You don’t have to be an angel to find this New York Times article interesting. It says that venture capitalists invest these days not in green start-ups, but in more mature clean tech companies. It highlights one investment firm, Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund, and two companies, Quench and GreenRoad.
Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
In backing clean energy start-ups, fund look for larger resumes
Monday, May 24th, 2010Selling agriculture 2.0 to Silicon Valley
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010Venture capitalists invested billions in Silicon Valley’s technology firms. Their next big thing is sustainable agriculture. More and more are aware that conventional agriculture wastes water and energy, and worsens climate change. These concerns create markets for technological innovation.
South could benefit from a little efficiency
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010The American South both consumes lots of fossil energy and lags in energy efficiency. A new study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University concluded that pushing higher efficiency aggresively would pay off in fewer power plants, more jobs, and lower utility bills.
Report: Airline recycling in ‘sorry state’
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Here’s another article about airline trash. Green America, a environmental nonprofit, just found that most American airlines do little recycling, blaming airports’ lack of facilities. Delta and Virgin do best, earning B-’s. United and US Airways both get F’s. An average passenger leaves behind 1.3 pounds of trash, of which 20% is recyclable. Enough aluminum cans are tossed to build 58 new Boing 747s. European airlines do better. You can help by recycling your own cans, bottles, and newspapers.
Panel suggests 100 ways buildings can be greener
Monday, February 8th, 2010A panel of experts appointed by New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg made more than 100 recommendations how building codes could become more environmentally friendly. About half of the measures would cost little. The building industry supports the overall goal, but wants help with added costs.
Wanted: Green engineers
Monday, January 11th, 2010This article by Oliver Morton in The Economist stresses the human element of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Although technological breakthroughs will occur, and be most welcome, we can’t rely on them to provide new energy systems as quickly as we need them. What is required is large numbers of people trained to design and build them. The coal industry will need to multiply many times its carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity, and the nuclear industry will need thousands of nuclear engineers and regulators if it is to expand. The renewable sector is better off because it lends itself to production lines, and retrofitting to decentralization, yet both will have to compete for designers and engineers. Governments need to reexamine their subsidies to other high-tech industries, in order to create a more level playing field. They also need to encourage young idealists to choose engineering as a career.
Bloomberg drops an effort to cut building energy use
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009The New York Times reports that New York Mayor Bloomberg has shelved part of his effort to improve the energy efficiency of buildings in New York by requiring owners both to conduct energy audits and to pay for the installation of retrofits. Oweners objected; they couldn’t comply in today’s bad economy.
Study forecasts 297,000 green jobs
Sunday, March 29th, 2009One sees a lot of estimates these days as to how many “green jobs” will be generated in the U.S. by a shift away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Self-interested defenders of the status quo tend to come up with low numbers, while ecological enthusiasts predict lots of green jobs. Of course, it helps if everyone uses the same definitions, so we can applaud the Union of Concerned Scientists who have established a “renewable electricity standard” set at 25% by 2025. By this standard, they found, almost 300,000 new green jobs would be created. Job losses from fossilfuel industries would total about 100,000, so the net gain in jobs would be just over 200,000. This is three times as many jobs as would be produced if the country did not shift toward renewables from business as usual fossil fuels. This wide disparity in job creation is due to the high degree of mechanization of the mining sector. Today renewables do require more labor per unit of! energy than fossil fuels, hence could be considered inefficient. Until some future as yet undetermined date, the trade-off is jobs for dollars. In today’s economic environment, creating jobs is critical. However, advocates of green jobs need to keep in mind that all those green jobs may not last forever.
The recession’s green lining
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009Despite the hardships we all face in the wake of the economic recession, these tough financial times are providing benefits to the environment in the form of carbon dioxide emissions reductions. Slowed economic growth has caused some of the world’s dirtiest factories to shut their doors, especially in developing nations such as China and Mexico. Emissions from Europe and the United States are also projected to decline due to the to recession. Around the globe, there are many examples of how environmental quality is improving. It remains to be seen what will happen once economic activity picks up again. While many nations are trying to use the poor economic conditions to implement emissions reductions and clean environment strategies for the future, there are hints that some of the factories that are shutting down (large emitters of carbon dioxide) could reopen should the demand for the goods
Recycling gadgets when they go pffft…
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Dead cellphone? Old computer? Broken television?
Looking to get rid of these technologies once their time has expired?
In this weeks The Green Home, a new series in the New York Times, recycling electronics is discussed. Fortunately, many of the gadgets that make our lives easier (for the most part) can be disposed of with the environment. Items that have only recently stopped working can be restored and given to those in need. Some towns have electronic recycling programs or events and many stores are now allowing customers to drop off old items. The article provides a list of many websites that can also help you recycle technologies.