Articles by Sarah Laskow

Rent solar panels instead of buying them

Solar leasing companies have been ramping up their business in the past year or so, and, looking at Colorado, you can see how successful they've been. So far this year, more than half of home solar installations were leased systems; last year, it was only 40 percent. The solar leasing companies say it's because it makes solar affordable to a broader swath of people.

The new biodiesel boom

Last year, about a third of the biodiesel plants in the country went idle and output fell by half. But now federal tax credits and renewable energy mandates mean that biodiesel is booming again and plants are opening back up.

Their hold on success is tenuous, though: it depends, the industry says, on Congress extending a tax credit that pushes fuel blenders to include biofuel. The current boom started when Congress restored that credit back in December. But that was only a one-year reboot. For the industry to revive completely, producers say they need a longer extension.

Critical List: Protesting a Chinese solar plant’s pollution; Solyndra will never go away

Solar power isn’t all rainbows and puppies. In China, protesters have spent the past few days outside a solar panel plant, which they say polluted a nearby river.

A U.S. wind turbine company is suing a Chinese company for paying an employee of American Superconducter more than $1 million to steal wind turbine technology.

China's also put $15 billion into Alberta's tar sands in the past year and a half.

We're going to keep hearing about Solyndra all next year.

Campus revolts over bottled-water bans

Two Minnesota college campus have banned bottled water, and students are, like, totally flipping out. As one College Republican, who apparently is also enrolled in the Sarah Palin School of Political Oratory, put it:

“A little bit goes along the line of free choice. For us, that’s a big principle, in College Republicans is that you can’t really delegate to students what they can and cannot do in their own free will,” said Caitlyn Spence, chair of the St. Benedict Republicans.

(What?)