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Times Square ball-drop switches to LEDs
Despite Republicans' efforts to equate efficient lighting with tyranny, the age of incandescent bulbs will be officially over as of Jan. 1. The best indication of this switch-over is not any one piece of legislation coming out of Washington, but a totally symbolic move: When the Times Square balls drops at midnight on New Year's […]
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Eaters, beware: Walmart is taking over our food system
Aubretia Edick has worked at a Walmart store in upstate New York for 11 years, but she won’t buy fresh food there. Bagged salads, she claims, are often past their sell-by dates and, in the summer, fruit is sometimes kept on shelves until it rots. “They say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ but they don’t. […]
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Map shows when rooftop solar will be cheaper than grid electricity
What happens if and when current subsidies for solar panels are phased out? Doesn't matter — the cost of solar photovoltaics continues to fall even as the cost of grid electricity continues to rise, which means eventually the two trends will meet and it will make more sense to put panels on your roof than […]
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Heavy metal sucks; this device eliminates it
Heavy metal, as in the music and the cartoon movie with all the boobs, is still cool. (YES IT IS.) But heavy metals, as in heavy metals, are not very popular on account of being toxic. Luckily engineers at Brown are also cool (YES THEY ARE), and have devised a new way to remove heavy […]
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Death of ‘lightbulb ban’ greatly exaggerated
Congresscritters who love inefficiency, waste, and air pollution — or at least the money that comes from industries that do — attached a rider to the spending bill yesterday evening that will reverse an earlier law to phase out crappy old-style lightbulbs. The crazy thing is that the ban is still in effect, and the […]
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Fundamental breakthrough could double electricity from solar panels
It is a truth often repeated that fundamental physical limits mean solar panels can never capture and transform more than about 31 percent of the sun's energy. But Xiaoyang Zhu at the University of Texas apparently just did the impossible, and in a most spectacular fashion: He found a way to increase the efficiency of […]
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Facebook and coal are no longer in a relationship
Until recently, Facebook had an "it's complicated" relationship with coal; an April 2011 Greenpeace report found that 53.2 percent of the company's electricity use was coal-generated. Now, the company is pledging to move away from dirty fuel and work towards powering its operations, including energy-suck data centers, using renewable energy. And they're helping to spread […]
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E. coli can now make three kinds of fuel out of grass
Switchgrass, Dubya’s favorite biofuel feedstock, is back in the news. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered E. coli — the same bug that is spoiling the lives of raw cookie dough eaters everywhere — to transform switchgrass into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The secret sauce of their solution […]
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Apple HQ could have the country’s biggest solar installation, and it still won’t be enough
The current plan for the new Apple headquarters calls for 500,000 or more square feet of solar panels, generating at least 5MW of power. That could make it the biggest corporate solar panel installation in the U.S. — but Apple operations take so much power that this will just be supplemental. The proposed building, which […]
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Tighter efficiency standards may lead to bigger, more ironic vehicles
The idea behind fuel efficiency standards, nominally, is to end up with more efficient cars. But according to a new study from the University of Michigan, what they actually do is create a financial incentive for bigger cars — because bigger cars don't have to be as efficient. Fuel economy goals are stated as an average […]
