The Alliance to Save Energy’s Commission on National Energy Policy included financing as one of the central recommendations in its recent report, “Energy 2030: Doubling U.S. Energy Productivity by 2030.” The commission consists of some of the key leaders in energy policy and business in the United States.

The commission’s plan would use financing programs (more…)

Solar energy company SolarCity and automaker Honda have joined forces to increase access to solar power for their customers. The partnership establishes an investment fund to finance $65 million in solar projects to assist Honda and Acura (Honda’s luxury division) customers with the initial cost of solar power installation. Millions of Honda and Acura customers (more…)

The Green Power Hike, which recently took place in Hong Kong, is an annual fundraising event that focuses on environmental conservation and education. It’s a great initiative, but it serves as another reminder of just how inundated my daily life has become by the word “green” and how many different meanings the word has come to adopt. I am beginning to think that (more…)

Adura Technologies (Adura) is a San Francisco company that provides wireless lighting controls and energy management systems. Adura was recently acquired by a large Atlanta-based commercial lighting company called Acuity Brands.

Adura’s patent portfolio includes at three U.S. patents and at least five published patent applications. The (more…)

Marketing is an essential ingredient for the success of energy efficiency finance. But too often, finance and efficiency experts focus on technical and financial issues and underestimate the importance of marketing. Using best practices in marketing is necessary to drive demand to the high levels state goals require.

At a New England Clean Energy Council panel (more…)

Every year around this time since 2007, as executive editor of a leading global cleantech research and news service, I’ve contributed to predictions on what to expect in the year ahead in cleantech.

We’ve kept that tradition alive here at Kachan & Co. We don’t claim a perfect track record, but we’ve been eerily prescient and nailed some biggies a (more…)

Advanced lighting has brought us not only energy savings, but also a slew of new screw-in-a-light bulb jokes. For LEDs, it usually goes something like this: How many people does it take to screw in a LED light? One. And a roomful of deep wallets to pay for it.

To be fair, the cost of LEDs (light-emitting diodes) has been falling dramatically and is now even (more…)

Our latest webinar featured Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Galen Barbose sharing hot-off-the-presses findings of the 5th annual Tracking the Sun report on solar price trends in the U.S. The report confirmed that solar has never been a better deal for Americans. 2011 brought another year of double digit cost declines, and that downward (more…)

Eilat Eilot, Israel’s international yearly event in the renewable energy arena, is underway now in Eilat. The event kicked off with EnergyVest, the investment summit of the conference, on November 26th.

We spoke to one of the organizers of the event, Ophir Gore, Director of the Renewable Energy and Alternative Fuels Department at Israel NewTech. (more…)

A new report compiled by Greenpeace International and the Global Wind Energy Council on the future of the wind industry and released yesterday in Beijing says wind power could supply up to 12 percent of global electricity by 2020, creating 1.4 million new jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by more than 1.5 billion tons per year, more than 5 times today’s level. By 2030, (more…)