Eternal dilettante Jimmy Wales, the playboy founder of Wikipedia, has a new girlfriend-of-the-moment: Mother Nature. His for-profit offshoot wiki startup, Wikia, has launched Wikia Green, an edit-it-yourself guide to all things environmental. Like his past launched-and-abandoned efforts — anyone remember Campaigns…
In a recently filed patent application, Google details plans to build a "Water-based Datacenter," complete with an array of pontoons to generate electricity from the motion of the ocean. The abundant water could also be used to cool the servers, and power could be further augmented with wind energy. But the real…
A rash of solar panel thefts has hit the Bay Area and Sacramento according to a report from local news station KPIX. Recently hit was the Hearst Elementary School in Pleasanton. Best part of the story? The main suspect in the case, a Pittsburg, Calif. resident, is alleged to have used Craigslist to fence the goods.…
If Burning Man were still held at Ocean Beach, it would be a lot greener. Eighty-seven percent of the 27,000 tons of greenhouse gases generated by this year's party on the playa come from participants driving and flying to and from the event, according to the Cooling Man project. Cooling Man wants Burners to spend…
The antipollution device bolted onto your car's exhaust pipes contains platinum, an expensive metal. Some recycling shops will pay $200 for a used converter — whether it comes from a junked vehicle or was freshly sawed from beneath a Toyota Land Cruiser at the Stanford Shopping Center. I typed up the best parts of a…
Nth Power founder Nancy Floyd, whose firm invests in clean-energy solutions, spoke at the Democratic convention last night. I tracked down her full speech. Nth Power's investments haven't exactly threatened Kleiner Perkins on ROI. But Floyd has a plan to fix that. Wanna guess? Don't miss the part where she panders…
Time magazine gives renewable energy credit to hunky God-mayor Gavin Newsom. None was due. The august journal hails our fair mayor for a nonexistent wind-energy installation:
"I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels," House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Meet the Press Sunday. She said it again, just to be sure. We know what she meant, but dumb little mistakes like this are the general public's equivalent of Valleywag's Google cafeteria reports. I waited a…
"Energy-efficient computers powered by sunshine. This will be an instant hit," grouses chief bitterness officer Ted Dziuba in his latest opinion column for The Register. "There will be greenhouse gas output dashboards with neat little Ajax widgets." Mystery contributor theodp points out that IBM already sells it.
Click to view Makani Power, the company founded in part by Larry Page and Sergey Brin's kitesurfing buddy Don Montague, has scored another $5 million in investment from Google as part of a second round that could net as much as $20 million. That's on top of the $10 million already invested in the startup's plan to…
How did wind energy startup Makani Power garner $10 million in investment from Google and space at the NASA-run Ames research center on Moffett Field? Through at least one convenient marriage and a shared passion for kite surfing, a tipster points out:
We don't need any energy technology breakthrough to solve the climate-change problem. At least, that's the Tthesis posited by The Economist in a debate sponsored by everyone's favorite multinational oil company, British Petroleum Beyond Petroleum. The ayes are having it so far. Joseph Romm from the Center for…
With a subject as touchy as nuclear power plants, arguments for or against can quickly degrade into fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But today's featured commenter, Cynical Tech Media Bitch, offered up rebuttals to create a discussion worth the read:
San Francisco alone consumes 850 continuous megawatts of electricity during the day. How much is that? The two supersized solar arrays planned for 2013 won't be enough to run SF — they'll produce 800 megawatts total. Gavin Newsom's pet project, the tidal power generator, will only piddle out 55 megawatts —…
Google, everyone's favorite search-engine monopoly, has spent $10,739,521 on three geothermal power projects, including investments in AltaRock Energy, Potter Drilling and a grant for the geothermal labs at Southern Methodist University. The idea? Dig a hole two to six miles deep, pump it full of water and then use…
Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, ever the indulgent father, has stopped showering tears on his 17-year-old daughter Mary, and switched to cash instead. Mary Doerr's nonprofit, Inconvienient Youth, is a Ning-based social network that's supposed to make Al Gore's global warming presentation more "teen-friendly," …
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla's 15-year old son Neal, a student at ritzy San Francisco prep school Lick-Wilmerding, is refusing to eat any vegetables. "The only vegetable he has had this week is a single, lone piece of onion that snuck into his fajitas, despite spending the majority of dinner carefully picking all…
What's cooler than a solar energy plant 10 times larger than any ever built? Two of 'em! Two plants to be built in San Luis Obispo County will deliver a planned total of 800 megawatts to PG&E. That's four times the output of San Francisco's Hunters Point plant, or enough to run 800 big Wal-Marts. The bad news: They…
Greenwashing — the practice of gussying up old-fashioned capitalism as newfangled Earth-saving — is an art form. I used to think local greenwashers Pacific Gas & Electric and spam-prone solar shill Steve Westly were the masters. But they look like rank amateurs compared to Oklahoma native T. Boone Pickens. The man…
Click to viewKevin Rose, the Casanovative founder of Digg, is concerned about the effect that all his whizbang gadgets are having on precious Gaia. He proposes that the heavenly father of the Jesusphone, the almighty Steve Jobs, develop an "iPower" system to monitor a home's electrical system. When your iPhone's GPS…
