For today’s company spotlight, I wanted to look at smart meters. Smart meters have been in use since 2006 in the United States and have gained wide penetration in some areas and caused backlashes in others. In the near future many utilities will be switching their customers over to this technology. So what exactly are [...]
Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Itron: A Global Leader in Smart Meters
May 21st, 2012 
John Basalla KiOR Update: Stock Closes Up 10%
May 16th, 2012 John Basalla KiOR, which was profiled on this website two weeks ago, closed up nearly 10% Tuesday. The big move came after KiOR released its 1Q2012 earnings. While revenues were non-existent, which is to be expected from a start-up company, the CEO Fred Cannon stated in the conference call that the demonstration plant was completed ahead of schedule [...]
Posted in Business, Green Products, News 
Tags: Green Tech Company Spotlight, john, John Basalla 
No Comments »Maxwell Technologies: Creating the Replacement for the Battery?
May 14th, 2012 John Basalla If you read enough articles about electric or hybrid vehicles, sooner or later you see references to ultra capacitors. Ultra capacitors are currently widely used in many energy saving devices and have a bright future, including potentially replacing the standard battery. Maxwell Technologies (stock symbol: MXWL) is one of several companies at the forefront of [...]
KiOR: Turning Trees into Oil
May 7th, 2012 John Basalla The following post is the first by our new contributor, John Basalla, a CPA currently working in Tokyo who is interested in the business side of green technology. All his “Green Tech Company Spotlight” articles can be found at the following tag or on John’s page. What does KiOR do? KiOR is an alternative fuels [...]
Billboard Ecology: Turning Old Billboards into Consumer Goods
May 3rd, 2012 Eric Wilson While the number of electronic billboards is on the rise, most billboards are still comprised of a single banner. Neither type of billboard ranks high in terms of sustainability. Even the electronic ones that use LED lights to conserve energy are still using electricity where older banner style require huge inputs of materials, but do [...]
Posted in Business, Eric Wilson, Green Products, Recylcing, Sustainability Tags: Colorado, Green Product, Landfill, LED Lights No Comments »Axion: Turning Bottles into Bridges
May 2nd, 2012 Justin Manger Using a technique developed at Rutgers Universtity, Axion International from New Providence, N.J. is building small bridges from recycled plastic bottles. Aside from reusing the bottles, the company says the I-beams, rail ties, and other structural building products it makes are rust and corrosion proof, cost competitive, and won’t become food for termites. Take their [...]
Posted in Business, Conservation, Green Building, Green Products, Justin Manger, News, Recylcing, Sustainability, Transportation Tags: Green Product No Comments »How You Actually Crack Shale Rock 2 Miles Underground
May 1st, 2012 Justin Manger How is it possible to drill through 10,000 feet of impermeable rock, turn 90 degrees and continue drilling horizontally all that way under the surface, then blast chemical water and sand at high pressure to crack open rocks, and then – if that weren’t enough – capture the gas once it has come back up [...]
75 Percent Recycling Rate at 2012 Consumer Electronics Show
April 26th, 2012 Chris DeArmond At the beginning of the year, I talked about some of the eco-friendly products that were featured at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). However, I didn’t go into great detail as to how sustainability was carried out as a major theme of the venue itself. Now that several months have passed since the event, [...]
Posted in Business, News, Recylcing, Sustainability Tags: Chris DeArmond, Video, Waste No Comments »FFF: Green Peace Study on Server Farms
April 20th, 2012 Justin Manger Mobile internet services based in the “cloud” are a part of daily life and continue to proliferate. Given the huge amounts of energy needed to power the data centers that are the backbone of our online life, Greenpeace recently released a “How Green Is Your Cloud” study comparing which internet companies are the most environmentally [...]
Hertz on Demand: Toward Sustainable Transportation
April 18th, 2012 Eric Wilson Can a rental car company really move society toward sustainable transport? Hertz on Demand, a car sharing service from the eponymous rental agency, believes they have devised a way to more appropriately share cars. Currently there are a wealth of these types of services. Occasional Car, eGo Car Share, and ZipCar are some of the [...]
