Read more of this story »

The economy definitely had an impact on this year’s West Coast Green with less venders but with less money that mean that people just had to get more creative with less moola such as the floating island, show gardens and even the sustainability built Jewish Sukkoth. The usual green rock stars like Eric Corey Freed and Michelle Kaufman made their presences felt with their energetic personalities.

Read more of this story »

Editor’s Note: John Gartner is Editor in Chief of Matter Network and an Industry Analyst at Pike Research

While San Francisco and Portland are each publicly claiming they’ll have the best electric vehicle networks in place in their cities, San Jose may be have made the most progress.

The city of San Jose has installed 7 charging stations so far, including spots at City Hall and a public parking garage. At the charging locations vehicle owners don’t pay for the power; instead they are charged based on the time in the parking spot. To simplify payment, EV owners get a keychain fob that’s connected to their credit card.

Read more of this story »

Coulomb Technologies was founded in 2007 with the mission to ensure that anyone who is considering the choice to buy an electric vehicle will have adequate access to fuel for the cars.

In the US there are 247 million cars but only 53 million home garages, meaning that a lot of electric vehicles will need to be fueled outside the home garage. Exacerbating the situation, according to studies at UC Davis, 80% of owners of electric vehicles will want to charge more than once a day.

It comes to this: we need charging opportunities where our cars are parked when we sleep and when we work. Since Coulomb’s founding, much as been written regarding the “chicken and egg problem” with infrastructure and vehicles. Will people buy electric vehicles if they don’t have a place to charge them, and conversely, will anyone buy infrastructure if they don’t see cars?

Read more of this story »

At the local level, though, energy independence may be realistic… and numerous communities around the United States are exploring available renewable resources, and the technology necessary to harness them. Here’s just a handful of towns creating models for clean energy production… and good old fashioned self-reliance.

Read more of this story »

San Jose, CA - Achieving a goal of 100 percent energy independence is a little closer for San Jose thanks to a momentous move by the City Council today. The City Council authorized the City Manager to negotiate and execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop potential lease terms and guidelines for developing an organics-to energy bio-gas facility.

The bio-gas facility, planned to be constructed and operated by Zanker Road Biogas, will be based on a 40-acre site near the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plan. The proposed facility would also be bound on either side by two solid waste recovery and recycling facilities owned and operated by Zanker Road Resource Management, Ltd.

The MOU, which was authorized today, will set forth the guidelines and work-plan for the potential lease terms of the bio-gas project. Pending successful negotiations for the MOU, San Jose will issue a lease to Zero Waste Energy Development Company, Inc., a partnership between GreenWaste Recovery and their sister company, Zanker Road Resource Management.

This project would also see the cooperation of GreenWaste and Harvest Power, Inc., a company that provides leading technology and project development capabilities for harnessing the renewable energy in organic waste.

Read more of this story »

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the Clean Fleet Report on April 7, 2009.

Intermodal solutions allow people to effectively navigate major cities such as New York, Washington D.C., Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo. Subway and light-rail are especially effective, but expensive to build. As cities grow, change, and morph, not every potential route can be served with subway and light-rail. Bus rapid transit is a cost effective way to duplicate some of the benefits of light-rail, at a fraction of the capital expenditure. Buses, taxis, car sharing, bicycling, and walking are all parts of the solution. For many, cars are their preferred way to get around, yet if all transportation were cars then cities would be frozen in gridlock.

High-speed rail integrates all these systems together and moves people from city to city at high-speed. When the distance is only a few hundred miles, high-speed rail coupled with city transit beats airplane and car every time.

Now an 800 mile high-speed rail network is being started in California. Because it depends on local and public-private partnership funding, as well as state and federal funding, it will be built in sections. First online are likely to be areas that are currently overwhelmed with passenger vehicles crawling on freeways that should be renamed “slowways.” Likely to be among the first in service are the Orange County - Los Angeles section and the San Jose - San Francisco section.

San Jose provides an example of current transportation problems as well as the future promise of high-speed rail integrated with intermodal solutions. Currently, during rush hour, cars crawl from all directions into San Jose, the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. Vehicles overload some of the nation’s busiest highways - 680, 880, 101, 280, 87, and 17.

Read more of this story »

Rooftop falcon-cams and electric-car chargers on streetlights may sound like things out of the future, but for the city of San Jose, California, the future is now.

Okay, I’ll admit it. Having grown up on the East Coast, for much of my life all I knew of San Jose was that Dionne Warwick apparently didn’t know how to get back there.

But take one look at the LEED Platinum-certified City Hall; the Falcom-Cam that keeps watch of once-endangered Peregrine Falcons that now nest annually on the building’s roof, and; the electric car charging station across the street, and you’ll get a peak into the future of urban sustainability.

The thing about San Jose, Mayor Chuck Reed said to me during a phone call we had last week, is that “innovation just happens” happens in the Silicon Valley. Obviously not every city has the advantage of such a robust technologically innovative base, but like any other city, the hard part, explained Reed, is implementing policies to facilitate the development of that innovation.

Read more of this story »

As it became apparent that the resident female’s mate from last year would not return for a second season in downtown San Jose, fans of the city’s Falcon Cam, installed on the roof of city hall a few years back, also noticed frequent visits from a new male suitor.

“I’m delighted that Esteban Colbert appeared at City Hall this week, and that he and Clara are hitting it off,” said San José Mayor Chuck Reed in a statement. Reed is reportedly an avid fan of Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report. “Like the City Hall falcons, the original Colbert has proven that with primitive instincts and sharp talons, anyone can survive in modern society,” said Reed.

Read more of this story »

With servers humming constantly and air conditioning systems keeping the climate at just the right temperature, data centers have some pretty steep power demands. Now the industry is promoting a new set of energy efficiency guidelines.

The Green Grid, a consortium of tech companies founded in 2007, launched the new guidelines at its second annual technical forum in San Jose Wednesday. The Green Grid calls it the Data Center 2.0 program, which it says will create a “multi-year set of design guides proposed for use by data center operators and designers to build and operate energy efficient data centers.” The program will offer guidelines for newly built centers and renovations to existing ones, the group said.

Read more of this story »

Tesla Motors hopes to secure funds by applying to redevelop brownfields sites; previously-developed land that is now deemed hazardous or polluted.

Though Silicon Valley electric car maker Tesla Motors originally had plans to develop a ‘virgin’ site in San Jose to house the company’s headquarters and manufacturing plant for its yet-to-be released Model S, the intended location, an 89-acre strip of land in San Jose apparently no longer works because Tesla wasn’t able to raise the $100 million in venture capital it needed to build on it.

But the fact that the private capital has fallen through may be a blessing in disguise for Tesla. By applying to develop its new manufacturing facilities on environmentally-troubled brownfields sites, Tesla will not only improve its standing with the federal government, but will also improve land in the process.

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Tesla plans to move the company’s headquarters to the new site as well, which will ultimately employ about 1,000 people when it opens in 2010.

>>More on Tesla Motors at Green Options

Read more of this story »

Back in June, the Governator himself was lamenting about the prospect that Tesla Motors — one of the state’s own shining green corporate stars — might pass up California in favor of New Mexico as the location for its future facilities.

But, after some serious wheeling and dealing, Schwarzenegger convinced Tesla that California was the right place to build by promising beucoup tax incentives and major financial help. His package included a government-funded lease-to-own option that would save Tesla from purchasing $100 million of equipment up front, and waive $8 million in taxes to boot.

Above and beyond the state’s financial incentives, the deal with San Jose involves a 40-year lease in which Tesla has the first 10 years rent-free and all development fees rebated in the form of tax credits. Gotta hand it to Tesla, they certainly know how to work the system.

Read more of this story »

Germany’s Daimler has teamed up with Essen-based utility RWE on a pilot project in the country’s capital. The project will see more than 100 electric cars on the road and a network of 500 charging stations.  Daimler currently has a pilot project in London, where a test fleet of about 100 first-generation Smart Fortwo electric cars are being used by corporate groups and municipal authorities, including the London Police.

Eva Wiese, a spokeswoman for Daimler, told the Cleantech Group that the new Smart cars in Berlin will have a greater range.

“The London one has 115 kilometers, and we think that with the new battery technology it will be a little better, but we haven’t specified it yet.”

Recent reports have pegged San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla Motors, maker of the high-speed electric Tesla Roadster, as a battery supplier for Daimler, but the Germany automaker is keeping tight-lipped about its power plans.

Read more of this story »

So what’s West Coast Green?  Well, when we covered it last year, the event was billed as a “residential building conference and expo.” This year, however, the program will expand to cover the wide range of issues and ideas surrounding green building and development, and the event’s being described as “…a feast of innovations and ideas — an educational smorgasbord designed to widen your vision and stimulate your mind with the latest best practices in green building.” Homebuilders, homeowners, policy wonks and ecopreneurs will all find plenty to keep them engaged.

Read more of this story »

As of February 20, the project included 24 San Jose homes producing 99kW of electricity. The 24 systems in San Jose will produce 3,560,000 kWh over the systems’ lifetime and will eliminate, according to today’s current fuel mix, about 5,055,861 pounds of carbon dioxide. The community group wants to see this program spread across the Bay Area and held a training for people interested in setting up their own community discount programs.

Read more of this story »

Source:  AP

Image: laughparty.com

For San Jose, converting 100 percent of public fleet vehicles to run on alternative fuels and electric vehicles is part of the city’s 10-point “Green Vision“, a 15 year plan of action, including such laudable environmental goals as reducing per capita energy use by 50%; switching to 100% clean renewable energy; recycling or reusing 100% of wastewater, and; creating 25,000 new jobs in the clean tech sector alone.

Part of the economic engine needed to achieve the aforementioned job growth in the clean tech sector is helping entrepreneurs move their ideas from the back of a cocktail napkin to the front page of the business section. Enter: The Clean Tech Open.

Spawning Clean Tech

Expanding to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions this year, the Clean Tech Open is a contest that awards early stage clean tech businesses with critical support in their formative years.  Early stage startups are invited to enter in six competition categories: renewable energy, transportation, smart power, energy efficiency, green building, and air/water/waste management.

In addition to the recognition/exposure, regional winners are awarded with packages that include: $50,000 cash, office space, legal services, accounting, insurance, public relations, recruiting, software, and other business essentials. Regional winners are also now entered into the national competition with an even larger purse.

“We’ve seen some exciting products and companies come out of the Clean Tech Open in previous years,” said Reed, citing the company GreenVolts and their concentrating solar photovoltaic technology as an example of how a company can take the spoils of winning the Clean Tech Open and really springboard into the marketplace.

Some argue that the key to creating a sustainable future on this planet will be found in developments in urban sustainability. How can hundreds of thousands or millions of people live, work, and play in such a confined space without having a collective footprint that spreads well beyond the city limits?  San Jose believes it has found some of those answers, but certainly not all.

And as for those Perergrine Falcons that have nested on the roof? Mayor Reed told me that the pair of adults is watching over four eggs, so he is hopeful.

Images: dbdbrobot via flickr; Clayton Cornell, gas2.0.

If you’ve ever been to San Francisco, or lived there for a time as I have, you can’t help but be charmed by the city, but also aware of the natural beauty of the entire 9 county bay area. That charm and beauty, in many cases, was won in difficult and often contentious battles between environmentalists, governments and developers to name a few.

San Francisco author John Hart and photographer Nancy Kittle have put together a wonderful book about 50 notable "elders" who helped shape the area with their committment to the environment and conservation. This is a review of Legacy, and the impact the "elders" have had on the bay area.

For San Jose, converting 100 percent of public fleet vehicles to run on alternative fuels and electric vehicles is part of the city’s 10-point “Green Vision“, a 15 year plan of action, including such laudable environmental goals as reducing per capita energy use by 50%; switching to 100% clean renewable energy; recycling or reusing 100% of wastewater, and; creating 25,000 new jobs in the clean tech sector alone.

Part of the economic engine needed to achieve the aforementioned job growth in the clean tech sector is helping entrepreneurs move their ideas from the back of a cocktail napkin to the front page of the business section. Enter: The Clean Tech Open.

Spawning Clean Tech

Expanding to the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions this year, the Clean Tech Open is a contest that awards early stage clean tech businesses with critical support in their formative years.  Early stage startups are invited to enter in six competition categories: renewable energy, transportation, smart power, energy efficiency, green building, and air/water/waste management.

In addition to the recognition/exposure, regional winners are awarded with packages that include: $50,000 cash, office space, legal services, accounting, insurance, public relations, recruiting, software, and other business essentials. Regional winners are also now entered into the national competition with an even larger purse.

“We’ve seen some exciting products and companies come out of the Clean Tech Open in previous years,” said Reed, citing the company GreenVolts and their concentrating solar photovoltaic technology as an example of how a company can take the spoils of winning the Clean Tech Open and really springboard into the marketplace.

Some argue that the key to creating a sustainable future on this planet will be found in developments in urban sustainability. How can hundreds of thousands or millions of people live, work, and play in such a confined space without having a collective footprint that spreads well beyond the city limits?  San Jose believes it has found some of those answers, but certainly not all.

And as for those Perergrine Falcons that have nested on the roof? Mayor Reed told me that the pair of adults is watching over four eggs, so he is hopeful.

Images: dbdbrobot via flickr; Clayton Cornell, gas2.0.