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  • Why climate change is now irrelevant to clean energy

    p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Arial} span.s1 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #1f0199} Clean energy isn’t about climate change any more, it’s about China. So says cleantech investor Alex Taussig. That’s his takeaway from last week’s summit of ARPA-E, the government agency tasked with funding energy innovations so crazy or with such far-off payouts […]

  • China’s scrap metal workers are human recycling machines

    A worker at a motor scrap recycling plantPhoto: Adam Minter Cheap, un-unionized, un-regulated labor helps the environment in the U.S. and China, argues Adam Minter, a journalist who has been chronicling the “engine breakers” of Shanghai. China’s human-powered recycling plants break down and sift through junked cars and other scrap metal, searching for valuable reusable […]

  • Climate challenge hinges on fueling China with clean and cheap energy

    We must make renewables affordable if we ever hope to curb China's steady rise in greenhouse-gas emissions.

  • Wind production in Gansu, China

    As of the end of 2009, according to the China Renewable Energy Industries Association, more than 10,000 utility-scale wind turbines had been installed nationwide. And in 2010, according to figures released last month by the China Industry Energy Conservation and Clean Production Association, China spent approximately $US 45.55 billion on 378 big wind power projects, […]

  • Solar production in Gansu, China

    In 2009, China launched a program to build the nation’s first big solar power projects, which produced two 10-MW photovoltaic power installations in Dunhuang, at Gansu’s far northern end. More than a dozen other solar energy projects -- totaling 280 MW -- will be completed this year.

  • Coal is China's Largest industrial water consumer

    China’s coal mining, processing, and electrical generating industries consumed over 112 billion cubic meters (30 trillion gallons) of water annually, which is nearly 20 percent of all national water consumption, according to the China Ministry of Water Resources.

  • Coal is China’s Largest industrial water consumer

    China’s coal mining, processing, and electrical generating industries consumed over 112 billion cubic meters (30 trillion gallons) of water annually, which is nearly 20 percent of all national water consumption, according to the China Ministry of Water Resources.

  • New wind and solar sectors won’t solve China’s water scarcity

    JIUQUAN, China — Business for wind and solar energy components has been so brisk in Gansu Province — a bone-bleaching sweep of gusty desert and sun-washed mountains in China’s northern region — that the New Energy Equipment Manufacturing Industry base, which employs 20,000 people, is a 24/7 operation. Just two years old, the expansive industrial […]

  • Another Silicon Valley solar startup to build a factory in Oregon

    A SolarWorld worker making panels. Photo: SolarWorldAnother Silicon Valley startup is planting a tree in Portlandia’s solar forest, thanks to a United States Department of Energy loan guarantee. SoloPower, a San Jose, Calif., company that makes thin-film photovoltaic models, on Thursday snagged a $197 million federal loan guarantee to build a factory in Wilson, Ore., […]