We at Greentech Media spend quite a bit of our time reporting on renewable energy technologies. We live, breathe, and eat renewable energy. But today I received some bad news from Vinod Khosla, an investor sort, who spoke at the Palo Alto Research Center on Thursday.

According to this Khosla guy (if you have any background on him, let me know) many of the market sectors that Greentech Media covers are essentially greenwashing and certainly not a solution to our climate issues.

• Photovoltaic panels in the booming $20 billion PV market? Not scalable and not sustainable without subsidies. PV panels on roofs in Germany or San Francisco? No way. Not when Germany has the same solar...

Here's a factual nugget you can throw out the next time you want to impress someone that's stuck sitting next to you on a crowded train. Approximately 1 percent of the world's fuel is consumed in making chemical fertilizers, according to Jay Keasling, a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering at UC Berkeley speaking at the Global Technology Leaders Conference at the university. Keasling, who is also one of the recognized leaders of synthetic biology, pointed out that bit about fertilizer to demonstrate the need for things like self-fertilizing plants. The world population is expected to increase by about 50 percent to 9 billion by midcentury as well, so expect the...

Tom Siebel, who made a big pile of money in the '90s by founding Siebel Systems, is trying to squeeze into green. Siebel is trying to put together a contest that will encourage companies to come up with HVAC systems and other technologies for relatively affordable, zero-energy homes. "They will be grid connected, but after 365 days the meter should read zero," he said during the Global Technology Leadership Conference taking place at UC Berkeley today. The contest, which is still under construction, will come with a few rules. For one thing, the homes have to be something the average American would want to live in. "You can't solve the problem by sitting in the dark and freezing...

Project Better Place, the organization that wants to set up chains of electric charging stations and seems to generate a new press release every 20 minutes, will make an announcement today in San Francisco City Hall with Mayor Gavin Newsom. What to expect? Probably that BP will insert charging stations in San Francisco. Newsom, who once owned a General Motors EV-1, is determined to make San Francisco a green city. San Jose already has a deal with Coloumb Technologies to put electric charging station in San Jose. Shai Agassi, the former SAP exec who founded BP, has said that it will take around $1.5 billion to electrify California. He gives a great speech too, but several...