Climate Technology
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In Solyndra's wake, polling finds support for clean energy remains strong
Tea Party conservatives have tried to use the Solyndra faux-scandal to tarnish the image of clean energy, but new polling finds that it isn't working.
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'Peak Coal' comes to Appalachia
By 2015, coal production in Appalachia will be half what it was in 2008. Some coal industry advocates argue that such a drop is due to increased regulation by the Obama administration (go figure). But geologists and others who work in the industry say it's actually the result of a much more basic fact: Appalachia is running out of coal.
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Company makes fuel from wood using nothing but water
A company called Renmatix says it can make ethanol from wood and woody biomass using nothing but water. If they're right -- and they just cut the ribbon on an R&D facility in Pennsylvania in order to find out -- it could mean the unlocking of a vast reserve of biomass previously untouched by the cleantech industry.
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Guitar Antihero 2: Lawless logging and slaughtered wildlife didn’t stop Gibson Guitar
A federal action accuses Gibson Guitar of importing wood from Madagascar, even after Chinese logging gangs pillaged the country's national parks.
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Guitar Antihero 1: How Gibson Guitars made illegal logging a conservative cause célèbre
Republican leaders are bashing well-respected trade regs that protect American jobs. Behind the coup: Tea Party groups and Gibson Guitar.
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Navy Secretary says getting off fossil fuels is just like ditching sail power
Ray Mabus, Secretary of the U.S. Navy, has a refreshing historical perspective on the Navy's efforts to end its dependence on our increasingly expensive and environmentally destructive supplies of oil. From a speech he recently gave at the National Clean Energy Summit 4.0:
In the 1850s, we went from sail to coal. In the early 19th century, we went from coal to oil, and in the 1950s, we pioneered nuclear.
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Critical List: Energy Dept. picks more winners; natural gas boom comes to Ohio
The Department of Energy, always picking winners, you know? The first Quadrennial Technology Review, to be released today, favors technologies that could come into commercial use in 10 years — i.e. consumer goods you can spend money for. This could mean DOE favors EVs over new clean energy technologies.
This company, Renmatix, will probably make it under the wire, though. It says it has the right technology to make commercially viable biofuels from biomass and just opened a plant to forward development of the technique.
The natural gas boom comes to Ohio.
Although Beijing usually gets a bad rap on pollution, Central and South Asia are not great places to live if you like inhaling clean air, either. -
Engineers: We have all the tech we need to cut carbon
Apparently the world's engineers are getting sick of being told that cutting emissions is an engineering problem. Eleven of the biggest engineering organizations have released a joint statement saying, in effect, "You want carbon cuts? We can give you carbon cuts. Just say the word, smart guy."
We already have all the tech necessary to cut emissions 85 percent by 2050, say the engineers. What we don't have is support from governments -- laws that prioritize carbon reduction, and funding to put the technology into action.
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Graph: The embarrassingly paltry sums government gives renewable energy
Click here for a larger version of this image.
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Solyndra shows the government is doing its job, for once
Solyndra's failure isn’t an embarrassment for the government, says Joe Nocera in The New York Times. In fact, it’s exactly what we should expect from a government program designed to fund risky, early-stage technologies that wouldn't otherwise find traction among private-sector funders of research and development. If there were no Solyndras in this world, says Nocera, it would mean government was funding precisely the wrong kind of breakthrough energy research.