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New business coalition plans to flex its muscle on climate policy
Nike, Starbucks, eBay, and a handful of other big-name U.S. companies are putting forward a climate agenda that’s just as ambitious as that of many environmentalists, if not more so. The new coalition — Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy, or BICEP for short — grew out of a partnership between Nike and Ceres, […]
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For eSolar, clean energy starts with computing power
An overhead view of eSolar’s Sierra solar array, located in Southern California (Photo courtesy e-Solar) I’m sitting in the back of a black Lincoln Continental with eSolar CEO Bill Gross on the downward glide into Antelope Valley, a sun-blasted stretch of semi-suburbanized desert northeast of Los Angeles. We’re on our way to take a […]
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Coal mining industry fights back with deceptions about jobs and the economy
If you’re a reader of Grist then you are almost certainly aware that the Obama Administration signaled a major shift yesterday in how mountaintop removal coal mining will be regulated. In brief, Obama’s head of the EPA, announced a decision to delay and review permits for two mountaintop removal mining operations, an action that calls […]
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Reinventing the trailer park
Trailer parks get a bad rap, especially in the post-Katrina days when we’ve come to see them as North American refugee camps slowly poisoning their displaced inhabitants with formaldehyde fumes. But the trailer park, done right, actually holds great potential as a development model. MiniHome: a big idea. Sustain Even in its current form, with […]
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VRB Power accquired by Chinese Prudent Energy
Back in early January, I mentioned it was bad news that VRB, the makers of large-scale, long-lasting vanadium flow batteries for storing electricity, was going out of business. Well their assets have been acquired by Prudent Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese JD Holdings Inc. This is good news in the sense the Prudent […]
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How cap-and-rebate brings about carbon reductions
David Roberts asks: Who, in this scenario [carbon revenue rebated to consumers], has any new incentive to shift to low-carbon electricity or efficiency? Short answer: everyone. Let’s say I’m your utility, and I raise your energy prices so that, at present rate of consumption, your bill will rise to $50,000 per year. Pretend that energy […]
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Solar PV market doubled to 6 Gigawatts in 2008
After growing 19 percent in 2006 and 62 percent in 2007, world solar photovoltaic (PV) market installations exploded by 110 percent last year to a staggering 5.95 GW, according to Solarbuzz’s Annual Report, Marketbuzz 2009: Europe accounted for 82% of world demand in 2008. Spain’s 285% growth pushed Germany into second place in the market […]
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Former GE Chief Jack Welch says obsession with short-term profits was ‘Dumb Idea’
File this one under “now they tell us” or maybe “the former drug kingpin says crack is not healthy for you.” The Financial Times reports the shocking not-quite-deathbed conversion: Jack Welch, who is regarded as father of the “shareholder value” movement, has said the obsession with short-term profits and share price gains that has dominated […]
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Knock out calls for anti-mountaintop removal bills
Ain’t no mountain high enough: King Coal is on the ropes. Across the nation, anti-mountaintop removal bills are quickly being moved across Capitol Hill and numerous legislatures this week to stop one of the most egregious human rights and environmental violations in modern times. Here’s the real “Down from the Mountain” tour: Hundreds of citizen […]
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Product service systems, Microsoft, blackouts, Kentucky’s Clean Energy Corps, and cool maps
Grist has comments turned off as we transition to a new website. If you have feedback on this post or anything else, let me know: droberts at grist dot org. • One of my favorite bright green ideas: objects as a service, sometimes called “product service systems,” a fascinating and potentially revolutionary idea desperately in […]
