Energy

Bill Gates: Don't dismiss nuclear energy

These days, Microsoft's co-founder has more on his mind than software sales figures or even his charitable work -- namely he wants to help solve the world's energy problems. 

FORTUNE -- At WIRED's Disruptive by Design Business Conference today, Bill Gates discussed the current state of energy and potential technology replacements for oil and coal.

Gates suggested there's much more potential for nuclear energy, despite the recent disaster with Japan's Fukushima reactor. MORE

Bill Joy: Better batteries key to Green power adoption

Kleiner Perkins' Green guru believes on a household level, green power needs to recharge advanced batteries rather than plug right into the fuse-box.

FORTUNE -- Having helped both create the Java programming language and co-found Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy is best known as a technologist and entrepreneur. He hopes to add environmentalist to that list.

As a partner at leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Joy is devoting much of his time to MORE

What green thinkers think about green

Speakers at Brainstorm GREEN have been stopping by Fortune's virtual conference to take questions from online attendees:

Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar, Google (GOOG)

What comments might [you] have about the "Bloom Box" replacing a National Grid?
Weihl: There's a role for both distributed generation and centralized power plants -- I expect we'll see both -- and the Bloom Box will play a part in distributed generation.

Last year Google bought a decommissioned papermill MORE

Dow's amazing $7 billion profit on green

The company learned they had to accurately account for saving money in order to understand how they profit from green investments. Once they did, the figures were staggering.

FORTUNE -- Making chemicals takes energy -- a lot of it -- so the mere fact that Dow Chemical (DOW) can save a lot of money by improving their energy efficiency is not what's surprising. It's just how much energy and cash they've MORE

A green technology wish list for 2011

By Michael Kanellos, Editor in Chief of Greentech Media. His colleagues Shayle Kann, Shyam Mehta, MJ Shiao, Rob Day, Eric Wesoff and Brett Prior also contributed.

The green tech industry will fondly remember 2010. After enduring collapsing prices and lackluster demand in 2009, solar companies saw panel shipments grow by an astounding 93 percent to 125 percent this year. Waiting lists for the new electric cars from Nissan and General MORE

Better battery financing for Better Place won't help most EVs

Better Place is working with GE to finance purchases of batteries for its switching stations and electric car system. But since most EVs come with the batteries built in, the financing won't be a panacea for the pricey new cars.

The electric vehicle industry's major hurdle these days is the exact same piece of hardware that's supposed to power it. Batteries for electric cars can cost up to $10,000 a piece. MORE

Tony Blair's Next Act

A silent cement factory on the Northern California coast is not where you would expect to find a former British Prime Minister on a Sunday afternoon. But there was no mistaking a blue-blazered Tony Blair hopping down from a black SUV as it rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust in front of a series of construction trailers. The reason for Blair's visit to this windy stretch of MORE

Sun gambles big as outlook darkens

Bryan Cantrill and Mike Shapiro, Distinguished Engineers at Sun, dreamed up a new type of storage product and convinced executives to let them build it in relative isolation. Image: Sun

Maybe there's something about unconventional office space that gets Silicon Valley's creative juices flowing.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard worked their magic in a garage. Apple's (AAPL) Macintosh development team flew a pirate flag over the Bandley 3 building. Now Sun Microsystems MORE

Dell's comeback machine

The redesigned Dell Latitude line will offer colors, a Linux mode, and other un-Dell touches. Photo: Dell

I'm at Dell's design headquarters near Round Rock, Texas, getting a first glimpse of the company's colorful new line of business laptops that go on sale Tuesday, and I mention that the pink looks a lot better in person than online. A Dell executive is quick to tell me why. What I've seen on MORE

Rackspace breaks IPO drought

There haven't been many tech IPOs lately - only three this year, in fact. People here in Silicon Valley have certainly noticed  – this place thrives on venture capital, so in financial terms, the mood has been a little like a maternity ward going without any deliveries. Yes, entrepreneurs have still gotten rich selling out to big companies like Google and Microsoft, but without the same kind of cigar-passing glee MORE