Latest Articles

Plastic purge: Trouble on every aisle

It took me two hours to buy five days' worth of groceries that didn't have any plastic packaging. Two hours! WTF?

Me, talking about the conservatism of the power industry

David Roberts and his beard sat down to chat with the folks at EnergyNow about a Black & Veatch survey of utility executives.

New transportation bill strays offtrack

A transportation bill should make investments in infrastructure repair, not cut funding.

Anatomy of a solar PV system

Solar photovoltaic gets a lot of attention compared to other forms of clean energy, but the attention is deserved.

On Independence Day, towns take back their streets from cars

For one day each year, humanity descends on an otherwise inhumane landscape, pedestrians boldly take back the public realm, and my hometown feels like a community again.

GOP introduces slash-and-burn budget for the environment

The Tea Party bill includes major funding cuts for climate protection and axes protections for air, water, and land.

Nuclear power is fine — it's corporate power that's dangerous

In the Guardian, George Monbiot argues that nuclear power was the least of Fukushima's problems. Sure, the nuclear industry is corrupt and regulation-resistant -- but name a power industry that isn't. When it comes to health threats, says Monbiot, the conscienceless scumbags in the nuclear industry are miles ahead of all the other conscienceless scumbags.

Despite recession, Californians install solar panels at record-breaking pace

While the drill-baby-drill contingent was bitching about reliance on foreign oil, that hacky-sack full of smelly Nancy-Pelosi-electing hippies known as California quietly installed more solar in 2010 than any other state, ever.

500 MW of distributed solar could have prevented blackout that affected 55 million

The massive blackout of 2003, which affected 45 million people in the northeast United States and 10 million more in Ontario, could have been prevented by just 500 megawatts of distributed solar, says John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance. For reference, California installed almost 200 megawatts of distributed solar in 2010 alone.

Limitless supply of rare earth elements found in ocean — if we can get them

The seabed of the Pacific ocean contains 1,000 times as much tonnage of rare earth elements as all the deposits on land, says a new paper published in Nature Geoscience. The elements, which are key to cleantech innovations like solar panels, batteries and electric motors, have been in short supply lately as China, pretty much the world's sole supplier, clamps down on exports.