Climate Technology
All Stories
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How wiring the developing world can help save the planet
Envaya helps people in Africa build ultralight websites, on the ultracheap.Like most equatorial countries, Tanzania is feeling the impacts of climate change. Malaria is spreading to areas at ever-higher altitudes. Lake Victoria, which feeds the Nile, is retreating. The rainy season is starting later and getting shorter — last year, the typically four-month season lasted […]
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Crowd-sourced radiation maps put the hivemind to work for public health
Map: RTDN.org and Google Maps What if Foursquare were good for something? It might look a little like this. Crowd-sourced maps of radiation in Japan allow anyone with a radiation detector to log their reading, resulting in real-time information with potentially as many data points as there are users. RTDN.org, put together by Portland's Uncorked […]
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PG&E to let customers disable their smart meters — for a price
Over the past year, a revolt against the rollout of utility Pacific Gas & Electric’s smart meters has swept through Northern California as some customers claimed the devices’ wireless transmission of electricity data was harming their health. In response, city councils in a number of cities tried to ban their installation. On Thursday, PG&E, acting […]
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Giving clean energy developers cash works better than tax credits, stupid US policy notwithstanding
One of the great undercovered aspects of U.S. energy policy is the fact that most of it happens through the tax code. That’s one reason it’s so unbearably lame. Why do we do energy policy this way? There are many reasons, but a big one is that decades of conservative agitprop have made it almost […]
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California going to sh*t — for green electricity
This is an opportunity we want to go down the drain.Recession-wracked California is truly going down the toilet. For green energy, that is. In a gift to headline writers everywhere, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday handed out nearly $1 million to fund an experimental project to convert what it politely refers to as “biosolids” […]
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New David Koch building gets energy upgrade — courtesy of the climate program he loves to hate
Image: Positioning GreenCross-posted from Positioning Green. Billionaire conservative financier David Koch doesn’t know it, but the cutting-edge energy-saving technologies included in a brand new $211 million research lab that bears his name were partly funded through a government program to reduce global warming pollution. It happens to be the very same program under a blistering […]
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We CAN Do Something About Tsunami Devastation
The ferocious tsunami that devastated Japan’s coast is a tragic reminder that we have an uneasy relationship with our oceans. While we can’t prevent earthquakes, we can minimize at least some of the damage from tsunamis on American shores by dealing with climate change and rising ocean levels now. March 20th marked the beginning of […]
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San Francisco mayor calls for city to go 100% renewable by 2020
San Francisco’s mayor wants an all-renewable town.Photo: jfraserWhere could you get 797 people to stand in line outside a nightclub to attend a $100-a-ticket fundraiser for a nonprofit that advocates for solar energy? Not-so-sunny San Francisco, of course. The queue to get into the Vote Solar Initiative annual spring equinox bash snaked down the street […]
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Sears Tower to become giant solar farm
The Sears Tower, lately unceremoniously renamed the Willis tower, is about to pioneer a kind of crazy-innovative window, one that produces power without obstructing the view or letting in appreciably less sunlight. It's way too complicated to explain in mere words, so hopefully this image will help. If it doesn't, feel free to be a […]
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Google Maps tells you where to shove it, where “it” is the plug of your electric car
Looking for a place to plug in your electric car? Now you can find it the same way you find everything else: Google Maps. The Goog has reached out its electronic tentacles and absorbed the Department of Energy's master list of U.S. electric vehicle charging stations (there are over 600, at least one for every […]
