Tata Chemicals get together with jatropha seedling company JOIL
Nov 29, 2008 Green Technologies, Natural Resource Conservation
Tata Chemicals
Tata Chemicals Ltd through its wholly-owned subsidiary Tata Chemicals Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. signed a joint venture (JV) agreement to invest S$25 million in a Singapore-based jatropha seedling company, JOil this week. JOil has been set up by the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) in venture with other investors in Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: biodiesel, India, Jatropha, Singapore, Tata, Tata Chemicals
Green apps for Android and Iphone
Nov 28, 2008 Green Technologies
Ecorio
Android and IPhone have recently become hot amongst mobile application developers. And guess what? Both are seeing a trickle of green apps like location aware carpooling and carbon footprint calculator. A perfect excuse for guilt free holiday shopping for all ecowarriors out there 
One of them is Ecorio on Android. It is a carbon footprint calculator that uses the G1’s GPS feature to track movement. The user inputs mode of travel choices, including automobile, public transit and bicycle. Ecorio determines how fast you’re moving — and if you’re in a car, how efficiently. Vehicle make and model are taken into consideration as well. Indicating that your ride of choice is a Prius, for instance, helps improve your overall rating more than choosing a Humvee. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: android, apps, eco-apps, green apps, Iphone
Orient Green Power (India) raises $55 million
Nov 27, 2008 Green Technologies, Stars, Policy and Finance
Orient Green Power
Orient Green Power, an Indian renewable energy producer, has raised $55 million in a fresh round of funding. The investment led by Olympus Capital Holdings Asia, which put $35 million into the round had return backers Shriram EPC and Bessemer Venture Partners invest $10 million each.
Orient Green now has access to $75 million in equity with this latest round of funding. Orient Green will use the cash to expand its renewable holdings, including setting up and acquiring biomass, cogeneration, wind, small hydro and biogas projects.
Orient Green currently operates 70 megawatts (MW) of biomass and wind power, but it’s aiming for 500 MW of renewables within the next five years. The company has two 7.5 MW biomass plants in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan and multiple wind farms in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. Currently, it’s working on another 146 MW of hydro and biomass power.
OGPL was founded by SEPC in October, 2006 along with Bessemer Venture Partners, with the objective of owning and operating a portfolio of renewable energy projects. Apart from the sustainable revenues from power generation, the Company expects to profit from the sale of CERs.
Green nightclub in NY
Nov 26, 2008 Green Technologies
Party time!
Now Green is coming to even hip nightclubs in New York! Greenhouse, a new club in Manhattan decided to tango with green credentials and follows in the steps of several clubs like Temple Nightclub in San Francisco, Surya in London and Watt in Rotterdam with claims of putting energy conservation and sustainability at the top of their agendas.
You may forever argue if this is another example of greenwashing, but my bet is that Greenhouse will be busy counting greenbacks from charity dos and parties thrown by the green brigade. How about a post launch party for your next EV or plugin hybrid? How long, you bet, it will take to recoup the 33% extra investment compared to conventional clubs that proprietor Jon Bakshi has supposedly help? Will the LEED certification from US Green building Council help wrangle a premium from bleeding green party goers? Read on! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Green, green clubs, Green nightclubs, NY, NYT
MIT professor develops tech to produce hydrogen inexpensively
Nov 26, 2008 Green Technologies
Solar "plant" producing hydrogen
Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, claims to have devised an inexpensive catalyst system using strips of cobalt, nickel, and phosphate, that could be the first step to creating a cheap hydrogen generating synthetic “plant”. Professor Nocera imagines a system where solar panels or artificial leaves collect solar energy and turn it into electricity. From there his catalyst would use the electricity to split water, forming hydrogen fuel. This could be used to power hydrogen vehicles amongst other things!
Since exotic or expensive elements like platinum or palladium are not used, Prof. Nocera is upbeat about the costs.He is looking to move towards commercialization. He states, confidently, “We were really interested in the basic science. Can we make a catalyst that works efficiently under the conditions of photosynthesis? The answer now is yes, we can do that. Now we’ve really got to get to the technology of designing a cell. ”
Many others are skeptical about the potential for commercial scale hydrogen production. They say that the best results for its peak efficiency current density, which determine the rate of hydrolysis, is only a hundredth of the current commercial electrolyzers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: MIT, Solar Energy
Progressive Auto X Prize entries announced
Nov 26, 2008 Auto Tech, Green Technologies, Ratings and awards, Startups
Auto X Prize
The list of teams formally registered for the Progressive Auto X Prize was announced on November 19, 2008. Entrants are in the running for $10 million to create commercially viable cars that can go 100 miles on a single gallon of petrol, or the equivalent energy in another form.
Although 22 teams are registered, only 20 have been identified. The organizers say only that the others “have been accepted, but remain confidential”. speculation is rife that the “stealth” teams could be Fisker - known to be working on plug-in hybrids - or even auto giant GM! Others wonder if the secret entries are government-funded programmes who are not yet ready to talk. They speculate that US defence research agency DARPA, known to be interested in new, more efficient ways of fuelling transport, could be one of them.
As an aside, I am delighted to see Tata Motors enter their Indica Vista Hybrid and the Nano EV. Bravo!
Tags: 100 miles per gallon, Auto X Prize
Solar towers: an alternative way of harnessing solar energy
Nov 25, 2008 Green Technologies
Solar Tower PS10 in Spain
Spanish firm, Abengoa is close to making operational a ’solar tower plant’, a technology that uses a system of mirrors to reflect sunlight to superheat water at a central tower. More than 1000 mirrors, about half the size of tennis court each, will be used for the plant that will produce 20MW of electricity once this €80m (£67m) plant is inaugurated, scheduled in January 2009.
Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology is seen by many as a simpler, cheaper and more efficient way to harness the sun’s energy than other methods such as photovoltaic panels. But CSP only works in places with clear skies and strong sunshine.The Andalucian deserts are an ideal location, and Spain hopes the plant, named PS20, will enable it to have a headstart in the CSP technology.
Abengoa has already built a smaller version of the tower technology to test that the idea works. The 11MW PS10 system has been generating electricity for almost two years. Its new design uses an area larger than 100 football pitches, with 1,255 mirrors, called heliostats, each with a collecting area of 120 sq m. These track the sun as it moves through the day and reflect the energy to the top of a 160-metre tower at the centre of the field. Here, the concentrated light is used to heat water to more than 1000C, producing steam that can turn an electricity generating turbine. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Concentrated solar power, CSP, Solar Energy, spain
$4 million funding for enterprise carbon management s/w company
Nov 25, 2008 Startups
Clear Standards, a developer of enterprise software for tracking greenhouse-gas emissions, water and energy use, and energy efficiency, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from the venture capital firms Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Kinetic Ventures. Novak Biddle had also provided the seed capital last year.
Clear Standards faces competition from Planet Metrics amongst others. These startups are trying to develop software to provide climate change risk assessments, carbon emission management and so on. With new carbon regulations on the the horizon, pressure for companies to get ahead on their environmental impacts has increased. Public carbon markets saw their worth triple in 2006 and are forecast by the World Bank to do so again by 2015. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Carbon, CDM, Clear Standards, Planet Metrics, software
GM turns up the “Volt”age
Nov 25, 2008 Auto Tech
Bob Lutz with the Volt mule
In this official GM FastLane blog post, GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz sings paens to the Volt hybrid, on which rests the unreasonable responsibility of taking GM into the next decade.
So now we know that Volt has moved into “the next phase” of development. Until now the company had been testing the Volt system in older Malibu cars (MaliVolts). Now, it is testing the Volt gear in its own next-generation vehicles, like the Chevrolet Cruze, says Lutz. He personally took the next-gen Volt system for a 30-mile test drive, in freezing conditions and noted that the car ran for 19 miles from 60% charge before the gasoline motor kicked in.
Tags: Chevrolet Volt, GM
Solar energy installations over graves in Spain
Nov 24, 2008 Green Technologies, Information of the Day, Natural Resource Conservation, Stars, Policy and Finance
Spain Solar Cemetery
Our ancestors have always been source of inspiration and learning, but now, they are the source of energy as well.
Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a town outside Barcelona, has installed an array of solar panels atop mausoleums at its cemetery.Flat, open and sun-drenched land is so scarce in Santa Coloma that the graveyard was just about the only viable spot to move ahead with its solar energy program.
The cemetery hold the remains of about 57,000 people and the solar panels cover less than 5 percent of the total surface area. They cost 720,000 euros ($900,000) to install and each year will keep about 62 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.The power the 462 panels produces — equivalent to the yearly use by 60 homes — flows into the local energy grid for normal consumption and is one community’s odd nod to the fight against global warming.
“The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations. That is our leitmotif,” said Esteve Serret, director Conste-Live Energy, a Spanish company that runs the cemetery in Santa Coloma and also works in renewable energy. They plan to increase the installed capacity. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Solar Energy, spain