CarbonFlow, which has developed software tools that the company says will make it easier for organizations to devise strategies and corporate policies for managing carbon credits, has pulled in more money from investors, this time from @Ventures. Other investors include Clean Pacific Ventures, OVP Venture Partners and Meridian Energy. Think of this as Sarbanes-Oxley services for the green market. Carbon regulation is already in place in Europe and will likely be imposed in the U.S. in the near future. Barack Obama wants to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. (whoops--that said 2010 earlier.) But measuring, tracking and putting a value on emissions, and the emissions that were produced by your suppliers, isn't easy. By automating the process, CarbonFlow says it can cut the costs or speed the time required for compliance. Experts on carbon trading have devised the software and it has a relationship with Det Norske Veritas (there's a name you don't see everyday), the largest verifier of carbon credit projects in the world. What's to stop Oracle or SAP from getting into this market? Nothing. But those companies often show a preference for just buying a startup in a new market than concocting their own software tools if it looks like the idea might take a long time to copy. So who knows, Carbonflow migh get snapped up. In the past two years, green software has been increasingly grabbing the attention of investors. Unlike many other greentech outfits, software developers have low capital requirements, which makes them attractive to investors. A few million dollars, a foosball table and an Internet connection and you are on your way. Compare that to a money suck like Bloom Energy -- the $100 million plus invested in the company has yielded exactly zero commercially available units. Other green software companies, or companies that use software to reduce the cost of green technology, include Sungevity (Internet enabled solar estimates), Greenbox and Fat Spaniel Technology.

The Volt is the Future of GM. Or it's dead. Whatever the case, GM is getting a rumor community that would even make Apple envious. The ailing Detroit automaker, which has consistently been losing money and looking for ways to cut costs, is expected to announce important changes tomorrow. Reuters, citing sources close to the company, says GM will push ahead with the Volt and continue to invest in hybrids, but it will cut back in other areas. Jalopnik, meanwhile, has a report that GM will put the Volt on hold indefinitely. The source is an unidentified nephew of an engineer. It's a bit out there, but within the I-am-your-father's-uncle's-roommate standard first unfurled in Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs." Personally, I'm betting on Reuters. GM has bet everything on the car, the company knows the future is in fuel economy. And our future president (not Dick Cheney; that skinny guy) wants to give people tax credits for buying fuel efficient cars. Besides, a significant portion of the engineering is done. If GM didn't have the Volt, all the company would have left in terms of assets are delivery vans, scrap metal and old Grand Funk Railroad eight-track tapes left in the lockers of employees laid off in the '70s.

Single walled carbon nanotubes are the child prodigy of the material science world. The tubes-which are spools of carbon atoms that resemble rolls of chicken wire--are stronger than steel and conduct electricity better than metals. They are also incredibly thin, only a few nanometers wide, which gives them an ability to transport other particles with very little energy. Unfortunately, they also tend to be somewhat tempermental and difficult to control. Manufacturing them in large batches in a uniform manner has proved extremely difficult. The chirality, or how the carbon atoms are arranged in relation to one another in the wall, varies from tube to tube, which changes their properties in many applications. It's one of the big reason that carbon nanotube semiconductors keep getting pushed further and further into the future. Other applications, such as tennis rackets, can get by with the less spectacular cousin, the multi-walled nanotubes. Porifera, a spin out of Lawrence Livermore National Labs, has come up with a way to skirt the manufacturing problem and devise a product that leverages the unique thinness of single walled nanotubes. It has made a water filter of single walled carbon nanotubes. The tubes are packed closely together and the water flows through them like it flows through straws. Chirality doesn't matter, said company representatives I spoke to at the California Clean Tech Open, which held its award gala in San Francisco tonight. The opening of the tubes is so small (a few nanometers wide) that bacteria, biological material and other impurities get cleaned out of the water because they can't fit where water molecules can. The filter will also likely be useful for desalinating seawater, although purifying wastewater will likely be the first application. Another added bonus: because the impurities get stuck outside of the tubes, membrane fouling is less of a problem. It is difficult to clean traditional membranes because material can be caught inside the membrane. If bacteria or salts accumulate on the outside, they can just be swirled away with water. Overall, Porifera's array could cut the cost of desalination by 25 percent or more. In traditional purification and desalination systems, large amounts of energy are required to pressurize water and force it through a membrane. Here, gravity does a lot of the work. A nanotube membrane also has the advantage of simplicity. Some companies, such as Denmark's Aquaporin, are working on molecular filters that rely on a synthetic version of a natural protein called an aquaporin. Although scientists have struggled with making reasonably uniform carbon nanotubes,they are farther along than trying to make synthetic aquaporin. (General Electric, which has been snapping up water companies in the past few years, is working on similar molecular straw membranes.) Porifera by the way were the runner-up the air, water and waste award at the Clean Tech Open. The winner was Over the Moon Diapers, which is working on environmentally friendly diapers. The prize for Over the Moon came with a $100,000 value and attracts attention from VCs.

Don't like being surprised when you open your utility bill? Or are you a utility company that wants to help customers scale back their energy usage? Energy management software company Greenbox Technology is certain it has some answers. Greenbox, founded by the creators of multimedia technology platform Flash, figures that if a little less than a third of us reduced our electric power consumption by 20 percent, we would save $8 billion on our energy bills. That's just the economic side. If you believe in the benefits of environmental stewardship and sustainability, you'd be happy about the 105 billion ton reduction in carbon dioxide each year from such an action and the associated avoidance of $10 billion in coal-fired power plant creation. I chatted with founder Peter Santangeli and Matthew Smith this past week to learn more and to prep for an upcoming Greentech Software panel session in which Santangeli will participate at our Greentech Innovations conference on Nov. 17 and 18. According to Santangeli, a former VP at Macromedia leading the engineering teams for the Flash and Breeze product lines, being involved "where the Internet would impact individuals next and would have much more personal impact" was a key motivator for the move to the green software arena. "We saw energy monitoring as a first step in that direction," added Santangeli. The Greenbox team also mentioned that most people don't know how much energy they use.

For residential customers, Greenbox offers a Web-based solution to help people track, understand and manage their home energy usage and environmental footprint. For utility customers, Greenbox provides an online interface for residential energy customers, helping them to manage their energy utilization and change their consumption habits.

The value proposition Greenbox offers is pretty straightforward -- know instantly how much energy you're using and what you can expect to pay rather waiting for the utility bill at the end of the month to find out. The advanced capabilities include visualization of your power use and offering up savings opportunities by eliminating unnecessary loads in the home. Greenbox also calculates a customer's carbon footprint based upon their energy usage profile. Finally, allowing for benchmarking against others -- a little healthy competition -- is part of the offering. The software allows you to assess your usage anonymously with similar residences.

Find out more at Greentech Innovations: End-to-End Electricity on Nov. 17 and 18 in New York.