusions. Nuclear option will play a limited role, but not as large as its advocates hope for.

- The single largest solution is efficiency and the Super Grid, or the Smart Grid, plays a crucial role in several aspects of a comprehensive plan to solve the crisis. It gives us access to the best solar areas of the South West by giving us more access to the lower-loss transmission lines. It gives us access to the best wind corridors that aren’t being used now. Most of the wind energy is not being produced in the best sites.

- By infusing the grid with intelligent devices and smartness, we will be able to deal more effectively with the intermittancy of these sources, and we can empower consumers to take charge of their energy use and respond to energy waste which is ubiquitous throughout our system. We have such large amounts of waste throughout our energy system.

- The Smart Grid will also empower an entirely new collection of devices and instruments that haven’t even been invented yet — just like when the internet was first born.

- The Smart Grid creates job, reduces our dependence on foreign oil and reduces emissions of global warming-causing pollution.

- The analogy to the internet is close to exact and very relevant. We are moving inexorably toward a widely distributed energy generation and storage model. Right now we’re still locked into the centralized model. But in some countries that use solar more, about 90 percent of solar is coming from rooftops of homes and businesses. New storage devices will make a major difference in connecting these with the Smart Grid.

- We’ve seen an increase in electricity use in the U.S. — the increase in the peak load has been even more. We have huge investments in standby generation just to reach peaks that arrive 400 hours per year, less than 5 percent of the time — more enormous waste and inefficiency.

- Speaking of smart storage, the wave of electric vehicles and hybrids will arguably serve a larger role as energy storage devices than transportation.

- Right here in San Mateo and Northern California, more than 10,000 smart meters are being installed every day — right here is one of the truest Smart Grid developments in the country.

- This new Smart Grid is cost effective in and of itself. Even if you discount some of the future projections, it immediately produces cost savings — proven over and over again. Our current infrastructure is outdated and vulnerable. And it’s costly when you account for unanticipated outages and grid failures like blackouts. Even small outages for some businesses are extremely costly — variations in power quality can even cost a tremendous amount. When you take the competitiveness impacts of these failures into account — our GDP is losing $1 trillion per year.

- Having a very effective Smart Grid is going to be a competitive advantage for the U.S. in the world community. The average transformer is estimated to be 42 years old. That’s unacceptable.

- The steps that are necessary serve multiple goals and should be undertaken for other reasons anyway. It will pay for itself over not many years. The innovation required will drive favorable developments in lots of other areas.

- Still, in many states where regulators and legislators still have antiquated laws and regulations, we are stuck thinking about the grid in terms of these large coal generating plants connected to consumers. The world is passing that model by. Many laws and regulations are just hopelessly out of date — another reason a federal initiative is absolutely necessary.

- We think of the grid as an exciting and wonderful thing. Our electrical system has been described as the most important engineering feat of the 20th century. But just as we’ve benefited from the building of the highway system and the internet, so this vision of a Super Grid with smart feature is going to be one of the most significant achievements of the 21st century.

- We will allow people to use the internet to connect to Smart Grid devices and appliances. Whirlpool will be delivering more than 1 million smart clothing dryers next year. Yesterday, California issued that law restricting use of big screen televisions. It takes 1 percent of the output of a coal-fired power plant to provide energy to televisions that aren’t even turned on in California. A Smart Grid would make it easier to solve problems like this.

- When homes are equipped with lots of smart appliances and new devices that have yet to be invented, we will live in an era where the use of the internet by things will exceed use of the internet by people. It’s already quite considerable.

- The intelligence out there in the world, in these devices is considerable. By giving them IP addresses and connecting them to the Smart Grid and employing strategies to cut energy waste we can accomplish several goals simultaneously. And by calling people’s attention to where savings are to be had on their bills and elsewhere in the system.

- China is building an 800-KW grid to connect every part of China. One of the reasons they are moving so quickly is because they see it will give them an enormous competitive advantage. There is also a program spreading in Europe to connect a transcontinental grid with renewable sources in Africa and the Middle East and consumers in Western Europe.

- This will help them become less dependent on Russian gas, and it creates more jobs in Northern Africa, which is the source and transit point for the largest numbers of undocumented immigrants coming into Europe looking for work, creating a lot of other issues.

- There are proposals to take solar energy from the deserts of India to the heavily populated areas. There are similar plans in China. Australia is starting on an aggressive plan of its own.

- A large amount of the U.S. stimulus project has been allocated to green technology and the Smart Grid. Now there is talk of a jobs bill that could also benefit these areas. But we also need to remember that these previous programs for cleantech are creating thousands of jobs in themselves.

- We cannot wait to begin working overtime to get this initiative completed. Here in this audience people are devoting their lives to making this a reality. A lot of you have exciting plans and ideas. I’ve seen some of them here and I feel the excitement at this conference.

- But in order for anything to happen, we have to deal with the policies involved. We need a federal initiative to remove obstacles, and we have to put a price on carbon. Our over-dependence on carbon runs through all of these issues. It is out of sight and out of mind without a price tag. No wonder we’re pumping 90 million tons of it into the atmosphere as if it were an open sewer.

- We have to remove the obstacles that our in our path: Political obstacles, as has ever been the case whenever a large new set of changes are being proposed. The good news is that many business leaders, especially at utilities, have become advocates for change. They have considerable political power in our system and especially in the U.S. Senate. We have to build up the pressure for change so we can overcome those obstacles.

- I want to urge everyone here to become more politically active. Its one thing to change your light bulbs and drive a hybrid cars — but we need to change the laws. [Big applause]

- The other set of obstacles are market obstacles. A brief word on the cap-and-trade system. It’s been demonized but more than half of people support it because it lets us use the marketplace as an ally. It worked incredibly well to reduce sulfur-dioxide pollution, a cause of acid rain. The cost of making those reductions was one-eighth of what is being estimated today, and it happened far faster than what is being projected. It works extremely well. A cap is set and those allocations are made. Those who don’t have enough emissions credit can buy from those companies that have not used up all of theirs.

- Company boards then will have a fiduciary motivation to manage carbon emissions. It is so much less costly to make changes in efficiency than to buy credits — every company will get on board to make the changes needed.

- Reductions have been incredible driven by the cap and trade system — it’s sort of like what Churchill said about democracy — it’s the worst system besides all the other systems that have been tried.

- There are other obstacles in the marketplace — the principal agent problem so that the incentives for decisionmakers are different than the incentives for the people who reap the consequences. There are a lot of people working on improving this situation.

- The final set of obstacles has to do with the way we think about the crisis — this is the most formidable set of obstacles. We have inherited a predisposition toward short-term thinking. Our predecessors survived previous threats, but we face very different threats than can be responded to immediately. Our chances of encountering a leopard are small — but the chance of encountering the climate crisis is 100 percent. We can only respond to this by using forethought, discussion and shared values.

- We have the capacity to create long-term goals and stay on track to achieve them. Cathedrals in the past were built over centuries. The Marshall plan created after WWII was spread across decade and we haven’t had any more world wars coming out of Europe. We have that same capacity but we have to cultivate it and resist distraction. We have to build consensus.

- There’s an old proverb: If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. We have to go far and quickly.

- An infant can recognize faces to a higher degree of accuracy than the largest super computers. We need to be able to visualize what needs to be done. Most people are simply not aware of enormous opportunities to save money, energy and have a higher standard a living at a negative cost — they will actually be making money. This information needs to be pushed out to the people.

- I was in Seattle speaking at Microsoft yesterday and people came through the line during the book signing, and a young man came up to me and said, “You know, we are going to solve this.” And I thought, thank you, I needed that. It made me remember, when I was 13, I heard president Kennedy announce the goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him back. I heard people call that a mistake in the weeks after. But then Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and that day there was a big cheer at mission control in Houston — their average age was 26. They heard Kennedy’s challenge at age 18.

- The kids out there today need to see the potential, and it’s our responsibility to tell them. The Smart Grid is that important to the clean energy revolution.

- There will be a day when the next generation looks back and asks one of two questions: 1) If they see the climate crisis come to a devastating head, they will be justified in asking, “What were you thinking? Were you watching Dancing with the Stars? Didn’t you hear the scientists? Didn’t you care?” 2) But if they see a world in renewal with millions of new jobs building a new renewable energy platform and sustainable environment — if they feel in their generation a legacy that gives them a sense of purpose with a hopeful future, I want them to look back and say, “How did you find the moral courage to rise and solve a crisis that so many people said was impossible to solve?” I want the answer to be that smart men and women came together in places like San Mateo to make it happen — that they had the political will, which is in itself a political resource!

[STANDING OVATION]