Finance

US Solar PV demand

The latest NPD Solarbuzz North America PV Markets Quarterly has forecast growing US demand for solar photovoltaic panels throughout the rest of 2013 towards a near-20% increase over 2012 levels.[read more]

light truck cleantech?

 

An innovative retrofit for medium-duty trucks (such as delivery trucks and garbage trucks) could improve fuel efficiency and reduce smog and particle emissions by 90 percent.[read more]

internet of things

After three years of quietly building an internet-of-things platform in stealth mode, Ayla Networks unveiled itself by announcing a $5.4 million round of funding and major partnerships with leading chip producers and a Chinese internet giant.[read more]

Shanghai/shutterstock

Alpbach News interviews Robert D. Atkinson, head of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think-tank in Washington D.C. He talks about innovation, cleantech, and China.[read more]

cleantech rankings

Energy policy leadership may be nearly nonexistent in Washington, D.C. due to partisan gridlock, but America’s states and cities are well on their way to a clean energy future – with California leading the charge.[read more]

cleantech setbacks/shutterstock

Neither the failure of Better Place, which might yet find a bargain-hunting savior, nor the retreat of DESERTEC looks like a mortal blow to the long energy transition now underway.[read more]

Japanese solar plant

Not only can solar replace nuclear power in Japan, but it is also set to become the world’s largest solar revenue market in 2013, thanks at least in part to a surge in installations in Q1.[read more]

net metering

It’s not surprising that utilities aren’t fans of net metering. They can’t say that the reason they’re against it is because it eats into their profits. Instead, they use the argument that all customers are subsidizing those who use net metering.[read more]

C3 Energy data integration

C3 Energy has quietly been building on an audacious promise: a big data integration and analytics engine, hosted in the cloud, that can aggregate and put to use information for big energy systems.[read more]

smart grid/shutterstock

A new white paper offers practical suggestions that help accelerate the transformation to a Smart Grid. It also helps build the foundation for the transactive energy business model.[read more]

US Navy

The Navy got its first ever solar powered electric vehicle charging station last week, in yet another demonstration of a slow but steady transition out of petroleum dependency by the US military.[read more]

global carbon pricing

It’s ironic considering all the attention on the struggles of the EU Emissions Trading System, but today over 40 national and 20 sub-national jurisdictions have either implemented or are considering carbon pricing mechanisms.[read more]

Better Place Charging Station/Wikimedia Commons

Twenty years from now, when it is likely that electric drive will be a far more ubiquitous technology than it is today, we will look back on Better Place and other early failures as the natural price that had to be paid for innovation.[read more]

recent oil prices

If we are dealing with a financial crash, oil prices may in fact be lower, but people will still be unable to afford the oil because of other issues, such as lack of jobs or lack of access to money in their bank accounts.[read more]

China coal power plant production

80 GW of coal decommissioned from 2001 to 2010 is impressive. But how long did it take China to build 80 GW of coal plants to replace those? Well, they basically did it in 2006 alone.[read more]