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GE is delaying the construction of its previously announced Aurora, Colorado, thin-film solar panel factory in what appears to be an acknowledgement of Solar PV's economic headwinds.[read more]

Ask an expert on clean tech what the largest barriers to a low carbon energy future are, and chances are they will list higher technology costs, policy barriers, or the need for new infrastructure to accommodate novel energy sources.[read more]

“Expertise in multiple technologies is the future of the renewable energy landscape,” Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s Renewable Energy business, said in a statement. “At GE, we’re uniquely able to partner on both wind and solar projects with customers like Invenergy.”[read more]

“I was a huge supporter of cap and trade,” said Wayne Leonard, the CEO of Entergy, a $11 billion utility company. “We developed enormously elegant solutions, but they couldn’t get done.” Taxing carbon emissions is the next best way to deal with the threat of global climate disruptions, he said, in part because it would give the energy...[read more]

With the backdrop of solar company Solyndra's bankruptcy, the media has been running an endless stream of stories and op-eds seeking to discredit government investment in technology. CCNMoney, in an encouraging contrast, today published a blog post called "7 great government-backed inventions." From their story: It's under fire for...[read more]

On Tuesday, a group of the nation’s most formidable business leaders — including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Bank of America Chairman Chad Holliday – gathered in Washington, DC to deliver a full-throated warning to lawmakers: increase the federal government’s investment in energy innovation or risk losing out on a $5 trillion global industry.[read more]

My latest Clean Break column looks at how venture capitalists — impatient with lengthy returns on their investments and worried about the economic climate — are retreating from the cleantech space to less risky investment opportunities. Picking up the slack are corporate investors such as ABB, GE, and Siemens, who are making large...[read more]

How’s GE’s ecomagination  going? I put that question today to Mark Vachon, who is vice president for ecomagination at GE. He replied by talking about natural gas. “The large macro trend of gas is massive,” he said. “Our oil and gas business will be a huge beneficiary.” An abundance of shale gas in the U.S., and methane gas reserves...[read more]

Marrying Gas and Renewables A Turkish developer recently announced that it would build a new power plant using technology from GE that matches wind and solar generation to the output of a highly responsive natural gas turbine, all integrated in one package with the hardware and software to mesh its output with the grid. GE is...[read more]

The coming conversion of the world's electricity networks to the so-called 'smart grid' (I don't think it means it becomes self-aware - at least I hope not) will cause the grid to decarbonise itself by over 50% in America. The exact amount elsewhere will depend on many other factors, but be at least as great. This is good news for...[read more]

 General Electric Co. (GE) is betting big on natural gas. The $150-billion a year company, whose power plants generate about one-fourth of the world’s electricity, today announced a new natural-gas power plant that it says is more efficient and flexible than any other in the market. By phone from Paris, where the announcement was...[read more]

My Clean Break column today takes a look at the importance of bats when it comes to agriculture and how bat populations, under threat by white nose syndrome and wind turbines, are getting some help by the Electric Power Research Institute. EPRI researchers have designed a system that can detect a bat’s echolocation call and adjust the...[read more]

 This week, the U.S. clean energy sector received a welcomed boost towards making advanced clean technology a commercial reality. General Electric (GE) announced that it plans to build the largest solar manufacturing facility in the United States to produce cheap, efficient thin-film solar panels.  This development is...[read more]

I've just debriefed with three, very smart people who will be discussing their top three challenges to smart grid implementation: Brian Huey from Sprint, John Skinner from Intel Ventures, and Michelle Lesh who runs Smart Grid operations at GE.  The conference, hosted Plug and Play Tech Center, takes place April 14 and will be...[read more]

As the first mass-market electric cars start to, slowly, hit the streets, the big question is whether battery-powered vehicles are the future or a fad. The answer won’t be known for years but a new report from GTM Research offers some interesting insights into where the electric road might lead. The report, “The Networked EV: The...[read more]