Cleaner air raises the costs of electricity

The price of electricity produced by coal based power generators, one of the most noxious combustibles, will double starting with 2013 if it will be necessary for the power generating companies to acquire all the certificates for air pollution, declared Gabriel Baleanu, expert from the Economics and Finances Ministry. This will lead to the increase of [...]

McCain’s Vision for Renewable Energy

GOP candidate John McCain has his eyes on nuclear energy to address our current climate crisis. Nothing like solving one problem while creating another. I can understand that he may hate the sun for what it does to his pasty white skin. And that he may hate the wind for messing up his well placed [...]

Plans for Largest Solar Power Op Include High-Voltage Lines in Scenic Vista

What price are you willing to pay to get the oil/coal/gas monkey off your back and switch your community to clean energy? Would you accept a long stretch of high-voltage power lines across your favorite scenic vista? It’s a question I’ve taken on before in a post titled, “What Do I WIMBY (Want In My Backyard)?,” [...]

BioTown, USA: Is Total Energy Self-Sufficiency Possible?

Sure, it’s easy enough for one person to attempt energy self-sufficiency: put a solar panel on your roof, run your car on biodiesel, and you’re halfway there. But how easy is it for an entire town to become self-sufficient? That’s the question that Reynolds, Indiana has been trying to answer for the past 3 years. In [...]

Harness solar + wind power for < $150

In past journal entries I’ve referred to solar hot water as a low-hanging fruit in alternative energy appliances. If that metaphor is true, then there is a lower cost solar device which is like the fruit falling in your lap — although it will take some work to enjoy it’s benefits. Without repeating what I’ve [...]

Mindset Six50 Electric Car Mixes Gas, Li-Ion and Solar Power

New car industry start-up Mindset, has announced plans to sell a gasoline-electric hybrid next year. The 2+2-seater hybrid, called the Six50, boasts an electric-only range of 100km (62 miles) via a built-in Li-Ion battery. A two-cylinder gasoline motor, which kicks in as a generator as required, boosts the range to 800km (496 miles). Battery charging [...]

10 Ways to Cut Home Energy Consumption

Editor’s note: Our friends at Low Impact Living point out 10 ways you can save energy this summer. This post was originally published on June 10th, 2008. The heat of summer is coming, and that means many of us are about to crank up the AC, make an extra batch of ice, and generally burn energy [...]

Transparent Transistor Makes Solar Energy Twice as Efficient at Half the Cost

When we first purchased our solar panels 15 years ago, the standard rule of thumb was it would take 10 years before your solar investment would pay off in saved utility bills. Now, new technologies are changing all of that. HP and Xtreme Energetics, are teaming up to develop a solar energy system [...]

No More Power Bills

That’s the headline on this look at the awesome house that New Jersey engineer Mike Strizki hath wrought. It’s not what you thought the future would look like. Strizki converts sunshine into electricity using photovoltaic panels - and then uses the electricity to wring hydrogen for fuel out of ordinary tap water. The result: For two [...]

Harnessing the sun’s heat from pavements

Dutch scientists have figured out how to harness the sun as it beats down on hot highways - cutting heating and road repair bills. At nearly a dozen sites across the Netherlands, embedded in the pavement, lies a network of pipes. Water flows through these pipes and heats up in the summer sun. The warm [...]

Inflatable photovoltaics

It may look like a giant kiddies balloon, but the object pictured above is in fact state-of-the-art concentrated solar photovoltaic technology for which Cool Earth Solar, a California-based company, has reportedly just received $21-million dollars in funding.

New World Record Set For Solar Efficiency: 31.25%

On a perfect New Mexico winter day — with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual — Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate.

The Largest Building In The World To Be Green

Foster + Partners have just been granted preliminary permission to start construction on this volcano-shaped superstructure in Moscow, which will be dubbed “Crystal Island”. In terms of efficiency monolithic buildings like this seem unnecessary, but the proposed dimensions are amazing: it will be 1,500 foot tall with 26,909,776 foot squared of floor space, that’s enough room to house 30,000 people.

Solar Notebook: Go Anywhere…Sustainably

Solar-powered laptops sure would be a great thing to have in mass production to (1) cut down on energy consumption and (2) not have to worry as much about the battery dying. One concept design which looks interesting is by Nikola Knezevic of Nikoladesign.