Pivot is the buzzword of the decade for startups. But it’s not often you hear about one of the accelerators supporting those startups doing the pivot.

That’s what Greenstart, the San Francisco accelerator that launched last year as the first such program supporting cleantech companies, is doing. In an announcement this morning, Greenstart's leaders said the accelerator is no longer focusing on the broad swath of clean-energy companies—one that ranges from solar to biofuels—and is instead narrowing its focus to support companies working where information technology and energy meet.

Mitch Lowe, cofounder and managing partner of Greenstart, also said the accelerator is adding a design consulting practice led by David Merkoski, now Greenstart’s chief creative officer.

“If Y Combinator and IDEO had a love child and it was focused on the intersection between cleantech and information technology, that would be Greenstart,” Lowe told Portfolio.com.

Lowe said the reason for the shift is simple. Companies like Nest, a smart thermostat firm formed by Apple alumni, are showing that cleverly designed devices and systems that take advantage of IT to create energy savings are likely to be the next wave of innovation in clean technology.

“It was where the most exciting opportunities were,” Lowe said. “There’s just a lot of really exciting stuff going on. What we’ve thought of over the last 10 years is going to be very different from the next 10.”

Also today, Greenstart announced its second class of companies. They'll participate in the three-month program to focus on how information technology can help make buildings and transportation more efficient and on better ways to store and transmit energy.

Those five companies were chosen from a pool of 152 applicants are:

• Scoot Networks, which is in stealth and hopes to address urban congestion.
• Growing Energy Labs, which is creating a “micro utility in a box” that measures and communicates information about energy storage, generation, and use.
• RidePal, which takes a leaf from Google by making it possible for companies to offer employee shuttles from home to work, reducing the number of cars on the road.
• SmartGridBilling, which is working on shifting small-business and residential energy use to off-peak hours and allowing the sale of that energy back to utilities.
• kWhours, which is working on a mobile data software platform to help building energy auditors do their jobs more efficiently.