Last month an airplane known as Solar Impulse completed a fully solar-powered flight across the USA as a demonstration of current solar solutions. In the video above you can see why they made the flight and how the Switezerland-based company wants to change air travel. At the Guardian there is
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Things Are Good: Global Solar and Wind Energy Production Continues to Grow
The sustainable energy market consistently needs to prove its worth despite the obvious benefits, whats worse is that the industry as a whole is up against the subsidized fossil fuel industry. Despite the artificially lowered fossil fuel prices sustainable energy solutions continue to prove their economic worth. Global solar and
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Electron democracy
A long-belated companion to Steven Chu’s “Time to fix the wiring” essay I posted earlier, this is the white paper I co-authored for the same McKinsey & Company series. Given the roughly five-month delay in uploading this, I suppose “Time to post the writing” might be an apt subtitle… 🙂
Continue readingThings Are Good: New Homes in Lancaster, California Required to Produce Solar Energy
Lancaster, California has nearly half a million citizens and they want to reduce their carbon footprint. Their most recent step to being a green city is a world’s first as far as I know: every new residential development in the city is required to produce energy using the sun. “However,
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Solar Structure That Cools in the Sun
Keeping buildings cool in the summer is hard enough as it is and we have access to air conditioning technologies. Now, there’s a better way to keep buildings, cars, and whatnot thanks to some research out of Stanford University. Their new approach to cooling entire structures doesn’t require electricity and
Continue readingThings Are Good: Burning in the Sun: The Small Solar Industry in Africa
A few years ago in Mali some filmmakers went to chronicle what’s going on in the country and ended up making a documentary about solar energy. Daniel Dembele is an entrepreneur who brought solar power to the people by starting a company and bringing photovoltaic panels to rural Mali. This
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Steven Chu’s “Time to Fix the Wiring” at four years
Former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s recent resignation — his farewell letter is here — is no doubt celebrated in the fuel cell quarters as passionately (or more so) than it is mourned in the rest of cleantech. Early in his term, Chu infamously argued (infamously, at least, to fuel
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Our Renewable Future part 1: clearing “myth”conceptions
With Obama talking the talk on climate action in his State of the Union address yesterday, now seems a good time to start compiling a planned set of blog entries about renewable energy. Many many others have done so online already (as evidenced by the fact I’m linking to them!)
Continue readingCarbon49 - Sustainability for Canadian businesses: Winning Cleantech by Design
Being able to get across a green product’s essence to consumers and investors is a key that can turn it from a fringe interest to mass market success. Design can connect consumers with a cleantech product’s functions, values, and green character better than words can. This article shows the key
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Solar Powered Combustion Engine May Be in Your Future
This may sound counter-intutitive, but researches have begun a project to build an internal combustion engine (a common car engine) that runs off of solar power. Instead of using gas to ignite everything they want to heat water, add a dash of oil, to create a replacement to the overused pollution producing machine that is […]
Continue readingThe Ranting Canadian: Eventually people will have to get it through their heads that…
Eventually people will have to get it through their heads that cleaner alternative energy isn’t just for tree-hugging hippies. Eventually these energy sources — along with energy conservation, reducing/re-using other products, and population redu…
Continue readingThings Are Good: Pacific Island 100% Solar Powered
Tokelau is a small island in the Pacific that has switched it’s entire power grid to solar, this is the first of a few islands in the region that will be fully independent from having to import fuel for electricity.
Before the solar power grid was completed, the New Zealand-administered grouping of three coral atolls, […]
Things Are Good: Solar Panels Break 1/3 Record
Photovoltaic solar panels are measured in terms of how efficient they are at converting light into electricity. Obviously potential energy is lost when this conversion occurs and it has long been speculated that it would be possible to get 1/3 of the energy captured converted into electricity. In labs, this
Continue readingThings Are Good: Tesla Motors Builds Solar Charging Stations
Tesla, the electric car company, has unveiled solar powered electric charging stations in the USA. This is a good step toward sustainable personal transportation. Not only has Tesla created battery charging stations called Superchargers for electric cars but they are giving the energy away for free to some lucky people.
Continue readingCarbon49 - Sustainability for Canadian businesses: Green R&D: Companies Betting Big On Green Innovation
The Green Transition Scoreboard reports that $241 billion was recently invested in green R&D by large multinationals like Samsung, General Electric, and Nissan and smaller companies like Owens Corning, Cree, and First Solar. Companies around the world are recognizing a tremendous opportunity as we shift from a dirty fossil fuel-based economy
Continue readingThings Are Good: Germany’s Sustainable Energy Grid Keeps Improving
In May, Germany was able to supply 50% of their national energy consumption using renewable power sources. That was remarkable in itself given the size of Germany in both industrial and population size. Now, it’s been announced that for the first half 2012 Germany produced 67.9 billion kilowatt hours of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Homeowners Can Earn Cash From Solar Roofs
Energy is still delivered via large power stations which can fail and leave entire regions without electricity. The future requires a more distributed energy grid that is a combination of large and small electricity generators, doing so will ensure electricity is not so heavily impacted by a rise in the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Heartland Institute, ALEC and More Gearing Up to Undermine Renewable Energy
shutterstock_87374705.jpg One of the environmental movement’s biggest accomplishments over the past decade has been convincing states to adopt so-called renewable portfolio standards (RPS). RPS require a state’s energy supply to diversify, gradually shifting away from fossil fuels and towards renewable sources like geothermal, wind and solar. At least 30 states now have
Continue readingThings Are Good: Germany Achieves 50% of Power Consumption from Renewable Sources
Germany continues to show the rest of the industrialized world how to be economical successful thanks to sound energy policy. This past week the country achieved a symbolic victory in their campaign to be a more efficient country and had 50% of the energy consumed come from renewable energy sources.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Japan’s Largest Solar Power Plant: 70MW
Japan is about to build a new solar power plant and it’ll their largest one to date. The country is trying to improve their power grid and make it more sustainable after the nuclear disaster last year. Great to see progress! The new plant, which will be called the Kagoshima
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