Climate Technology
All Stories
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How plug-in cars can face up to winter’s challenges
Plug-in and hybrid vehicles face particular challenges in cold weather. But new technologies in the works could help those cars cope.
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Africa’s first green, locavore, gluten-free beer
In Mozambique, home brewing is big -- not because the country is full of mustachioed, fixie-riding expats from Portlandia, but just because it's less expensive. So when brewing giant SABMiller wanted to figure out how to sell beer to people who are already making their own, they had to do it on the cheap.
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Here are the potential Solyndras of 2012
Hey makers of right-wing talking points! Pay attention to these solar companies. They might fail this year, and as we all know, when a solar company fails you can repurpose its hide into a political hobby-horse and ride it forever.
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Turning your teeth green — in a good way [VIDEO]
Is this America's Greenest Dentist? He can't make getting your teeth cleaned more fun, but he can make it greener. Find out how he does it.
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‘Passive House’ documentary is the last word on zero-energy buildings
Passive Houses are homes so well insulated that they require no heating at all, even in winter. They're super popular in Europe, because it’s a magical land where everything is made out of chocolate and any sexual encounter that ends in fewer than three orgasms is immediately reported to the happiness police.
Journalist Charlie Hoxie realized that most people in America have never heard of the Passive House (or Passivhaus in the original, economical German) building movement, so he embarked on a documentary to spread the word. What follows are a series of excerpts from that film.
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Weird new all-electric cars debut at Detroit Auto Show
Volkswagen E-Bugster
Hitting the "on" button on this car (because in the future, all cars will be started the same way you start up a laptop) makes the interior flash blue like you've just stepped into a light cycle from TRON. Check the video, below, for the full effect.
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This electrical socket spits out your power-sucking plugs
The PumPing Tap does not like wasted power. It's an electrical socket with a spring-loaded ejector seat, which pops plugs right out if they're slowly sucking energy when not in active use.
The idea is to combat vampire power, the massive amount of energy slowly sapped by idling gizmos, like microwaves that aren’t cooking or chargers that aren’t charging anything. The PumPing Tap (which is still in the design stage, sadly) monitors the flow of energy, and if you don't use a device for 10 minutes -- ptooie! -- it's unplugged.
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Super scrubber turns CO2 into fuel
Boffins at the University of Southern California have created a plastic-based, sand-like solid that absorbs CO2 from the air at room temperature and releases it at 185 degrees F, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Think of it like clumping cat litter for air — it sucks up CO2 and makes it easily removable. It can […]
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Trick out your Kindle with solar panels
Screwdriver-and-soldering-iron types have probably already made their e-readers solar powered, but what if you didn’t have any Schottky diodes lying around? SolarFocus has the technologically inept among us covered, with a Kindle cover that charges your device with solar panels. An hour of full sunlight can charge your Kindle enough for three days of reading, […]
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The only defense of electric cars you really need
Maggie Koerth-Baker is one of the most responsible energy journalists on the planet, in part because she writes for the blog of all blogs, BoingBoing, which has never felt the need to cloak its writers' opinions in trumped-up objectivity and false balance. So it was refreshing to see her refute the latest turd lobbed over the wall by the internet's favorite tabloid, Gawker Media: "You Are Not Alone. America Hates Electric Cars.”