technology

Facebook app facilitates carpooling to the polls

Could a potential record number of voters tomorrow also mean massive CO2 emissions as people drive to the polls? Live Earth and carpool site Zimride sure hope not. They’ve partnered to make a Facebook app enabling people to find a ride in their area to their local polling spot. Their Carpool to the Polls application […]

Sometimes the issue with a particular technology is the technology itself

In arguing for efficiency mandates, Joe Romm notes the failings of carbon pricing as a solution to climate change: That means a price of $400 a metric ton of carbon (whether achieved through a tax or a cap & trade system) would increase the price of gasoline a mere $1 a gallon. How much efficiency […]

Gratitude for quirky wind entrepreneurs

This story about a quirky entrepreneur pursuing the first large-scale, floating-turbine, offshore wind project on the Oregon coast reminded me of this story of a quirky entrepreneur pursuing a massive offshore wind project on the Delaware coast. Both faced stiff resistance — the latter eventually overcame it, the former, not yet. Let us pause and […]

Green policies in California created 1.5 million jobs

A detailed new economic analysis “Energy Efficiency, Innovation, and Job Creation in California” [PDF] finds: Over the past thirty-five years, innovative energy efficiency policies created 1.5 million additional fulltime jobs with a total payroll of over $45 billion. Looking forward, the report finds that if California improves energy efficiency by just 1 percent per year, […]

What should Google do next?

I was excited to read this L.A. Times piece, which seemed to hold out the prospect of evidence that Google is moving into smart-grid technology. Instead of evidence, though, there was wild and utterly unmotivated speculation. I do enjoy speculating about what Google will do next though. It’s so nice to have a company with […]

AP: cellulosic ‘not even close’ to being ready to satisfy government mandates

For a while, I’ve been wishing I had time to write a feature on cellulosic ethanol, the allegedly "green" biofuel that’s been "five years away" from commercial viability for about, oh, two decades.  Government mandates — backed by a plethora of tax breaks, grants, and other goodies — require production of 16 billions of the […]

With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels

Synthetic biologists, a brave new breed of science entrepreneurs who engineer life-forms from scratch, are holding their largest-ever global gathering in Hong Kong this week, known as “Synthetic Biology 4.0.” Although most people have never heard of synthetic biology, it’s moving full speed ahead fueled by giant agribusiness, energy and chemical corporations with little debate […]

Must-read NYT Magazine: ‘Capitalism to the Rescue’

The New York Times Magazine has a long article on how uber-VC Kleiner Perkins is helping to jumpstart the clean-tech revolution. It is a must-read because what Kleiner and other VCs are doing — pushing a broad spectrum of carbon-mitigating technologies out of the lab and into the market — is some of the most […]

Sharp to boost thin-film solar capacity six-fold to 6,000 MW by 2014

The world’s second-largest maker of solar batteries plans a massive increase in capacity to meet soaring demand. Bloomberg reports: The company will raise the capacity to 6 gigawatts as early as 2014, from 1 gigawatt estimated for 2010 … Sharp, which lost its market-leading position to Thalheim, Germany-based Q-Cells AG last year, is focusing on […]