Curt DespresFloating Fish Farms
Tweet Traditional fish farms have environmental issues because of their ultra-concentration of fish, so now a Hawaiian company has come up with a solution that involves a 22-foot floating “Aquapod” that contains the fish while it floats in open ocean…and the environmental impact is zero! Courtesy: todaysgreenminute.com
THE GREEN ENERGY B...Northeast Solar Sales Surge Through Home Depot
Tweet Stephen Lacey It was the holy grail of solar. Get solar panels on the shelves of a big-box store like Home Depot where do-it-yourselfers shop for home improvement projects, and the solar industry could tap a whole new class of customers. Except it didn’t really happen that way — at first. In 2001, Home [...]
4 Ways to Use Solar Power at Home
Tweet Much of our country’s electric grid runs on coal. Even with carbon capture technology, coal is far from clean. As we burn through the world’s coal supply, coal companies resort to more drastic measures to extract it from the ground. A common industry practice, mountaintop removal mining, involves literally blasting the tops off of [...]
Renewable Energy in 50 Years: 3 Predictions
Tweet Humans have the unique talent to imagine the prospective in rich, complete detail. Futurists from past generations foretold a global paradigm shift, buttressed by interconnectivity, digitization, seamless space travel, and policemen equipped with surgically fastened, bat-like wings. Granted, it’s an imperfect science. Sometimes we dream up winged peacekeepers, but other times, we prove ourselves [...]
‘Fire Ice’ – The New Source Of Green Energy? Japan Certainly Seems To Think So
Tweet Imagine lighting a fire to a hard-packed snowball or the mud deep inside the ocean bed. While that may sound impossible, it is not only feasible, but the government of Japan believes that they can use this energy to fuel the entire country, for at least a decade. As you have probably guessed the [...]
CAN BEING GREEN SAVE YOU MONEY?
Tweet Guest Post To many, thinking and looking after the environment is viewed as an arduous task. As we rifle through our bins, sorting the recyclable from the waste, quite often looking after the environment isn’t always the most enjoyable of tasks. The truth is however, being green and looking after your home can also [...]
Stanford’s Solar Cell Turbocharger Could Boost Solar Power Output by 50%
Tweet Scientists at Stanford University have improved the efficiency of a revolutionary solar cell by around 100 times. Unlike standard photovoltaic cells, which only capture light energy, Stanford’s new device captures both light and heat, potentially boosting solar cell efficiency towards 60% — way beyond the 30-40% limit of traditional silicon photovoltaic solar cells. This [...]
Australia Retains Renewable Energy Target
Tweet Despite efforts by some Australian utility companies and industry groups to see Australia’s Renewable Energy Targets (RET) wound back, the government has decided to maintain them. Utilities are having an impact elsewhere, with fixed electricity prices set to increase to ensure solar households pay “their share” of electricity infrastructure costs. Energy policy in Australia [...]
Apple’s Data Centers Now Running on 100% Renewable Energy
Tweet Bloomberg notes that Apple has posted the 2012 update of its environmental policy pages, noting that the company has now achieved 100% renewable energy usage at all of its data centers. On a worldwide basis, the company’s corporate facilities are now running on 75% renewable energy, up from 35% just two years ago. Our [...]
Solar Power to Hit Cost Parity Next Year
Tweet Image credit: Kevin Thoule: Flickr Creative Commons They said it couldn’t be done. They tried to tell us that renewable energy could only survive if it were propped up with government subsidies. Never mind that our whole system of economic development, beginning with the patent office, is predicated on the idea that fledgling, underfunded [...]
Morocco Leading the World Toward a Green Energy Future
Tweet By Paul E McGinniss Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize the fledgling American Republic in 1777. Now, they are seeking clean energy independence and asking the world to join them in a green revolution. This North African country, a constitutional monarchy about the size of California, has recently set a [...]
Using Compressed Air as Green Energy Storage?
Tweet LightSail Energy, headed up by 25-year-old Danielle Fong, is developing technology to store energy as compressed air. A stumbling block to increasing our reliance on electricity from cleaner energy sources such as solar panels and wind farms has always been figuring out how to efficiently store the energy for use when the wind isn’t [...]
UAE Boosts Solar Power 10 fold with Shams Power Plant
Tweet Abu Dhabi, the largest sheikhdom in the United Arab Emirates, is making a 10-fold boost in its capacity to generate electricity from the sun by starting the Shams 1 solar plant with partners Total SA (FP) and Abengoa SA. (ABG) Masdar, the state-owned renewable energy company, will supply 100 megawatts of electricity from the [...]
Mom, My School Is Turning Green!
Tweet Here’s our salute to The Green Schools Alliance, which is linking the great young environmental minds in three thousand schools around the world and challenging them to save energy dollars…all while inspiring the environmental leaders of tomorrow! Courtesy: todaysgreenminute.com
Solar Energy: Grid Parity In India, Italy, and More to Come in 2014
Tweet Deutsche Bank just released new analyses concluding that the global solar market will become sustainable on its own terms by the end of 2014, no longer needing subsidies to continue performing. The German-based bank said that rooftop solar is looking especially robust, and sees strong demand in solar markets in India, China, Britain, Germany, [...]
Solar Energy to Get Boost From Cutting-Edge Forecasts
Tweet Newswise — BOULDER — Applying its atmospheric expertise to solar energy, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is spearheading a three-year, nationwide project to create unprecedented, 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun for solar energy power plants. The research team is designing a prototype system to forecast sunlight and resulting power [...]
Researchers Develop New Way of Harvesting Solar Energy Using Nanoparticles in Water
Tweet A new method of harvesting the Sun‘s energy is emerging, thanks to scientists at UC Santa Barbara‘s Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials. Though still in its infancy, the research promises to convert sunlight into energy using a process based on metals that are more robust than many of the semiconductors used in [...]
Offshore Wind Cheaper than Gas by End of Decade
Tweet Imagine a wind turbine so big that it would take Usain Bolt 19.32 seconds to run across the 200m diameter of its blades (before plunging tragically into the sea). This is what wind manufacturer Dong says will help bring the cost of offshore wind down to below that of new gas-fired power stations (the [...]
Lancaster, California: Solar Panels On All Homes Will Be Required By 2014
Tweet From Mother Nature Network’s Matt Hickman: In the high desert city of Lancaster, Calif., not too far from where telephone pole-hoarding folk hero Alan Kimble Fahey was forced to demolish his home and where a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad known only as The Bride had her nuptials officially ruined, mayor [...]
IKEA Is Retail’s Solar Power King in Florida
Hmm…not so sure if this says something good about IKEA or something not so good about their domestic competitors here in the U.S., but as a matter of fact it looks like a foreign company has just laid claim to being the biggest solar power owner in our Sunshine State of Florida, other than utilities. [...]
A startup aims to crank up solar power with efficient materials
Raising money for solar technology manufacturing is tough these days. But a startup called Malachite Technologies hopes to break through with an idea to design equipment that can make a solar cell using super efficient semiconductor materials that can boost the solar energy generation of a panel. The company pitched a hybrid solar cell concept [...]
Breakthrough For Hawaiian Solar Power Announced By Clean Energy Groups
IREC Press Release January 29, 2013 Contact: Isaac Moriwake, Earthjustice: 808-599-2436 x6613 Tim Lindl, IREC: 510.314.8385 Barriers should come down for homeowners, businesses wanting to add rooftop solar Honolulu, HI — Today, national organizations Earthjustice and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Inc. (IREC) commended the Hawaiian Electric (HECO) utilities’ path-breaking plans to enable more rooftop [...]
Hydrokinetics: The Biggest Source of Renewable Energy You Never Heard Of
Renewable energy has certainly made tremendous progress in the past decade. Indeed, most people would acknowledge that it has grown from being little more than a mascot, to a full-fledged member of the energy generation team. And yet, despite the fact that people as reputable as the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have come [...]
7.5MW Solar Power Plant for Water Treatment
SunPower Corp. A 7.5 MW solar power plant has been developed by SunPower Corp at Phoenix’s Lake Pleasant Water Treatment Plant. The installation is expected to generate 70% of the plant’s energy needs. SunPower’s solar system is expected to save the water treatment plant more than US$4 million over 20 years. The installation has a [...]