Early Stage Cleantech Venture and the Next Billion Dollar Businesses

Early Stage Cleantech Venture and the Next Billion Dollar Businesses

Looks at how cleantech has the potential to produce the next billion dollar companies and become the engine of growth for the US; and goes on to look at how the entrepreneurial ecosystem can be encouraged, especially in the critical early stage phase.

Brown to Green: A New Use For Blighted Industrial Sites

Brown to Green: A New Use For Blighted Industrial Sites

Few places in the U.S. are as well suited to developing renewable energy as the contaminated sites known as “brownfields.” But as communities from Philadelphia to California are discovering, government support is critical to enable solar and wind entrepreneurs to make use of these abandoned lands.

Enhanced Geothermal Roadmap Workshops

Enhanced Geothermal Roadmap Workshops

The Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy agency (EERE) has announced a roadmap workshop for enhanced geothermal. It is inviting a select — small — group of subject matter experts to take part in this roadmap workshop in order to help develop a plan for how the country can proceed in developing its dry rock geothermal resources and enhancing existing geothermal resources.

DOE SunShot Initiative Aims for Cost Competitive Solar Energy by 2020

DOE SunShot Initiative Aims for Cost Competitive Solar Energy by 2020

The DOE’s “SunShot” initiative which is modeled after the highly successful Apollo moon shot program aims to spur innovations and rationalizations that will together slash the total system cost of solar photovoltaic systems by three quarters within this decade. If it manages to achieve these goals then solar PV would become cost competitive with other […]

Election Does Not Spell Cleantech Doom

Election Does Not Spell Cleantech Doom

The loss of the Democratically controlled Congress, does not spell doom for cleantech.  Republicans and Democrats can find common ground in areas like energy efficiency, renewable energy standards, R&D, government procurement, and a gas tax.  Additionally, global macro-economic trends will continue to have an impact on our energy policy. by David Gold, Lead Partner for […]

New State-by-State Wind Power Data Helps Build a Green Grid

New State-by-State Wind Power Data Helps Build a Green Grid

The first comprehensive update to Unites States wind potential estimates in 17 years helps renewable energy proponents by providing solid data for development and legislation. However, the wind power industry needs an improved electrical grid in order to transport and sell wind-generated energy…

States Can Create Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariffs

States Can Create Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariffs

After feed-in tariff legal uncertainty, a January 2010 report by the National Regulatory Research Institute finds that states can successfully and legally implement feed-in tariff programs to accelerate renewable energy projects.

Five Promising Thin Film Solar Startups

Five Promising Thin Film Solar Startups

It is a rough time to be a startup in the Solar Photovoltaic sector. The financial crisis and deep recession has not only dried up capital, but has also hit demand for solar panels, which has lead to a global supply glut and a price collapse. In this very difficult environment startups must compete with much larger established global suppliers that have factories of hundreds of megawatts each, an established customer base and well developed brand names and sales channels. In this post we look at five promising CIGS thin film Solar PV startups based in the US and try to catalog their unique strengths and accomplishments.

ALERT: Two DOE Webinars Tomorrow: PACE and State of the States 2009

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program is hosting two Webinars tomorrow, Wednesday, November 18. The first targets recipients of Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG), and the second targets state and local officials interested in the role of policy in renewable energy market development.