Climate Technology

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.

Teen's invention boosts solar panel output 40 percent

Nineteen-year-old Eden Full is going to be taking a few years off from her studies at Princeton. That's because she's been getting a ton of grants to finish developing her SunSaluter, a technology that allows solar panels to track the sun, boosting output by 40 percent.

Solar industry is strong like bull

Texas Republican says we should still invest in solar after Solyndra

Here's Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas, explaining why the Solyndra collapse shouldn't end solar loan guarantees. Refreshing! Solyndra had "too little oversight," Barton says, but solar is still viable and other companies should get loans if there's a reasonable expectation that taxpayers won't get screwed.

Everybody but America is cuckoo for carbon capture

While the U.S. has largely given up on building functional carbon capture and storage projects linked to power plants, everyone else is all over it. Whatever your feelings about this technology, it's undeniable that it's one more "clean" energy effort we're falling behind on, reports EnergyBiz.

The world's greenest car

Berkeley, Calif. news site Berkeleyside polled readers about what kind of car best embodies that famously granola town. The Volvo station wagon won out, but this shot by reader Ed probably better encompasses Berkeley's green leanings.

The military's historic embrace of smart energy

The U.S. military's embrace of energy efficiency and renewable energy is going to be one of the great stories of the coming decade.

Scientists build machine to suck carbon from the air

This machine sucks carbon out of the air like a Ghostbusters beam snarfing up ectoplasm. The idea is that if we can build millions of these babies, and find a good place to stick the carbon they capture, we can start to bring down Earth's already-dangerous levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

It's not just the U.S. — China is also eating Germany's solar lunch

Germany has more installed solar capacity than any other country on the planet, despite having a population of only 80 million people. You'd think that would be enough to drive a market for domestic solar production, but only if you lived under a globalization-proof rock and ate steaming bowls of naivete for breakfast.

Critical List: #realtalk from Clinton on climate; a DIY electric car

“We look like a joke, right?” — President Bill Clinton, on the ridiculousness that is America’s climate-denying Republican candidates.

Obama is at least TRYING to cut coal, oil, and gas subsidies with his deficit reduction proposal.

Your commute could give you a heart attack. Not in some stress-related indirect way. The fumes from the cars increase the risk of your heart bottoming out.

These guys are DIYing an electric car. It’s awesome.