Dallas Kachan's blog

Cleantech Forum XX, the Cleantech Group's 20th assembly of clean technology investors, entrepreneurs, service providers and other influencers since 2002, is underway in Shanghai, China.

And while the main session only begins a few hours from now, some themes have been emerging in pre-sessions, closed door meetings, VIP events and the welcome reception.

Flies on the various walls of the luxury Grand Hyatt Shanghai—the highest hotel in the world, occupying the 53rd to 87th floors of a downtown tower—would be hearing well connected capital and other insiders opining that:

Would you let anyone you know fish for their breakfast in this?

Lest the pageantry and scrubbed skyline of the televised Beijing Olympics lull the world into thinking local officials have finished cleaning up China, it's important to remember that much work remains to be done.

On a recent visit to Beijing, I was fascinated—in a morbid sort of way—with the river running behind my hotel, on Liangmaquio Road.

A group calling itself the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) chose today, Earth Day, to rain on the climate change parade.

The ICSC cannily chose the day to release the names of 500 “climate realists” who endorsed its Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which calls on world leaders to “reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)” and Al Gore’s popular movie, An Inconvenient Truth.”

It's no longer news that rising commodity costs (such as oil) have been making alternative commodity sources (say, like tar sands) increasingly cost-effective.

But it is news when the reverse happens.

A paper mill in the central Canadian province of Manitoba is no longer accepting paper for recycling because the price of newsprint has dropped so low that it's no longer cost effective to recycle.

Instead, the mill plans to simply cut down trees to make its paper.

IBM has introduced a 3D online multiplayer game to help teach kids about renewable energy.

Intended for use in and out of classrooms, PowerUp challenges teenagers to help save the planet "Helios" from ecological disaster.

Don't have a market for your technology? Make one. Then franchise.

That's what tiny Xynergy (PINKSHEETS: XYNG) of Carson City, Nevada is planning to do for its hydrogen generator, details of which are vague, but which it touts as "the only one in the world that can turn hydrogen into real power in a cost efficient manner."

The company plans to open a restaurant this summer in Boulder, Colorado using its hydrogen generator as its primary power source. The restaurant is also to feature "revolutionary" refrigeration systems currently in prototype form developed by Xynergy.

Solar industry and media types gathered in the desert of Nevada today... but it wasn't for Burning Man this time.

No, today marked the formal commissioning of a 14 megawatt solar photovoltaic system at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, touted as North America’s largest solar photovoltaic installation (see Biggest U.S. solar PV install underway at Air Force base).

With a name like Green Alternative Motorsports, you were expecting a blue car?

Cellulosic ethanol certainly has "scoot," as they say in racing. 

A LeMans prototype vehicle powered by cellulosic E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) has finished second overall at the longest race in the world: the United States Air Force-sponsored 25 Hours of Thunderhill at Willows, California.

What do new strategic messages from solar manufacturer SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) suggest about its future direction?

At an investor conference today in San Francisco, SunPower CEO Tom Werner prefaced a corporate presentation with the suggestion that those familiar with the company would hear things in a slightly different wrapper.

For those who wonder what CO2-to-algae looks like close up, there was a demonstration system at this week's Burning Man festival.

New uses for old colostomy bags?

The Chlorophyll Collective—a loose affiliation of scientists and industry types that's trying to assemble algae information, Unix "open source"-style—assembled the demonstration to take the exhaust discharge from an electrical generator at Burning Man and use it to foster the growth of algae.