A new greener economy will be shaped by both large and small businesses. Our StartUp category, usually published on Friday as part of the Startup Friday theme features new companies, small entrepreneurs, and sometimes just hair brained business ideas all of which are aimed at solving some kind of environmental of social problem – through business. Enjoy.
Posted by Steve Puma November 20th, 2009 
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Ever since I was a kid, when my father used give me Matchbox cars he bought on his way home from work, I’ve been crazy about cars. So I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to speak with Simon Saba of Saba Motors, whose EV vision is something any gearhead can get jazzed about: to deliver an exotic electric sports car with a price tag of under $40,000, that will have the looks and performance of cars costing 10 times as much and is environmentally friendly to boot!
I had the pleasure to speak with the animated Mr. Saba and his charming wife at the Fast Lane to CleanTech Incubator Mixer, held at Club Autosport in San Jose. Club Autosport is the current home of Saba Motors, and hosts it and a number of other cleantech companies at its “car-condominium” facility, as part of the Electronic Transportation Development Center (ETDC), a San Jose Redevelopment Agency initiative to incubate and support startups dedicated to clean automotive technologies, including battery infrastructure startup EVIN, the very unusual compressed air powered Magnetic Air Cars, and over 30 others.
Posted by Amie Vaccaro November 20th, 2009 0 Comments
Hydrovolts develops modular hydrikinetic turbines for use in canals & other waterways
At Tuesday’s Academy Awards of Cleantech (The Cleantech Open), attendees were all abuzz about Seattle-based HydroVolts, winner of the $20,000 Cleantech Open sustainability prize. HydroVolts has created a floating in-stream hydrokinetic turbine that generates distributed renewable energy anywhere around the world. Hydrovolts’ vision is to provide renewable energy to millions of people around the world who live near water. The turbines are designed to drop into moving water, such as irrigation canals, spillways, tidal currents, wastewater flows, streams, rivers and other waterways. Energy is collected from the force of moving water rather than pressure, operating like an underwater paddlewheel, so the turbine is safe for fish, unobtrusive, non-polluting and of course, renewable. Each turbine can power 1 to 10 homes along the waterway and is about the size and cost of a small car. The technology is modular, scalable and simple to deploy. Check out this video to learn more.
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 20th, 2009 0 Comments
h.u.m.a.n. Healthy Vending is on a mission to change the world–one snack at a time.
The Los Angeles -based company is turning the $30 billion/year vending industry on its ear by using state-of-the-art, energy efficient machines filled only with healthy foods and drinks.
In addition, h.u.m.a.n. (short for “helping unite man and nutrition”) donates 10 percent of its proceeds to charities that fight obesity and malnutrition.
“At h.u.m.a.n., we believe that the sustainability of the environment cannot exist without the sustainability of our own health,” says Sean Kelly, a 26-year-old fitness buff who co-founded the company with Andy Mackensen in 2007. “Think about it. How are you going to get people to care about sustainability if they don’t care about themselves? Once we can connect with people about their health, I think we can connect with them about sustainability.”
Thanks mostly to refrigeration and lighting, a traditional vending machine can burn through 3500-4000 kWh/yr . But, h.u.m.a.n. Healthy Vending can cut that energy expenditure by up to 50 percent. h.u.m.a.n. machines use energy-efficient cooling units, triple pane insulation, and LED lighting. They also are equipped with remote inventory monitoring devices which allow for greater operational efficiency and reduce the amount of trips required for maintenance and stocking.
Posted by BC Upham November 20th, 2009 0 Comments
A maker of thermostat data systems that claims to be able to reduce heating and cooling costs for buildings by 20-30 percent won Grand Prize at this year’s Cleantech Open, one of the leading environmental technology competitions in the country.
Ecofactor makes integrated systems that calibrate a residential or commercial thermostat for maximum energy efficiency without having any noticeable effect on comfort. The system uses information from 24,000 data points, such as local weather, typical customer behavior and the design characteristics of a home or business to control the thermostat, which is connected to the Internet via a broadband connection.
As National Prize winner, Ecofactor took home $250,000, including $100,000 in seed capital. This is in addition to $100,000 the company won as California regional finalist in October. Started in 2006, Ecofactor has raised angel funding, and currently in negotiations for its Series A round, according to Earth2Tech.
Cleantech Open runners up were: Alphabet Energy (waste-heat recapture); and MicroMidas (transforms raw sewage into biodegradable plastic). Earlier in the day, audience members at the Awards Gala voted Alphabet Energy as the People’s Choice business competition winner.
Posted by Scott Cooney November 20th, 2009 0 Comments
Pop quiz: what does our municipal sewage waste that gets processed at wastewater treatment plants, and the great Pacific garbage patch, have in common?
Well, not much…yet.
A clean tech startup by the name of Micromidas may change all that, and in the process, change the game for plastic packaging.
Micromidas won the EPA’s 3P (People, Prosperity, Planet) clean tech contest earlier this year and is competing at this year’s Clean Tech Open in San Francisco. The bottom line is that it says it can convert 80-90 percent of sludge (biomass waste) to bioplastics. Typically, this sludge is either burned or allowed to decompose naturally, a process that takes 30 days or more. Either way, it contributes to climate change by producing greenhouse gasses. Instead of letting that happen, Micromidas turns that sludge into solid products that can be used in much the same way as conventional plastics.
Posted by Jace Shoemaker-Galloway November 20th, 2009 0 Comments
When it comes to footwear, comfort, style, durability and affordability are important aspects when picking out a pair of shoes. But there is a lot more that goes into shoes than just our feet.
Canadian-based footwear company Oliberté, is stepping up and reaching out to impoverished African communities and making a difference in a big way. In fact it is touted as the “first to market premium urban-casual footwear made in Africa.”
Posted by Steve Puma November 19th, 2009 2 Comments
At the last minute, I decided to attend Tuesday night’s Cleantech Open Awards Gala, and was pleasantly surprised at just how many companies with game-changing technologies were participating in the event. From the finalists to the runners-up to last year’s winners, the promise of what was on display was truly astounding, and gives me quite a bit of hope that we have a strong chance of beating some of the enormous challenges that are facing our environment.
EcoFactor, the competition’s overall winner, humorously presented an amazingly simple concept: a web-enabled thermostat that automatically and continuously adjusts the temperature of your home based on local environmental conditions. According to the company, more than half of households with programmable thermostats do not program them. The company’s technology avoids that problem, providing 25 percent or more energy savings with a hands-free solution.
While EcoFactor certainly has a very innovative product, I was simply shocked that they managed to beat out fellow finalist New Sky Energy, whose carbon-negative C02-to-building materials process appears to be an almost magical solution to excess carbon emissions. New Sky’s revolutionary chemical technology takes carbon dioxide from the air, combines it with polluted water, salts and renewable energy and ends up with carbonate-based building materials, in the form of bricks, tiles, laminated wood composites and others.
Posted by Mary Catherine O'Connor November 19th, 2009 0 Comments
The winner of the Innovation Competition, held as part of the GreenBeat 2009 conference in San Mateo, California, today, is actually a pair of winners.
The judges could not quite settle on one of the 11 entrants and so instead awarded both Locust Storage, a startup (just out of stealth mode today) and CPower , which provides businesses energy management services, as the co-winners.
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 18th, 2009 0 Comments
Think of it as CSI for the timber industry.
Singapore-based Double Helix Tracking Technologies (DHTT) uses DNA tests to verify the origins of timber. Essentially, it’s the same technology that’s used in forensics and paternity testing –only DHTT has adapted it specifically for wood.
“What we’ve done is to develop a very creative solution that builds upon existing scientific techniques and applies them to an old-fashioned industry,” explains Darren Thomas, managing director at DHTT.
But, why does wood have to be scrutinized so carefully?
Posted by BC Upham November 17th, 2009 0 Comments
Solarcity CEO Lyndon Rive said in an interview Friday that he is seeing a growing market schism between the thousands of small, local solar panel installers and a “half a dozen or so” national players that can provide “a trusted brand focusing on scale and services.”
Rise of the Brand Names
Solarcity, which the 32-year old Rive co-founded in 2006, has grown to be one of the leading solar panel installers in California, and perhaps the most recognizable solar installation company in the country.
The solar panel industry is still one where success is measured in the thousands of customers, not millions or billions, however, and despite its high-profile status in the news media, solar installers are still in a very niche business.
Posted by BC Upham November 17th, 2009 1 Comment
More than a dozen top executives ranging from Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn to David W. Crane of NRG Energy and Frederick W. Smith of FedEx Corporation jointly announced Monday the launch of the Electrification Coalition, a serious and rigorous industry-backed non-profit with the goal of having 75 percent of all miles driven in this country in 2040 powered by electricity.
The non-profit, non-partisan Coalition’s first act was to release the Electrification Roadmap, a 91-page report “detailing the dangers of oil dependence, explaining the benefits of electrification, describing the challenges facing electric cars, and providing specific policy proposals to overcome those challenges.” The Roadmap is available from the organization’s website. For anyone the slightest bit interested in the challenges and promise of electric cars, it’s required reading.
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 16th, 2009 0 Comments
Odds are, your data center feels as cold as a meat locker.
And if it does, you’re wasting energy –and money.
Data centers don’t need to be ice cold, says Rajesh Nair, the founder and CTO of Degree Controls, Inc., based in New Hampshire. Rather than over-compensating for server heat loads, he explains, companies need to focus on what’s really important: air distribution around the servers.
“In a data center, the heat load keeps changing over time and place,” Nair says. “But, the typical data centers has a static cooling system. That means there’s static cooling for dynamic heat flow –and that’s why there’s a problem.”
In fact, once you change the air distribution in your data center, it’s likely that you’ll be able to shut down 20 to 40 percent of your air conditioners, he adds.
But, how can you re-design the air flow?
Posted by Nick Aster November 13th, 2009 2 Comments
The Net Impact conference is as much about great speakers as it is about fortuitous encounters. Today at lunch I had the pleasure of sitting next to Peter Fyrkman of DripTech, a startup company aiming to tackle poverty by providing very cheap, easily scalable drip irrigation technology to small farmers around the world. Ever since I saw Paul Polak speak last year, the apparent ease by which one can bring a family out of poverty to something approaching a middle class lifestyle where education and other opportunities become reachable really struck me. With a small investment in better irrigation, a family can double or triple their agricultural output, feeding themselves and having enough left over to sell at a modest profit. In fact, Paul Polak is on the board of DripTech, inspiring Frykman to refer to the project as “Polak 2.0″.
Frykman told me: “There are 100s of Millions of small farmers suffering from the scarcity that need appropriate drip irrigation to thrive, current commercial products are too large and too expensive for them, it just can’t scale down…”
How does DripTech create a more affordable solution?
Posted by Cory Vanderpool November 13th, 2009 0 Comments
Consumers increasingly want the ability to make informed decisions through a better understanding of the human health and environmental impacts of products, processes and activities. Though many products claim to be “green,” the inputs and outputs that comprise them aren’t always environmentally friendly. Suppliers are now demanding adherence to specific green standards and those companies that comply are realizing that reducing negative impacts on the environment can also lower manufacturing costs by conserving energy, water and raw materials.
For businesses interested in greening their existing product line or designing greener products from the start, let me introduce you to Sustainable Minds. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sustainable Minds is a greener product design software and information company dedicated to bringing environmentally sustainable product design into the mainstream. Its impressive customer list includes Yakima, Whirlpool, Motorola, Pratt Institute and UCLA.
Nov 19, 09
San Jose: The Tech Awards
Dec 2, 09
Bard CEP National Climate Seminar: Hon. Ed Markey Sponsor event
Dec 16, 09
Bard CEP National Climate Seminar: Eban Goodstein, Live from Copenhagen Sponsor event
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