Climate Technology
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Amtrak using beef-based biofuel
Like Joe Biden, Amtrak now runs on beef tallow. America's rail company just replaced 35,000 gallons of diesel fuel in one of its 3,200-horsepower locomotives with biofuel derived from the stuff, and reports that the experiment resulted in no ill effects for the train, and lower than usual emissions. That doesn't mean using beef-based biofuels […]
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Locavore-dom taken to the extreme — by bike
Photo: MetrofietsI stepped out onto my front porch one day this summer just in time to see my farmer pedaling down the street with a trailer full of tools. To an outsider, such a vision must seem like a sketch right out of Portlandia, the television show that spoofs my hometown’s supposedly eccentric ways. Here […]
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Republicans critical of Solyndra sought loan guarantees for coal, nuclear
There's ample evidence that pretty much everyone in Congress — even vocal critics of the government’s investment in Solyndra — is into loan guarantees for energy, whatever they tell the cameras after a few of these relatively risky ventures inevitably fail. Rep. John Boehner, for instance, requested loans to enrich uranium under the same loan […]
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Hypnotic video of wind turbine being erected in under 7 minutes
Turns out assembling a 364-foot-high wind turbine is just like playing with an impossibly enormous Erector set. This 1.5 MW turbine went up in Boston, where it will save its owner $350,000 in electricity costs every year.
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Preoccupied: Grist readers sound off about the Wall Street protests
Photo: Eric WagnerA couple of weeks ago, we asked you all to send us your observations and insights on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. (Then we asked again.) And man did you deliver. We received an avalanche of emails, comments, tweets, and posts on our Facebook page. Word came in from New York City, […]
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Molson Coors explains why it decided to give a crap about the environment
The problem with corporations trying to do the right thing is that even if they were actually being socially and environmentally responsible, who would know? I mean, everyone knows that it's written into our country's laws that corporations must be sociopaths who care about nothing beyond enriching themselves. So it's refreshing to see Eric Roston, […]
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Hybrid power plant turns wind directly into automotive fuel
Enertrag is a new hybrid power plant whose parent company invites you to "drive to [your] local petrol station and fill up with 50 litres of wind … !!!" Three exclamation points! Renewable energy has made Germans so adorable. Their website even has a picture of German chancellor Angela Merkel showing off a tank of […]
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Cool energy-storage projects popping up; expect a lot more
Tracking the politics of clean energy can be a surreal and dispiriting experience. D.C. is so swamped in fossil-fuel money, fossil-fuel lobbyists, and fossil-fuel-owned pols that the conventional wisdom is absurdly pessimistic about clean energy: It’s unreliable, it costs too much, it can never work, blah blah. Meanwhile, out in the real world, costs are […]
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From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Earth
Photo: Eric WagnerThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems — its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere — goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and […]
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Facebook is building a renewable-powered mini-town in the Arctic
Facebook is building a server farm in northern Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic circle. The average temperatures there are so cold that they won't need to use anything but the outside air to cool 600,000 square feet of servers. But even so, the server farm will use as much power as 16,000 homes. […]
