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The sewer systems we use today are entirely ineffectual and unnecessary. The primary flaw in our design is that we use fresh water to dispose of feces. This is perhaps the most ineffectual thing to do with human manure — it pollutes fresh water, and it requires municipalities to maintain extremely costly sewage treatment infrastructures. Even after treatment, sewage can still wreck havoc on rivers and groundwater.
The most effective and straightforward thing to do with sewage is to compost it (or use it to produce fuel). It’s a valuable resource.
The C. K. Choi Building is a 30,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of British Columbia. The building has no connection to the sewage system. Instead it has composting toilets and waterless urinals installed. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher
The solar industry is just starting to understand the benefits of distributed solar inverters — the devices that convert direct current (DC) to grid-usable alternating current (AC). While most solar panels use a centralized inverter, inverter-maker Enphase Energy says slapping a cell phone-sized distributed inverter on the back of every solar panel can help harvest 5 to 25 percent more energy. Investors are getting it too, and this morning Enphase says it has raised $15 million in new funding led by RockPort Capital Partners, and including Third Point Ventures and Applied Ventures (VC arm of Applied Materials). 
Enphase CEO Paul Nahi says the company plans to use the money to keep growing to meet what it says is “tremendous demand.” Nahi says the company has sold about 1,000 inverter systems, half for residential systems and half to commercial installations; Enphase sells its systems through the traditional inverter channel of solar installers. 
Beyond the micro-inverter system, the company also uses an integrated solar monitoring service, which stems from the IT world — not a surprise given the company boasts several “20-year veterans” from infotech. The monitoring system checks the solar setup every five minutes and reports back if certain panels aren’t producing adequately or are in too much shade or need to be cleaned. We’re not entirely clear on the setup of how it’s networked and what pipes send what data; the company says it is proprietary. But Dan Kammen, director of UC Berkeley’s Renewable Energy Labs, recently attested to the company’s innovative use of broadband technology to deliver solar services. So they must be doing something right.
Source: http://earth2tech.com/2008/09/09/enphase-energy-raises-15m-for-distributed-solar-inverters/
If ever a conflicting topic needed a clearinghouse for all of the different rants, raves and theories, it would be the issue of “going green.” The co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, Jimmy Wales, hopes to crowdsource the discussion of “greenness” and has launched a green section of Wikia. Wales tells us he is looking to create a go-to repository of crowd-vetted environmental information that will serve as a starting point for anyone looking to learn more about sustainable lifestyles.
Wales says he didn’t create green Wikia so much to fulfill his passion for green living, but more to help deliver the truth of eco-info, which he says is sorely lacking: “I’m really passionate about having objective information in this area. It is really hard to get clear information on green issues.”
The site has six main, and pretty ambiguous, content areas: How To Guides, Go Local, The Green Movement, Sustainable Living, Environmental issues, and Green Science and technology. According to the site’s mission statement, Green Wikia is different from Wikipedia because it is focused on actionable items, more accessible to the average reader and written from a “green point of view.”
All the same qualms academics have with Wikipedia apply here, which could be especially dangerous for Green Wikia as so many seemingly cut-and-dry scientific conventions have been misconstrued in the public sphere. Meanwhile, corporate interests have mangled many a Wikipedia entry, like ExxonMobil editing the Valdez entry.
Beyond all the well-intentioned posturing, the site seems to abuse all the same old eco-buzz words and jargon. However, we’re waiting for the site to attract a tenacious user base eager to edit, amend and update. As purveyors of cleantech and “green”-related news, we know first-hand that Internet commenters have no fear of posting their eco-thoughts of varying veracity. Just make sure to check out the entry on “greenwashing” first.
Source: http://earth2tech.com/2008/09/09/jimmy-wales-comes-clean-with-green-wikia/
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher
With their dotcom and broadband-based winnings in tow, serial entrepreneurs of the information technology age have been taking the plunge into the energy and cleantech markets, looking to recreate their e-successes. Some are finding more success than others, and some are, frankly, finding no success at all. But these are new(ish) markets for innovation, and someone’s bound to find the Google of cleantech out of all these biofuel, solar material, water purifier and wind turbine firms. Will it be one of these 25?
- Shai Agassi, Founder, CEO Project Better Place.
- Bob Metcalfe, Partner, Polaris Venture Partners, CEO GreenFuel.
- Vinod Khosla, Founder Khosla Ventures.
- Sunil Paul, Seed investor, early stage cleantech, Nanosolar, Oorja.
- John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins.
- Elon Musk, Chairman, Tesla, Chairman, CEO SolarCity
- Steve Jurvetson, Partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
- Bill Gross, Founder Idealab.
- Ray Lane, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
- Al Gore, Chairman Generation Investment Managment, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
- Raj Atluru, Partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
- Steve Westly, Founder The Westly Group.
- Dan Whaley, Founder, CEO Climos.
- Martin Eberhard, Founder, former CEO Tesla.
- Martin Roscheisen, Founder, CEO Nanosolar.
- Martin Tobias, Former CEO Imperium Renewables.
- Manny Hernandez, CFO SunPower.
- Jonathan Gay, CEO of GreenBox
- Jeff Skoll, Founder Skoll Foundation, investor in Tesla, Nanosolar.
- Mitch Mandich, CEO Range Fuels.
- Bill Joy, Partner Kleiner Perkins.
- Larry Gross, CEO of Edeniq.
- Bruce Sohn, President First Solar.
- David Kaplan, Founder V2Green.
- David Cope, CEO of PurFresh.
Source: http://earth2tech.com/2008/05/05/25-who-ditched-infotech-for-cleantech/
Written by Craig Rubens
Fisker Automotive is moving full-steam ahead to get its $80,000 plug-in hybrid Karma on the road by the end of 2009 and today announced it will be using $65 million in Series C funding to do so. The company says the round closed on Sept. 4 and was led by a new investor, an affiliate of Qatar Investment Authority, who joined return investor Kleiner Perkins.
The money will be used to finish development of the startup’s first vehicle, the four-door Fisker Karma. Fisker says it’s still on schedule to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2009 and aims to ramp up production to 15,000 vehicles a year. So far, three prototypes have been built and the company’s engineers are now tweaking the battery management software and running crash-test simulations.
The funding pushed the startup’s total funding close to $100 million. Fisker’s got the money, it’s got the manufacturer, now it just needs to finish designing the car. Oh, and to make sure that pesky lawsuit goes away.
Source: http://earth2tech.com/2008/09/09/fisker-gears-up-with-65m-for-karma/
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