GreenTech

In Washington today, Amazon announced a series of initiatives and issued a call for companies to reduce their carbon emissions 10 years ahead of the goals set forth in the Paris Agreement as part of a sweeping effort to reduce its own environmental footprint. “We’re done being in the middle of the herd on this

Amazon will be stepping up its efforts to reduce its climate impact, CEO Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday. The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Michigan’s Rivian as part of this commitment, Bezos said. The commerce giant will seek to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2040 – 10 years

Arch Rao, the former head of product at Tesla who was behind the company’s Powerwall home energy storage is system, is back with a new company pitching energy management and efficiency for homes. SpanIO is looking to upgrade the electrical fusebox for homes with a digital system that integrates into the existing circuit breaker technology

Automating agriculture is a complex proposition given the number and variety of tasks involved, but a number of robotics and autonomy companies are giving it their best shot. FarmWise seems to have impressed someone — it just raised $14.5 million to continue development of its autonomous weeding vehicle. Currently in the prototype stage, these vehicles

Here’s something the hermetically sealed iPhone can’t do: Score a perfect 10 for repairability. Smartphone startup and social enterprise Fairphone’s latest repairable-by-design smartphone has done just that, getting 10/10 in an iFixit Teardown vs scores of just 6/10 for recent iPhone models. The Fairphone 3, which was released in Europe last week with an RRP

The Porsche Taycan, the German automaker’s first all-electric sports car, has arrived. After four years of development, the company lifted the veil Wednesday on the Porsche Taycan. Here’s a look back at how this four-door electric vehicle developed from a few sketches to the Mission E concept, and then to the Taycan prototype and final

The Porsche Taycan is a missile aimed straight at Tesla. The German electric sedan packs everything needed to give the Model S its first real fight. The Porsche is just as fast, is sleeker thanks to a lower drag coefficient and packs several technical goodies missing from Tesla’s sedan. However, the Tesla Model S has

Porsche has poured more than $1 billion into the development of its first all-electric vehicle, a sleek four-door specimen that marks the beginning of a new chapter for the German automaker and its biggest bet in more than a generation. On Wednesday, in three simultaneous events in Canada, China and Germany, Porsche finally introduced the

A UK group of climate activists is planning to fly drones close to Heathrow Airport next month in a direct action they hope will shut down the country’s largest airport for days or even longer. The planned action is in protest at the government’s decision to green-light a third runway at Heathrow. They plan to

Walmart came out swinging earlier this week in a lawsuit that accused Tesla of breach of contract and gross negligence over problems with rooftop solar panel systems installed at the retail giant’s stores. Now, just days later, the lawsuit has been placed on hold while the two companies try to reach an agreement that would

The 2020 Chevy Bolt EV now has 259 miles of range, a 9% increase from previous year models of the electric hatchback, according to the EPA. To get there, the company focused on cell chemistry, not the battery pack. The GM brand did not add more battery cells or change the battery pack or the way

From the time he was a high school student, Rohit Kalyanpur thought it was peculiar that although it’s possible to create energy from a solar panel, the panels have long been used almost exclusively on rooftops and as part of industrial-scale solar grids. “I hadn’t seen [anything solar-powered] in the things people use every day

As the technologies that were once considered science fiction become the purview of science, the venture capital firms that were once investing at the industry’s fringes are now finding themselves at the heart of the technology industry. Investing in the commercialization of technologies like genetic engineering, quantum computing, digital avatars, augmented reality, new human-computer interfaces,

Royal Dutch Shell, the energy giant known for its fossil fuel production and hundreds of Shell gas stations, is creeping into the electric vehicle-power business. The company’s first DC fast charger launched Monday at a Shell gas station in Singapore. Greenlots, an EV charging startup acquired by Shell in January, installed the charger. This is

Most of us, by now, are aware that all sorts of crazy stuff is happening to the planet’s climate and the blame is pretty much universally recognized as lying with humans, pumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere. Scientists are now saying tree planting, for instance, has to happen very, very quickly if we

For nearly 15 years LanzaTech has been developing a carbon capture technology that can turn waste streams into ethanol that can be used for chemicals and fuel. Now, with $72 million in fresh funding at a nearly $1 billion valuation and a newly inked partnership with biotechnology giant Novo Holdings, the company is looking to

Nissan and EVgo said Tuesday they will install another 200 DC fast chargers in the United States to support the growing number of consumers who are buying electric vehicles, including the new Nissan Leaf e+ that came to market earlier this year. The 100 kilowatt DC fast-charging stations will have both CHAdeMO and CCS connectors,

Impossible Foods is having quite the year. In the past seven months, the company has signed a nationwide deal with Burger King, weathered a demand surge that saw supplies dwindle and stocks of its signature Impossible burger sell out across the country, and raised fears among players in the $98 billion meat market that they

Electrify America will pilot the tech designed for fleets Kirsten Korosec 3 weeks Electric-vehicle chargers today are designed for human drivers. Electrify America and San Francisco-based startup Stable are preparing for the day when humans are no longer behind the wheel. Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with

Ridesharing and transportation platform Didi Chuxing announced today that it has formed a joint venture with BP, the British gas, oil and energy company, to build electric-vehicle charging infrastructure in China. The charging stations will be available to Didi and non-Didi drivers. The news of Didi and BP’s joint venture comes one week after Didi

Tesla has launched a new utility-scale energy storage product called Megapack modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia as the company seeks to provide an alternative to natural gas “peaker” power plants. Megapack is the third and largest energy storage system offered by Tesla. The company also sells the residential Powerwall

Apple led the way in solar usage as technology companies step up their development of renewable energy projects to offset their carbon emissions. That’s the word from the Solar Energy Industry Association in its latest tally of leading corporate solar energy installers across the U.S. Last year, Apple installed 400 megawatts of solar capacity to

Tesla is set to aggressively ramp up the rate at which it opens new service facilities, according to CEO Elon Musk’s guidance on the company’s Q2 2019 earnings call. In total, Tesla opened 25 new service centers during the quarter, and added 100 new service vehicles to its existing fleet — which is in contrast

Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn International is backing Carbon Relay, a Boston-based startup emerging from stealth today that’s harnessing the algorithms used by companies like Facebook and Google for artificial intelligence to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the technology industry’s own backyard — the data center. Already, the computing demands of the technology industry are responsible

Healthy oceans are on the minds of Marc and Lynne Benioff, and they showed it today with a $1.5 million donation to the Sustainable Oceans Alliance, a new non-profit attempting to promote and incubate conservation-focused startups. The money will considerably expand the organization’s upcoming Ocean Solutions accelerator. Benioff is due to appear Wednesday evening on

Google has launched its first clean energy project in Asia. The company announced today that it struck a long-term agreement to buy the output of a 10-megawatt solar array in Tainan City, Taiwan, about 100 km south of its data center in the country. Google already has solar and wind projects across North and South

Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company developing technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and process it for use in enhanced oil recovery or in the creation of new synthetic fuels, has locked in financing from two big industry backers — Chevron and Occidental Petroleum — to bring its products to market. The undisclosed amount

FloWater, an eight-year-old, Burlingame, Calif.-based company whose reusable water bottle refilling stations produce purified water, has raised $15 million in its first major round of funding. Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round. FloWater caters to schools, colleges, fitness centers, hotels and offices, and, in the words of

One of the tallest buildings in the world, Taipei 101’s New Year’s Eve fireworks have become an iconic celebration since the first show at the end of 2004. But despite being a major tourism draw, the fireworks haven’t been immune from criticism. Over the past couple of years, as poor air quality becomes an increasingly

Across the globe, a clutch of companies from Oxford, England to Redwood City, Calif. are working to commercialize a new solar technology that could further boost the adoption of renewable energy generation. Earlier this year, Oxford PV, a startup working in tandem with Oxford University, received $3 million from the U.K. government to develop the technology,