Climate Technology
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Americans want fuel-efficient cars — can Detroit keep up?
The fuel-efficient Ford Focus is in high demand. The Ford Econoline van? Not so much.Photo: Ford Motor CompanyCross-posted from Climate Progress. This post was cowritten by Tyce Herrman. With gas prices just below the $4 per gallon mark and possibly climbing to $5 per gallon later this summer, Americans are demanding more fuel-efficient automobiles. But […]
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How solar power will become cheaper than fossil fuels in three to five years
Are you ready to flip the bird at your utility company? Lord knows you probably will be after you get the bill for what's shaping up to be an especially hot June. Luckily, a whole host of companies working on improving a novel solar technology would like to help you do it. The new tech […]
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Once and for all, do cell phones cause cancer?
Maybe. The World Health Organization has released a report [PDF] on the connections between cell phone use and cancer. It concluded that cell phones are a "possible" carcinogen, and there was much out-freaking. But what does this really mean? It does not, it turns out, mean that cell phones definitely or even likely cause cancer. It […]
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Apollo and BlueGreen Alliance merge — a smart move at a time of clean-energy trouble
Last week, the Apollo Alliance and the BlueGreen Alliance, two of the most important national nonprofits supporting clean energy development and good jobs, announced that as of July 1, they would merge. The much larger Minneapolis-based BlueGreen Alliance, a five-year-old collaboration of big green groups and unions, will become the parent of San Francisco-based Apollo, which […]
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Buildings that make more energy than they use gain steam
If every building made more energy than it uses, would all the world's power plants pack up and go home? Maybe education would be fully funded and the military would be forced to have a bake sale! But really: There is a building in Bellenberg, Germany that produces more energy than it consumes, mostly by […]
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How the ‘Arab Spring’ makes massive solar in North Africa more likely
Desertec is a massive project to to build solar thermal plants in the deserts of North Africa — you know, the same North Africa that had all the revolutions just now. But proponents are saying there’s no reason to put the project on hold just because of political unrest. In fact, they say, the economic […]
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Greener cars and fuel mean fewer deaths tied to vehicle emissions
Cars idling in traffic lead to more than 2,200 premature deaths each year, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health. But lower vehicle emissions and cleaner fuels have been driving down that number for past decade, and the number of deaths will continue to decrease until about 2025, the study […]
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Critical List: Christie ditches climate initiative; France opens huge solar farm
New Jersey governor Chris Christie has jumped ship from a regional greenhouse gas program, because "it's a failure." The owners of the Fukushima nuclear plant provided regulators with only a one-page memo on its tsunami and earthquake preparedness. One page. A decade ago. In Japan, the country that invented the word “tsunami.” Green tech companies […]
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Even the Swiss hate nuclear now
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it seems nobody can stay neutral on nuclear power, not even Switzerland. The country has abandoned plans for new nuclear reactors, and while the five existing reactors will be allowed to keep operating, they won't be replaced. Nuclear in Switzerland will be entirely phased out by 2034, and […]
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How to get to a fully renewable power system
How can we scale up the clean and phase out the dirty?What’s it going to take to substantially ramp up the amount of renewables in the electricity system? There are many nerdy discussions of that question on the interwebs, but lemme try to talk about it in reasonably non-nerdy language. There’s a certain amount of […]
