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Today in Green IT

Pedro Hernandez
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

After a 60 Minutes piece on Sunday, it’s fair to say that Bloom Energy owns the cleantech buzz this week. Already, there have been some interesting theories surrounding the secret ingredient that makes the Bloom Box run. Also, it’s been revealed that Google has been using the company’s fuel cell, but not for its data center. Why not? In Google’s experience, the power plant has an availability rating of 98 percent, missing the “four nines”-plus (99.99 percent uptime) mark so sought after by the industry. Also, each Bloom Box only provides a small fraction of power required by a major corporate data center. At $700,000 to $800,000 a pop, a Bloom Box-powered facility can turn into a pricey proposition for already costly builds and retrofits.

Chicago to Build Electric Car Charging Network

The city of Chicago and ComEd parent company Exelon are joining in a federally funded project to roll out 250 plug-in vehicle charging stations across the Chicago area by the end of 2011.

Submitted by Jeff St. John
A Tipping Point for Oil Prices

The New York Times speculates on whether unrest in the Middle East — specifically Bahrain and Algeria — could lead to oil prices rising past the "tipping point" of $100 per barrel, or U.S. gasoline prices past the $3.50 per gallon mark.

Submitted by Jeff St. John
Ethanol Loses Big Supporter in Congress; Iowa Sen. Grassley Ready to “Bite the Bullet”

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) tells the Des Moines Register newspaper that he's ready to support a rollback of federal plans to increase ethanol blended into gasoline from 10 to 15 percent in order to cut the federal budget. Iowa produces 30 percent of the nation's ethanol.

Submitted by Jeff St. John
BMW Teams Up With, Invests $5 Million In MyCityWay

BMW's newly created $100 million venture fund has invested its first $5 million in MyCityWay, a startup that provides location-aware city guides to mobile devices.

Submitted by Jeff St. John
Cali Senate Approves Tougher Clean Power Mandate

The California Senate has passed a bill that would make official the state's goal of requiring utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable resources by 2020, up from the current guideline of 20 percent by last year. An interesting point - the new bill doesn't require all that renewable power to be produced within the state's borders.

Submitted by Jeff St. John