On Monday, the latest entrant in the biofuels sweepstakes takes the wraps off a solar-powered technology designed to transform C02 and sunlight into ethanol. "We capture the energy of the sun into a solar converter," says Bill Sims, CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Joule Biotechnologies. "Inside exists a solution of brackish or gray water, nutrients and highly engineered photosynthetic organisms that directly secrete biofuels. There's no intermediary that has to be introduced or processed." So far, Joule's "helioculture" technology has only produced ethanol in the lab. But, says Sims, "We're moving the lab outside as we speak. We aren't expecting any …

A BrightSource Energy solar thermal project.Photo: BrightSource EnergyDrive around the San Francisco Bay Area and you can see the emerging corporate infrastructure of the new green economy. In a downtown Oakland office tower, you'll find the headquarters of BrightSource Energy, a solar thermal power-plant developer that has scored contacts to build more than 2,600 megawatts' worth of solar farms. Off Highway 101 in the Silicon Valley suburb of San Carlos, Tesla Motors is developing its next electric car. Down the road in Palo Alto, Shai Agassi's Better Place is designing regional electric-car charging networks and battery-swapping stations for Australia, Canada, …

Sure, it's smart, but is it a good conversationalist?So the oven says to the refrigerator, "Don't be so cold." That line will soon be more than a bad joke. The Jetsons are coming to life as dishwashers, washing machines, and other home appliances begin to talk to each other and to the electricity grid in an effort to manage and reduce energy use. Last week, for instance, General Electric and Boulder, Colo.-based smart-grid startup Tendril unveiled a deal to collaborate on software to connect the industrial giant's "smart appliances" to the grid. Pilot projects with utilities are expected to begin …

De Rothschild hopes his catamaran made of plastic bottles will draw attention to the need to develop solutions to increase the recycling and reuse of plastic.Courtesy Adventure EcologySan Francisco's waterfront is but a Disney-fied ghost of its former life as a maritime hub. But amid the chi-chi cafés along The Embarcadero and the tourist trap faux crab shacks on Fisherman's Wharf, some actual boat building is going on. Peer through the window of a battered green door at Pier 29 ½ and you'll see -- but not hear -- the form of a rather quirky catamaran quietly taking shape. That's …

Big Blue is rolling out a wide range of "green" services, including research into a new generation of batteries that could double the range of electric vehicles.Courtesy IBMBack in the day when I had to convince East Coast editors that green tech wasn't some crunchy California fad but Big Business, I often cited IBM as Exhibit A that Fortune 500 companies saw a lot of green to be made in green. Over the past several years, Big Blue has been recycling and repurposing a panoply of technologies to create a portfolio of environmental services -- everything from a traffic congestion …

Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist The red Honda Fit from a local car-sharing service pulls into the driveway of a suburban San Francisco Bay-area home, and two clean-cut young guys in khaki jump out and start unloading a Ghostbusters array of gadgets -- something resembling a giant black megaphone, a glowing tube attached to a video screen, and a handheld device that looks like it was pilfered from Dr. McCoy's sick bay. Meet the "greenup" team from Sustainable Spaces, a four-year-old San Francisco firm that conducts residential energy audits and energy efficiency retrofits to shrink a home's carbon …

You gotta be crazy to start a green-tech company these days, right? Venture funding has fallen off the proverbial cliff since the economy imploded last September, and even established renewable energy companies are struggling to stay afloat until the Obama stimulus cash begins to flow. But it seemed more 1999 than 2009 this week at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters when a crowd of entrepreneurs showed up to elevator-pitch their startups to a panel of VCs and win $40,000 in services. Competition to just get in the door was fierce, with 400 companies vying for 30 slots at Launch: Silicon Valley, …

Open one of those minimalist black boxes that contain a shiny new iPod and you're greeted by five words -- "Designed by Apple in California." In much smaller print would be the phrase "Made in China." Will Americans warm to a Chinese-built car when they can buy a domestic EV like the Chevy Volt for a similar price?Courtesy Coda AutomotiveThat, in a nutshell, describes the strategy of the latest entrant in the electric car sweepstakes: Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive. At a defunct Wilshire Boulevard Jaguar dealership on Wednesday, the startup emerged from stealth mode and CEO Kevin Czinger literally pulled …

Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristIt's not unusual these days for big green groups to get in bed with business, but one of the oldest and most-respected environmental organizations -- the Sierra Club -- is going them one better by getting into business itself. The San Francisco-based Sierra Club has launched a for-profit online venture called Sierra Club Green Home as a one-stop shop for information and services to green up your lifestyle and decarbonize your abode. Sierra Club Green Home is a joint venture between the 117-year-old institution and a group of individual investors -- or "donors" as …

On the 28th floor of a San Francisco skyscraper, a cadre of 26 young men and women called the Climate Corps is being briefed. They won't be planting trees or serving as Al Gore's cap-and-trade shock troops. Rather, these are MBAs on a mission to infiltrate the Fortune 500 and help them save ... money (and the planet too) by rooting out energy inefficiency and developing strategies to cut corporate carbon budgets. The Climate Corps is an internship project of the Environmental Defense Fund, and I'm at EDF's San Francisco outpost as a three-day boot camp gets underway to train …