Lisa Sibley's blog

A recent solar advancement out of Georgia Institute of Technology may be innovative, but it is by no means novel.

Researchers said they’ve come up with a three-dimensional photovoltaic system that could allow PV systems to be located other places besides rooftops. The technology uses zinc oxide nanostructures grown on optical fibers and coated with dye-sensitized solar cell materials.

The researchers said the technology enables PV generators to be foldable, concealed and mobile. According to Professor Zhong Lin Wang, optical fiber could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls, where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity.

Backpackers and outdoors enthusiasts are likely familiar with Switerland’s Katadyn, which makes water filters, tablets, and water treatment products such as pumps. Established in 1926, the company is a global leader in portable water treatment, with its ceramic filters.

It also specializes in desalination, currently making various portable pumps aimed at the boating community, especially for emergency drinking needs, Katadyn’s Chairman Adrian Schmassmann told the Cleantech Group this week at the company's Zurich headquarters.

Duebendorf, Switzerland-based Flisom’s CEO Anil Sethi released new details that his company accomplished a world record last week with its copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells, boasting more than 16 percent conversion efficiency.

It’s one thing to do it in the lab, he told the Cleantech Group yesterday. It’s a completely different story to scale that up and still achieve the same efficiencies. But that’s what it appears the Mumbai-based Tata Group is paying Flisom to do.

If you put a cleantech twist on the reality television show Amazing Race it would look something like the BioMotion Tour, which kicked off earlier this week in Paris running until Nov. 12 through seven countries and 35 cities in 31 days.

But instead of traveling by airplanes, taxis, rental cars, boats and on foot, the BioMotion Tour is, as the name implies, all about a fleet of cars zooming from one city to the next powered by different kinds of biofuels. The cars run on well-established fuels such as vegetable oil, biodiesel and ethanol, and also next-generation fuels including biogas (see Sainsbury's expands biogas-vehicle trial).

Two Calgary, Alberta-based companies, TransAlta (NYSE:TAC) and Canadian Hydro Developers (TYSX:KHD), appear to have made amends with a sweetened deal.

The companies jointly said today they have entered into a definitive pre-acquisition agreement. TransAlta plans to amend its existing share offer to acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of Canadian Hydro for C$5.25 per share in cash, for a total value of C$1.6 billion.

Risk aversion to investing in cleantech is starting to change and improve, but we’re not about to see a wave of IPOs in the sector anytime soon.

Or at least that was the consensus today from venture capital and private equity folks at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum-West conference in San Francisco. And while the primarily Silicon Valley-based panel had opinions that differed at times, they all agreed they have one thing in common: Their names are hard to pronounce.

With Watertown, Mass.-based A123Systems’ IPO bearing the weight of the watchful eyes of the cleantech world today, could this be the start of the boom that boosts the comp for executives in the energy storage space, as it did in the solar sector in 2008? (see Solar boom kicks salaries higher).

What do you do with employees who occupy your factory?

If you're Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems, you apparently cut them.

Vestas today confirmed it is cancelling plans to retool a U.K. factory from 40-meter blades to 44-meter blades, citing tough economic market conditions. So that's expected to mean the jobs of 600 people at the factory, located on the Isle of Wight on the English Channel, slated for closure on July 31.

Three of the Vestas squatters.

Martin Eberhard wants his second Roadster and his title back as the “founder” of Tesla Motors.

The former founder and CEO of Tesla filed a lawsuit against the electric automaker and current CEO Elon Musk for slander, libel, breach of contract and other complaints. The suit was filed May 26 with the Superior Court of San Mateo County, Calif.

Ze’ev Drori, former head of auto security systems company Clifford Electronics, took over for Eberhard in 2007 and was succeeded by Musk in 2008 (see Eberhard out, Drori in at Tesla)

Pacific Gas & Electric isn’t going to the dogs; it’s going to the cows. And rather than causing a ruining effect the ol’ saying implies, PG&E says it’s going to have a greening one.

The San Francisco-based utility (NYSE:PCG) launched a cow-powered contract today with renewable energy company California Bioenergy for its first greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reductions from a dairy farm. The investment is intended to yield 75,000 metric tons of verifiable GHG emission reductions.