At a time when the costs for materials going into solar energy systems have dropped, installers of that home energy option — once considered too expensive for most homeowners — are reaching out to pitch its affordability to middle-income people. Those pitches can be read in newspapers or on billboards along the freeways near downtown San Diego, heard in radio advertisements and visualized on TV. Whether one’s motivation is to be personally less demanding on the grid, to save on monthly energy costs or to be more sustainable, there’s more than one way to finance a photovoltaic solar energy system should one want it. 

San Diego-based Sapphire Energy Inc., which produces algae-based green crude oil, has entered into a commercial agreement with Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company LLC, a subsidiary of Tesoro Corp. 

Gov. Brown honored 17 companies and organizations last month with the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA), the highest environmental honor in the state. 

SGB Inc., a San Diego-based energy crop company has identified more than 2 million individual genetic markers (SNPs) in Jatropha curcas, a non-food energy crop, concluding that the plant has a genetic diversity comparable to corn and other domesticated crops. 

After being closed for about six months, two transit stations revamped for the Metropolitan Transit System’s 2014 launch of all-day Bus Rapid Transit service along Interstate 15 are scheduled to re-open March 18. 

In early March, San Diego Gas & Electric announced that for the first time in six years, a utility-scale renewable energy project from which it’s receiving power became operational within the borders of San Diego County. 

As November’s general election creates numerous possibilities for policy change both in San Diego and across the country, a group of executives from companies and groups involved in the expansion of solar energy systems discussed the state of their economies at a Daily Transcript roundtable. 

In the aftermath of the summer bankruptcy of the government-backed California solar panel maker Solyndra, expectations among renewable energy wonks, who describe the company’s failure as an outlier among many successes, remain generally high. But some policy research analysts are more skeptical — not doubtful, but still skeptical. 

When entering San Diego's business community about 30 years ago, Clint Walker’s aim had nothing to do with being in the solar business. His success as the co-founder and president of Southwestern Solar Systems since his entrance to the business in 2009 came about in much the same fashion his other major endeavors have. 

When Cecilia Aguillon, director of marketing and government relations for Kyocera Solar Inc., immigrated to the United States from El Salvador as a teen, she grew into a young adult with a lofty goal in mind: to save the world. 

Some people look at buildings and see a combination of wood, steel and mortar with a number of things inside to make them more comfortable and workable — lighting, computers and maybe a few windows, even if they can't be opened.