Headed to CES? Some green tech companies you should visit there

By | January 4, 2010, 9:18am PST

Summary: CES will continue its tradition of showcasing greener gadgets and the technologies that go into making them as part of the Sustainable Planet exhibit area.

From renewable energy battery innovators to technology recycling coordinators to even GreenPeace, there are close to 40 green-tech wannabes exhibiting as part of the special Sustainable Planet exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Some of the more novel items you could expect to see:

  • The YoGen by Easy Energy (yes, Yo as in YoYo) - This is a small device that is powered by, get this, a rip cord that you pull to charge your handheld, MP3 player or other mobile gadget. It attaches to devices via a mini USB. Here’s a prototype photo.

  • Bits Limited will show its third-generation Smart Strip. These power strips sense which attached devices are being used, and which are not, and switches them off accordingly. (It is smart enough to know, supposedly, which devices relate to each other, so that if your computer is on, your monitor will be on, and vice versa.
  • Solar Technology will be talking up the Freeloader Pico, a new solar charger that comes with four different connector tips for charging several different sorts of devices.

There’s a lot more in store for green tech enthusiasts. Here’s the complete Sustainable Planet exhibitor list.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

3
Comments

Join the conversation!

Just In

What are you talking about?
Johnny Vegas 5th Jan 2010
Please tell us what technology we have today that woould let us take every home off the grid.
0 Votes
+ -
Global Warming = FRAUD
linux_kernel 4th Jan 2010
People out of work, homes foreclosed, no food and
this Tree hugger agenda is going to FAIL.

Enough is enough..
0 Votes
+ -
Doesn't Matter
medezark@... 5th Jan 2010
Energy efficiency and alternative energy are both excellent points to pursue, regardless of whether or not AGW is a reality.

We, globally, need to start creating new ways to end the combustion era and decentralize power production. We have the technology today to take every home off the grid; we just need to make that technology affordable and practical for the individual.

I wouldn't actually want to kill the grid, but make it more robust by making each individual home/office/etc a productive part of the grid, and include massive centralized capacitors to store excess energy for redistribution in case of local equipment failure or temporary undersupply.

If yellowstone blows, solar would be unavailable or seriously underperforming for large swaths of the world for extended periods of time. A large decentralized system could theoretically mitigate the affects.

Wind and Wave power aren't, in my opinion, the way to go as both involve removing energy from existing climatological sources without any effective research into the results of removing said energy (altered atmospheric and oceanic currents caused by massive wave or wind farms would have climate effects on scales that would dwarf the AGW carbon based warming models.)
0 Votes
+ -
What are you talking about?
Johnny Vegas 5th Jan 2010
Please tell us what technology we have today that woould let us take every home off the grid.

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix