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  • Facebook’s new campus will simulate real street life, just like Facebook

    Facebook’s headquarters will have a new suburban face.Photo: pshabNow that Facebook has eaten the entire world and drunk its milkshake, the company understandably needs more space to let it all hang out. So they’re moving from their offices in Palo Alto, Calif., to a campus of their own in Menlo Park, a corporate park that […]

    Sarah Goodyear Technology

  • Solar-powered wind turbines not just a joke

    April fools led to a bunch of fake posts that made us die a little inside, and at least one that seemed like kind of a good idea: the solar-powered wind turbine. Turns out that the notion of harvesting the maximum amount of energy from the immediate environment is good enough that the combo of […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • Can the Keynes notion of ‘spontaneous optimism’ help U.S. investments in clean energy?

    This post originally appeared on the Great Energy Challenge blog, in partnership with National Geographic and Planet Forward.  John Maynard Keynes, a giant in modern economic theory, famously wrote, “Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be […]

    James Barrett Technology

  • New wind now costs the same as new coal — the tiebreaker is one of them kills you

    The radical environmentalists at Bloomberg have declared that the world's best new wind projects now produce electricity that costs about the same as electricity produced from new coal-fired power plants. A lot goes into these calculations, but here's the bottom line: wind costs $65 a megawatt-hour, while power from new coal-fired power plants costs about […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • How green are those solar panels, anyway?

    SolarWorld’s ratings aim to keep the photovoltaic industry on the sunny side.So which is the sunniest solar manufacturer of them all? I don’t mean companies whose photovoltaic panels generate the most carbon-free electricity, but which are the most environmentally friendly in their manufacturing, labor, and recycling practices. Solar modules can contain toxic materials, and they […]

    Todd Woody Technology

  • Putin test-drives, makes fun of radical new hybrid

    Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia's richest man and owner of the New Jersey Nets, has bankrolled an all-Russian natural gas-electric hybrid car called the ë-mobile (pronounced yo-mobile), but that wasn’t enough to impress Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his tiger blood. Putin: "This yo-mobile of yours, I hope it won't fall into pieces, will it?" Before a […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • How a carbon-neutral product is made

    Making environmentally-responsible products is hard, so kudos to M.E. Heuck Co., houseware manufacturer, for even trying. After more than a year of work with their partner FirstCarbon Solutions, they have unveiled ZEROCA Carbon Neutral Cookware. Yeah, they had to buy offsets to make it totally carbon-neutral, but first they did their best to tamp down […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • How to prevent climate change: Blot out the sun

    As Montgomery Burns reminds us, since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. That’s lucky for the top brains who attended Sunday’s conference on climate change and geoengineering — deliberately tweaking the Earth, sea, and atmosphere for improved performance. Of the several geoengineering solutions they discussed, only one promised to alter […]

    Jess Zimmerman Technology

  • Americans are crap at recycling mercury-containing CFLs — here’s how to do better

    Update: Turns out the original story on which this post is based is bunk. Check out an update direct from the EPA here: CFLs are not a significant source of mercury, says EPA Every year, Americans recycle only 2 percent of the compact fluorescent light bulbs they toss an unknown proportion of the CFLs they toss. The […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • Powering up: Green tech investment surges

    The money’s coming in for green tech.Photo: MoneyblognewzSome good news on the environmental front for a change: Global investment in green technology in the first quarter of the year spiked 52 percent compared to the previous quarter, to $2.57 billion. That’s according to a report released Tuesday by the Cleantech Group, a San Francisco research […]

    Todd Woody Technology