Expansion Media Blog

We will be at the Eilat Eilot conference, the leading cleantech conference in Israel, on Wednesday February 23. David Goldman, our global communications director, will be speaking on a panel titled: The Role of the Media in Promoting Clean Agenda Energy. The panel will be at 3:25 pm in Laurence Hall, Herods Hotel.

Karen Kloosterman, from the Green Prophet, will moderate the panel, and she has a nice piece about the conference on the Green Prophet:

At least three Green Prophets will be at the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference tomorrow in Eilat, Israel. Look for us talking excitedly to young start-up companies, and entrepreneurs, and catch Green Prophet’s editor Karin Kloosterman at a media seminar tomorrow afternoon, where with other media experts she’ll be talking about ways entrepreneurs can gain access to international media. She’ll be flying in for the day to report on the event.

Among those on the media panel will be Green Prophet’s friend David Goldman from Expansion Media. He works with clean tech companies around the globe, showing them how to put their “green” face forward. Starting at 3:25 PM at Herod’s (Laurence Hall), meet Green Prophet at the seminar: The Role of the Media in Promoting Clean Agenda Energy. Meet us there to listen and network afterward.

GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher wrote an article today about a new very NoCal trend – the eco-ATM. I predict pickup in the Pacific Northwest (CA, WA, and OR) as well as Boston, Minneapolis, and Madison, WI). Outside of that, not sure…..

Will kiosks strategically placed in stores finally convince us all to recycle our gadgets and cell phones? Startup ecoATM (a Green:Net 2010 launchpad company) and its investors think so; on Wednesday, ecoATM announced it has raised a Series A round of $14.4 million in funding from kiosk giant Coinstar, Oakland, Calif.-based venture capital firm Claremont Creek Ventures, and venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Capturing Energy Riches from Our Waste Stream

Park Spark Project provides anaerobic digester, where dog waste is converted methane, a burnable fuel for this gas light. Photo: Park Spark Project

Times change, thankfully. Instead of thinking first about how to get rid of waste, more people are now asking how they might put parts of the waste stream to use.

Some landfills now capture methane to power massive generators that feed electricity to the grid; a California company makes biodegradable plastic from organic waste without using petroleum. The list of companies and people involved in promising and innovative work continues to grow.

New Hampshire-based geothermal ground heat exchange company LVestus Energy has just begun a Geo Thermal Purchase Agreement (GeoTPA) program that makes green, geothermal energy a cost-effective way to heat or cool a commercial facility – for no upfront money – the same way that you can buy solar power.

Its GeoTPA is the same idea as the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) that turned solar power into a commodity in the nine or so states that have allowed solar companies to compete with electric utilities, by selling you just the power (off your roof) hour by hour.

As we have mentioned in earlier posts, climate change has been a polarizing message that lacks a broad appeal, and despite our belief that the science is there to back it up, many just won’t go there.  Check out this article in earth2tech that discusses the need for a new message and features a new documentary called “Carbon Nation.”