This month’s issue of Wired magazine includes a long feature, written by Washington Post national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin, headlined “Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust.” (Disclosure: I’m a contributing editor at Wired, and Eilperin is an acquaintance.) The story, which joins a lengthening list of obits for the cleantech industries, has a certain (more…)

Amid all the negative publicity that Solyndra’s failure has brought to the Administration’s cleantech efforts, one cleantech program has received broad bipartisan support: DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-e). In 2012, ARPA-e will receive $275 million, a 53% increase from the prior year with both the House and the Senate supporting significant (more…)

How do we know when solar becomes a mainstream energy source?

One tipoff: when mainstream energy companies get serious about solar.

For example, take NRG, a Fortune 250 wholesale energy generator with about 26 GW of capacity in its (more…)

We spend our days advocating for smart solar policy because we believe that harnessing the sun for more of our power is the better path forward. Turns out plenty of our fellow Americans feel the same way.

Polling released yesterday by SEIA and Schott shows that an impressive 9 out of 10 Americans think it’s (more…)

The cleantech industry as a whole, and the electric vehicle industry in particular, have been in the news nearly every day since Solyndra went bust, and not in a good way. The media and blogosphere are repeatedly asking the question, Which company will be the next recipient of money from the Department (more…)

The Solyndra debacle is no surprise to this cleantech venture capitalist. The inherent conflict between trying to get money out of the U.S. Treasury as quickly as possible to stimulate the economy and, at the same time, have government agencies that are ill-suited at making business decisions do just that was nothing other than a recipe for disaster. (more…)

For those of you who, like me, watch very little commercial news television, here’s a sample of reporting to consumers on the energy industry. This happens to concern Solyndra – a debacle that’s thrown a cold swimming pool of water on the already floundering US renewable energy industry. (more…)

For weeks now we’ve seen the Solyndra bankruptcy being used as a political punching bag. Now the overblown hype around one solar company is putting real industry growth and viable projects at risk. Enough is enough.

Last last week, SolarCity was informed that the DOE (more…)

Not so long ago the green energy movement celebrated because President Obama used words like ‘renewable energy’ and ‘climate change’ in his inaugural speech. It was a first for a US president.

Now comes the downside of being a political darling. (more…)

Recent solar industry bankruptcies like Solyndra and Evergreen Solar have some questioning government support for solar and the future of the solar industry as a whole.  Closer examination reveals though that the opportunities in the solar industry are not one size fits all, and that the current (more…)