Web 2.0 and Alternative Energy Sometimes Share a Stage If you travel in Internet circles and are tracking developments in clean tech or alternative energy, you have noticed that Web 2.0 and energy have sometimes shared a stage. We had, for example, climate change fighter Al Gore speaking at O’Reilly’s recent Web 2.0 Summit (update: [...]
Entries from January 2009
January 21, 2009
Dell and the Complexity of Sustainability
Claims and Skepticism Dell received a lot of attention for its claim last summer that it had become carbon neutral. The company claimed it was “saving more than $3 million annually and avoiding nearly 20,000 tons of CO2 through facilities improvements and a global power-management initiative.” Dell’s claim of having achieved carbon neutrality became the [...]
January 10, 2009
Decoding Clean Tech Investment Trends
The Wall Street Journal reported numbers this week that released by the Cleantech Group indicating $1.7 billion in VC investments globally in the fourth quarter of 2008. The story lead with the observation that this was the “steepest quarterly drop in two years” and “the smallest amount in six quarters.” But how does $1.7 billion [...]
January 8, 2009
Lessons from the History of the Oil Industry
This blog documents my efforts to educate myself about energy, clean tech and sustainability. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thought I would share, from time to time, my assessment of the books and articles I read. In that vein, I have just finished reading what is probably the definitive history of the [...]
