GreenTech24

The electrostatic motor, used more than 200 years ago by Benjamin Franklin to rotisserie a turkey, is making a comeback in a promising new design for motors that is light, soft, and operates without external electronic controllers.

Zipcar reported fourth quarter earnings yesterday and Wall Street was not happy (shares traded down an immediate 13 percent). Despite actually posting its second consecutive quarterly profit of $3.9 million, concerns are rising about revenue numbers, particularly in Europe where Zipcar is pegging a lot of its future growth. The car sharing company is doing [...]

Speculation that Fisker’s DOE loan guarantee is toast. Obvious concern for A123 Systems, Fisker’s battery supplier.

House Energy and Commerce is subpoenaing 5 white house aids. The dream of continuing “Solyndra” through the election continues.

With expanded production of nanomaterials fast approaching, scientists are reporting indications that dust generated during processing may explode more easily than dust from other common dust explosion hazards. Their article indicates that nanomaterial dust could explode from a spark with only 1/30th the energy needed to ignite sugar dust — cause of the 2008 Portwentworth, Georgia, explosion that killed 13 people, injured 42 people and destroyed a factory.

Tesla says orders look promising for the Model X. Here we go.

An LED light for $5 bucks. This could get interesting.

Incandescent light bulbs are really little space heaters with a side benefit of producing some light. They are an old technology that is being phased out for many applications by more efficient alternatives. Now, in addition to the LEDs and CFLs, we can add ESL bulbs, which have started to reach the market, to the available technologies. We've been watching for Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lighting technology for a few years. It is now commercially available with the introduction of the Vu1 bulb. ESL lighting uses an electron gun to stimulate a phosphor coated surface for illumination, much like an old CRT or television tube. The bulb is actually a vacuum, with no mercury (or anything else) inside it, so disposal and recycling is easier. The Vu1 bulb has an expected lifespan of 11,000 hours, which can be 5 times that of an incandescent and close to that of a good CFL. It uses 19.5 watts to produce 500 lumens, so it falls in between CFL and incandescent in efficacy. The...

Researchers are using new combinations of nano-materials to produce advances in infrared photodetection technology.

Despite 25 percent y/y subscriber growth, profit was lower than expected and European growth is looking slow. Zipcar is getting hammered in morning trading.

A refutation of the “cleantech VC has gone bust” argument. The details are always more complex.

Obama’s 2013 budget proposal is out and aside from some increases in support for many of the renewable energy programs the DOE administers, like the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the most interesting news is that Obama is starting to go after fossil fuel subsidies [...]

Alta Devices and the case for gallium-arsenide solar cells.

Indian conglomerate Tata is making a sizable investment in geothermal power in Indonesia. The Asian markets continue to look more interesting than N. America and Europe.

Geothermal energy is often overlooked as the "other" renewable energy. Capping geysers to harness their energy is difficult, and the sites where these resources exist are not widespread. But companies are exploring new methods of obtaining energy from geothermal sources by stimulating accessible geologic formations to generate hot water and steam for energy production. A demonstration project being run by AltaRock Energy is underway in the Deschutes National Forest near Bend, Oregon to explore the viability of this technique. AltaRock is using "hot rocks" and an approach called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) for energy production. This process uses accessible geological formations which are hot enough to generate steam for power generation, but which are not naturally geysers. The system is meant to be closed-loop, with the water re-cooled and returned through the system, so that there is less impact on local water supply. However, the demonstration will use somewhere between 73...

Honeywell's decision to sue smart thermostat maker, Nest, will have chilling effects on the cleantech startup community.

NASA has announced that they're seeking proposals for green propellant alternatives to the currently-used and highly-toxic fuel hyrdrazine. The space agency is asking for demonstrations of propellant technology that can perform as well as traditional fuels in future spacecraft, but have a much smaller impact on the environment and be less hazardous for those handling the fuel. Hydrazine is efficient and can be stored for long periods of time and is used widely in satellite and science and exploration missions, but it costs the agency in processing times and extreme operational hazards because of its highly corrosive and toxic nature. NASA is hoping that a new propellant technology can be found that eliminates those hurdles (i.e. saves money) and possibly even improves performance. Through its Technology Demonstration Missions Program, the agency will be accepting proposals until April 30 and then giving out at least one award to the best among the submissions that could be worth up to...

The legal fight could stifle innovation in the smart thermostat space.

The Costa Concordia Rvongher via Wikimedia And just how much fuel is that? It's been nearly a full month since the Costa Concordia ran aground just off the Tuscan island of Giglio, and after two weeks of delays salvage workers yesterday began pumping operations aimed at recovering most of the half million gallons of fuel aboard the badly listing Italian cruise liner. Roughly 84 percent of that fuel is stuck in 15 large tanks, and pumping that volume out of the ship will likely take another month--and that's with the pumps running around the clock. Pumping fuel from a capsized and largely unstable vessel the size of the Costa Concordia isn't going to be a simple chore. First, valves must be fixed to the tops and bottoms of each of the tanks beforehand--much of this preparation has been underway for weeks--and hoses attached to each. Then, the fuel must be heated to reduce its viscosity and get it to flow easier. Fuel then goes out via the top valve, and seawater is piped in the bottom...

Folks in the investment community are hunting for a solar turnaround and have an index of 33 solar stocks where bets can be placed.

Jonathan Koomey, who has written a great deal on the carbon impacts of IT, is out with a new book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which will be excerpted all week on Earth2Tech. Koomey wants to help business people understand how to profit from the fight against global warming. In [...]

A pilot project in Germany is collecting food waste from wholesale fruit and vegetable markets and cafeterias to ferment and make methane, which will then be used to power vehicles that have been converted to run on natural gas. The pilot plant has been developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology and is located next to Stuttgart's wholesale produce market for easy access to food waste. The plant will make methane from the waste by using microorganisms to break down the food in a two-stage digestion process over a few days. Because the food waste being fermented on any given day can be more or less acidic depending on what was tossed out, the pH levels have to be constantly monitored in order for the microorganisms to best do their thing. The waste is held in several tanks that feature a management system that monitors many parameters, including pH level. The software then calculates how many liters of which waste should be mixed together to feed...

As A123 Systems gets hammered due to the problems at Fisker, an incremental deal in the U.K. to put in some battery grid storage on the power grid.

As Apple feels the heat for working conditions in China, low power processor maker, SeaMicro, continues to get good press for being Made in the USA. This Wired piece outlines their reasoning for building here.

Texas Instruments is introducing a new radio chip that can handle tasks that usually required the applications processor. Unclear what kind of energy savings we might see, but conceptually the chip makes sense for executing simple authentication and location tasks.

Researchers in California report that they have significantly enhanced polymer solar cells' performance by building a device with a new "tandem" structure that combines multiple cells with different absorption bands. The device had a certified power-conversion efficiency of 8.62 percent and set a world record in July 2011. After the researchers incorporated a new infrared-absorbing polymer material into the device, the device's architecture proved to be widely applicable and the power-conversion efficiency jumped to 10.6 percent -- a new record -- as certified by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Tesla Motors has unveiled the prototype for their Model X, a larger, family-oriented vehicle (though not really a mini-van nor an SUV) that will be beginning production along with the Model S sedan. The body sits on the same battery-pack platform frame used for the Model S. The Model X does, in fact, look much like a taller, plumper version of the Model S in many respects. The rear seats are accessed through gull-wing style doors (which the company calls Falcon Wings) that offer a large opening for back seat passengers and access to third row seating, which makes the Model X a seven-passenger vehicle. Not unexpectedly, the focus from Tesla is on the performance of the vehicle (0 to 60 in under 5 seconds) rather than on range and economy. The Model X will have two battery options (60 kWh and 85 kWh) and three drive-train options (rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and performance all-wheel drive). Tesla's announcement states that they expect to begin production in late 2013 and have...

A process called "Black Silicon Nanocatalytic Wet-Chemical Etch" is allowing increased solar panel efficiency by reducing the light that reflects off of the panels instead of being absorbed. Any light that is reflected away from the solar panel lowers the amount of electricity it produces. The black silicon is especially good at capturing early morning and late afternoon light, which helps improve the overall effectiveness of the panel throughout the day. The panels made this way are slighly less efficient than the best uncoated panels currently made, but they have an overall efficiency increase of about 1 percent due to the improved performance early and late in the day. A one percent gain may not seem like much, but all these incremental improvements add up. The process is likely to gain widespread use if, as NREL hopes, it turns out that it actually reduces the cost of manufacturing the solar panels by 1 to 3 percent overall. The black silicon process has other benefits in reducing...

While the EPA mandated window sticker on a new car is a familiar feature, and we have become well acquainted with the testing that gives us comparative MPG (or now MPGe) ratings, those metrics are only one portion of how green a car may be considered. Other factors that are being taken into account with products like computers, consumer electronics and cell phones are now also being given consideration with the introduction of the EcoLogic label Chevrolet is putting on its cars, starting with the 2012 Sonic and extending to all Chevrolet vehicles in 2013. The EcoLogic label provides a third-party verified review of the company's claims about other factors surrounding the materials and performance of the vehicle. The Sonic example label (PDF) lists information about "Fuel-Saving Technology," "End-of-Life Recyclability," and "Responsible Management" and then notes the particular features the car has in these categories and explains how each is accomplished. As with the EPA's improved...

Seconds it takes for the Tesla Model X SUV minivan to go from zero to 60