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Sungevity partners with Lowe’s to bring solar to the public
Sungevity will install kiosks around Lowe’s stores in California.Photo: Grant BiermanCross-posted from Climate Progress. Yesterday’s news from the solar company Sungevity that it will partner with Lowe’s Home Improvement stores to help customers quote and install a solar system is a great indicator of where the industry is going. Critics often charge that solar is […]
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Eco-geeks rejoice: Here is Nathan Fillion with an electric car
Remember when we called the Arcimoto SRK "an electric car for the Facebook generation"? Apparently it's also an electric car for the "Firefly" generation. Actor Nathan Fillion got all excited about the car at its launch, and his remarks get at the main reasons for wanting an electric car: Spaceship resemblance and revenge. Thank you […]
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Nearly 1 million Bangladeshis rely on solar panels for electricity
Less than half of Bangladeshis have access to electricity, which is essential for economic productivity and the kind of night-time illumination that allows kids to study after dark. (Hey, not everyone is as determined as Abe Lincoln.) So the World Bank is spending to get solar-powered light systems installed where the (notoriously unreliable) electrical power […]
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Some biofuels worse than dirtiest fossil fuels
If you fuel your truck with biodiesel made from palm oil grown on a patch of cleared rainforest, you could be putting into the atmosphere 10 times more greenhouse gasses than if you’d used conventional fossil fuels. It's a scenario so ugly that, in its worst case, it makes even diesel created from coal (the […]
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Today in ‘you should pay more attention to utilities’ news
This woman is paying attention. Are you?For decades, electric utilities in the U.S. have mostly been barriers to progress on clean air and clean energy. This mainly has to do with the perverse way they are regulated, which ties their profits to deploying huge amounts of capital to build huge power plants burning cheap fuel […]
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Keystone pipeline spilled tar-sands oil 11 times in past year. Do we really want to supersize it?
The routes of the existing and proposed Keystone pipelines. Image: RL MillerThe State Department is currently weighing whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar-sands oil some 2,000 miles southward, from Alberta, Canada, to Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. It would be an expansion of the now-operational Keystone pipeline that goes as […]
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Bill Gates’ blind spots
So right, and yet so not-quite-rightPhoto: Suzie KatzWhen Bill Gates first jumped into the energy discussion with a big TED talk, I wrote a post called “Why Bill Gates is wrong.” In retrospect, I should have been a bit more diplomatic. I should have started with a post called “Why it’s super-fantastic that someone as […]
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Charge your phone by yelling at it
As if cell phones don't already encourage enough annoying, disruptive public noise, researchers at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul have developed a phone battery that you charge by yelling at it. The battery has zinc oxide wires running between two electrodes; sound vibrates the wires, and that creates electricity. Right now, it only works with sounds […]
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Critical List: Biofuels kinda suck, biomass kinda sucks, Toys ‘R’ Us embraces solar
The Fish and Wildlife Service has promised to evaluate the endangered status of 251 species in the next six years, if only so those pesky enviros will be quiet for a bit. The country's largest rooftop solar-energy field will be installed in New Jersey, at a Toys "R" Us distribution center. No word on when […]
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Bill Gates on energy philanthropy, R&D funding, & why the U.S. will out-innovate China
Bill Gates goes casual at the Climate Solutions breakfast.Photo: nonfictionmediaThe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — the richest in the world, with an endowment of $37 billion — doesn’t have plans to focus on clean energy and climate change, Bill Gates said on Tuesday. Speaking at a fundraiser for Northwest nonprofit Climate Solutions, he argued […]
