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Google's open-source, wireless, smartphone-controlled lightbulb
Google continues to roll out new details about its wirelessly-controlled “smart” lightbulb, which gets around all the problems usually associated with making a home energy-aware. The latest: the company is working on open-source software that will run on the lightbulbs themselves.
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Google's plan for cleantech world dominance says government policy is essential
Google set out to discover the effects of technological breakthroughs, and in the process discovered that strong government policies are key to accelerating their penetration into the market. Radical new battery technology and solar panels are great, but regular consumers don’t pick them up unless they're nudged in the right direction. In other words, the internet’s most successful capitalists say that the free market is all well and good, but we really need government regulation.
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Google says delaying clean energy will cost the U.S. trillions
Google says that without a focus on renewables and electric vehicles, delaying the clean energy economy could cost the U.S. trillions of dollars.
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Google to spend $280 million to give you solar panels — free
The challenge with putting solar on your roof is that even if it saves you money over the long run, you're essentially pre-paying your utility bill for the next ten to 20 years -- and who has that kind of scratch?
That's why SolarCity exists: to pay for and install those solar panels, and then lease them to you or sell you the power they produce, for less than your current utility bill. Google just dropped $280 million on the company because they think this is such a fantastic and, in their words, "safe" investment.
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Critical List: Floods herald largest Gulf dead zone on record; the Senate hearts ethanol
Louisiana fishermen can't catch a break. Flooding on the Mississippi River could create the largest dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico on record.
Louisiana, in general, can't catch a break. A plant that blends chemicals used in oilfields exploded on Tuesday.
The Senate decided against ending subsidies for corn-based ethanol in a vote that split, not just along party lines, but also between Big Ag states and everyone else.
Google's newest clean energy investment hands $280 million to a solar company that leases panels to customers. -
Why Google could successfully lobby Nevada to allow self-driving cars
Google is quietly lobbying Nevada to pass a bill to allow its semi-secret self-driving cars on the road. The bill would include an exception to the state ban on texting while driving, which implies that Google's technology has advanced enough to allow users of its vehicles to take their eyes off the road for extended […]
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An underwater grid for offshore wind, funded by Google
I have a feature story in the latest issue of Popular Science: “Hundreds of Miles of Wind Farms, Networked Under the Sea.” It’s about the Atlantic Wind Connection, a new project (funded, in part, by Google) that would lay high-voltage transmission lines beneath the sea floor along the mid-Atlantic coast, opening the area up to […]
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Dirty clouds: Greenpeace ranks tech giants on their data centers’ coal dependency
Tech companies have something hanging over their heads.Photo: The SharpteamAs I sit here at the Local 123 café in Berkeley on Earth Day, a dozen hipsters are transfixed by their Macbooks, their heads lost in the cloud. According to a Greenpeace report [PDF] released this week, all those presumably green and well-meaning digital workers-slash-slackers are […]
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Google to buy 100.8 megawatts of Oklahoma wind energy
Google’s Oklahoma wind farm will be built this year.Photo: Marcin WicharyIt’s getting a bit hard to keep up with all of Google’s green investments these days — $168 million put into a big solar power plant project one week; $100 million for the world’s largest wind farm the next. But this week’s big money move […]