clean

Commercial bathroom towel tech for the kitchen

There are plenty of those awkward moments in the kitchen when your hands are covered in raw chicken bits or eye-searing chile and you're trying not to touch anything. There's only so much you can do with your elbows.

This is why it makes sense to bring touchless technology into the kitchen. Restaurant and gas station bathrooms have been using touchless paper towel dispensers for years. Now there's a fancy version for the home.… Read more

Clean Urban Energy raises $7 million

Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced today.

The company has developed a software platform, and the monitoring and analytic services to go with it, that take advantage of a building's thermal mass and thermal-energy storage (TES) to make it run more efficiently and save on energy costs.

Clean Urban Energy says its software analytics platform can reduce the expense of a building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy use by 15 percent to 30 percent.

"By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks … Read more

California green vehicle rebates in jeopardy

California's rebate program for electric and hybrid cars has run out of money for this fiscal year.

The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project has been offering California residents who purchase an electric or hybrid vehicle a rebate of $1,500 to $5,000, depending on the type of vehicle purchased.

The state budget had allocated $5 million for the program for the 2010-2011 fiscal year with an additional $2 million coming from the state's Energy Commission. However, as with the federal Cash for Clunkers program, citizens responded much more enthusiastically than anticipated.… Read more

3 apps that uninstall apps on OS X the right way

As a new Mac user, you are taught to uninstall an app by dragging it to the trash. While this method does uninstall an app for your computer, often associated files are left behind. These files can add up and hog space on your Mac.

There are much more efficient ways to uninstall an app on your Mac. Here we round up three apps that help you uninstall software on your Mac. … Read more

CleanPath creates $800 million fund to invest in solar

Renewable energy investment firm CleanPath will pour more than $800 million into large photovoltaic solar projects in North America, the company said yesterday.

The company's new fund is expected to invest in more than 1,000 megawatts of solar power plants over the next five years. The plants will range in size from 5 MW to more than 100 MW.

Financing has been a major bottleneck for big solar projects that many see as critical to driving down the cost of the emissions-free power source.

The tax equity market, the key financing tool used by solar developers, has recovered … Read more

Study: No savings at 62 mpg

Raising federal fuel economy standards to as high as 56 mpg in the 2025 model year would yield fuel savings to consumers that more than offset higher vehicle prices, a new study found.

But lifting corporate average fuel economy to 62 mpg would result in vehicle price increases that exceed fuel savings over a five-year period, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research.

The report highlights room for compromise on the Obama administration's preliminary proposal to raise CAFE to between 47 mpg and 62 mpg from the 2017 to 2025 model years.

Environmental groups have pushed for 62 … Read more

This Day in Tech: Alleged hackers arrested, Spotify inks U.S. deal

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, June 10.

Pandora ups IPO price to $10 to $12 per share The online music service has bumped the share price up from the previously announced range of $7 to $9 per share. More

Google wading deeper into clean energy Job ads show that the tech giant is bulking up its internal renewable-energy engineering team to advance R&D and make clean energy cheaper. More

iOS 5 beta jailbreak gets broader push Days after initially jailbreaking the new … Read more

Fuzzy iPhone photos? Here's a quick fix

Lately I've noticed that the photos I've snapped with my iPhone 4 have looked less than sharp. Fuzzy, even. I tried a couple different photo apps, as well as some video recording; same result.

I checked the lens to make sure it didn't have any dust or other flotsam on it, and it seemed fine. But on closer inspection, with the light hitting it at just the right angle, I discovered the problem: a fingerprint.

Somewhere along the way (probably while pulling the phone out of my pocket), I'd managed to muck up the lens with … Read more

Report: Top 10 clean-energy states identified

Policy promoting green technology may be on the rise, but does that translate into well-developed technology--and, most importantly, more capital--for the states promoting it?

The results of an extensive study released Wednesday by consulting firm Clean Edge offers some answers.

The survey used more than 3,500 data points and 70 major indicators drawing from both municipal and private data sources to evaluate all 50 states in the U.S. for how well they did on policy, technology, and capital when it came to green tech.… Read more