Climate Technology

IKEA to go 100 percent renewable, starting with 67 wind turbines

Lots of companies talk about going green, but the scale of Swedish furniture retailer IKEA's ambition is breathtaking. In its quest to get 100 percent renewable, the firm skipped right over the usual, intermediate step of buying renewable power from a third party.

Buy an electric car, get a steep discount on the rooftop solar panels required to charge it

Ford has teamed up with SunPower to offer buyers of its forthcoming Ford Focus Electric a significant discount on SunPower's home solar power systems. This is more than just two companies teaming up to target a demographic likely to want to be interested in both their products: It also makes sense in terms of helping families get off of oil and coal at the same time.

New LCD screens will make your iPhone solar-powered

What if you could simply leave your iPhone face-up on a table or windowsill in order to trickle charge it and extend its battery? And what if the same technology that turned its screen into a photovoltaic panel also made its display significantly more efficient than current displays, leading to substantially increased battery life even if you're trapped inside a cave?

If the ‘smart grid’ gets too smart it will destroy itself, says study

If our utility company gives us too much information about the price of electricity -- a cornerstone of the "smart grid" -- we'll probably use that information to crash the grid and cause massive blackouts, says a new study from MIT. 

Wind turbines are about to become way more awesome

Wind power is pretty bad-ass to begin with, but conventional wisdom is that it's a "mature" technology that, unlike solar and other breakthrough energy technologies, won't be seeing much improvement in the coming decades. WRONGITY WRONG WRONG.

A green giant passes: Ray Anderson, sustainable-biz pioneer, dies at 77

Years before every business started angling to be seen as green, Ray Anderson set out to make his company Interface truly sustainable. He passed away today.

U.K. media down on renewable energy

The news media often gets flack for its "balanced" reporting on climate change that gives undue credence to climate skeptics. But in the U.K., at least, high-circulation newspapers can’t even claim balance when it comes to renewable energy. The Guardian reports on a study of news coverage of renewable energy in July 2009, when the discussion was largely about the "pros and cons of low-carbon energy sources.” The results:

Forget China; largest rare earth element deposit is under this Nebraska town

Perhaps you've heard that China has a worldwide monopoly on rare earth elements, without which the high-tech and cleantech world -- electric cars, computers, cell phones, wind turbines, smart meters, advanced batteries, the whole enchilada -- would grind to a shiny, clanking halt.

But now, instead of relying on Chinese imports to keep the rare-earth economy humming, we can destroy our OWN local environment! A small town in Nebraska has volunteered to be turned into a giant open-pit mine in the name of powering the post-fossil-fuel revolution.

How to cover 100 percent of your car expenses by renting yours out

Getaround is a car-sharing service like ZipCar, except instead of borrowing the company's vehicles, you're borrowing your neighbors'.

Solar-powered oil field runs on sunshine, irony

Put on your coal-fired vegan anti-irony helmets, because Oman is building a solar-powered oil field. Not because it will make them feel good or help them tamp down their emissions (I mean, this is oil they're digging up) but because it makes economic sense.