cleantech
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U.S. cleantech support about to fall off a cliff
Federal funding for clean technology is poised to dry up by the end of 2014. What new and better investments should we be making in cleantech? A new report has some great ideas.
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America could power a city on all the small-scale hydroelectric power we’re not harvesting
Every year, America misses out on 1.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power a small city. Where's it all going? Literally, it's being flushed down the drain.
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Cleantech spending drops 75 percent in five years
A new paper from Brookings, the World Resources Institute, and the Breakthrough Institute shows exactly how much trouble cleantech is in: Depressing, no? Some of that rapid decline comes from the end of stimulus spending. But the researchers found that even discounting those funds, federal support for cleantech dropped 47 percent between 2011 and 2012.
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Turbine makes fresh water out of thin air in the desert
If you've ever watched water drip out of a window a/c unit, you've seen the operating principle of Eole Water's new wind turbine in action.
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Google saves energy by cooling its buildings with ice
Google's new $700 million data centers in Taiwan will make ice at night, when electricity is significantly cheaper, and use it to cool the buildings during the day. It's called thermal storage, and it's basically a battery, but for air conditioning.
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Terrified by peak oil, FedEx turns to biofuels, efficiency
FedEx owns 700 planes and tens of thousands of trucks, which is why CEO Fred Smith is crazy for energy efficiency.
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Would you like a bamboo keyboard? Of course you would
The iZen bamboo keyboard is 92 percent bamboo, because normally keyboards are made from plastic, and plastic is made from oil and we'd rather not.
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DIY printable furniture ships as information, not parts
If your modular furniture from IKEA was fashioned from wood harvested on one continent, cut and finished on another, and shipped to yet a third, that’s not exactly sustainable. That’s why design firm Filson and Rohrbacher decided to replace actual furniture with its evanescent, Platonic ideal: pure information. Download the computerized machine-ready plans at their […]
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Batteries could make power grid unnecessary in some countries
Aquion specializes in making large batteries, cheaply. They don’t look like much -- they live in a former TV factory outside Pittsburgh, and you'll probably never buy any of their products.