All donations doubled!

Climate Technology

All Stories

  • The House wants to slow the military’s clean energy march

    Cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. The Department of Defense is the largest energy consumer in the nation. It has made significant efforts to wean the military services from their sole dependence on fossil fuels — particularly jet and diesel fuel made from oil — to power their planes, ships, and vehicles. Pollution from […]

    Daniel J. Weiss Technology

  • Distributed geothermal could supply 7 percent of California’s electricity

    With the right policies in place, geothermal could play an active role in reaching California’s renewable energy goals.Small, geographically dispersed geothermal power plants could provide 7 percent of California’s electricity supply, according to an analysis of data collected by a consultant to the Golden State. California recently passed new legislation requiring the state to provide […]

    Paul Gipe Technology

  • Turn your car into a car-share

    So you’ve successfully reduced your car usage, and now you have this hunk of metal sitting around outside your house, like a garden gnome that needs annual emissions inspections. Why not share it, and maybe make some money? Car-sharing service Getaround has unveiled a kit that will allow people to offer their cars for short-term […]

    Jess Zimmerman Technology

  • Great places: dense, wired, and sustainable

    This is part three in a series on “great places.” Read parts one, two, four, and five. Part of what makes great places great is ecological sustainability. So what’s the best way to reduce our per-capita resource footprint? Typically you hear one of two stories. One is about technology: making gadgets, appliances, vehicles, and factories […]

    David Roberts Technology

  • Getting green and happy by exporting pollution and misery: not cool

    Do you know where your Apple gadgets come from?Two things I’ve seen recently have got me thinking about how the Western world solves its problems by exporting them. First, over the weekend I saw The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a one-man theater performance from Seattle’s own Mike Daisey. It’s an absolutely brilliant […]

    David Roberts Technology

  • Are the Kochs pushing for an international oil pipeline?

    House Republicans are trying to speed up the review process for Keystone XL, the controversial pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s oil sands all the way down to Texas. This is potentially very dangerous, probably overpriced, maybe unnecessary, and almost certainly advantageous for certain corporate bigwigs. In other words, it stinks of unwashed Koch. […]

    Jess Zimmerman Technology

  • Critical List: 481 tornado deaths this year, Texas et al. v. EPA

    The average number of tornado fatalities in the U.S. each year is 55. Already this year, 481 people have died. Fifteen states, led by Texas, are looking to overturn the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. If they fail in court, they plan to stick their fingers in their ears and go “LA […]

    Sarah Laskow Technology

  • Behavioral nudges on electric bills could save three coal plants worth of emissions

    Smarter electric bills make smarter consumers.Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit about social psychology, behavioral research, and how they can be used to encourage energy efficiency and conservation. I’ve also written quite a bit about Opower, a company that uses behavioral insights to help utilities communicate more effectively with their customers. (See links […]

    David Roberts Technology

  • Five hot, rockin’ geothermal companies

    Cross-posted from Climate Progress. Like the natural gas sector, which has experienced an incredible boom due to new drilling techniques that allow companies to cost-effectively access unconventional gas, the geothermal sector is going through a renaissance that may open up a vast new set of resources. Traditional utility-scale geothermal, often called hydrothermal, utilizes hot water […]

    Stephen Lacey Technology

  • Can barcodes enforce sustainable logging in Liberia?

    Liberia, semi-miraculously, is still covered in rainforest, even though at one point in its history, warlord Charles Taylor was more or less giving arms traffickers logging tracts in exchange for weapons. The U.N. eventually noticed this problem and ended up saving the country's forests by putting an embargo on the country's "logs of war.” But […]

    Sarah Laskow Technology