Nano-scale filaments are not a new development in solar technologies; researchers have been working on this kind of technology for years, like the researchers in UC San Diego, Harvard, and the German universities Jena, Gottingen, and Bremen did in 2008 . Unlike some earlier applicatio...
Soccket is a soccer ball that harnesses energy with every kick and volley it gets. Developed by Harvard grads, the toy boasts a successful Kickstarter campaign, surpassing a funding goal of $75,000 by over $17,000 last month. A pendulum inside the Soccket ball swings when the ball mov...
(FFC) catalyst is more efficient at releasing breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen, and can be produced at a fraction of the cost of other exotic material catalysts. The FFC catalyst is based on ferrous oxide - rust. And, according to the researchers, the cost could be 1000 times l...
I'm a great fan, Hank, but you are way off in your comments about Earth Hour and the energy and carbon savings. Turning off your lights for an hour and lighting candles instead is not neutral -- you are actually adding more pollution. That's because the big bad utility company that pr...
The size isn't simply for world-record showiness. The larger the wind turbine, the more energy produced, according to a study by Swiss and Dutch Scientists , accounting for both size and the improved technology over time. Constructing massive offshore wind farms makes scaling up easie...
What if human waste, what’s left after our bodies extract energy-producing nutrients from our food and drink, could itself be transformed into energy? Four African teenagers went beyond asking this question: they created a generator powered by human urine. The machine, built by 14-yea...
In the United States, to the surprise of no one who experienced it, 2012 was the hottest year on record by more than a degree , with hundreds of new temperature records set throughout the year. The average national temperature was a full degree higher than the previous record. A degre...
LEDs may seem to be the peak of efficient lighting technology, but they aren't perfect, and that doesn't mean that other technologies aren't being explored. Recently, scientists from Wake Forest University announced a new kind of light called FIPEL, which stands for "field-induced pol...
top military leadership is generally in favor of green measures . The armed services have been adopting greater use of more sustainable materials, and they recognize the strategic importance of energy conservation and self-reliance for energy needs. As a whole, the US Department of De...
Driving range numbers, which are usually a concern for potential electric vehicle drivers, have not been included in the GM press release, although the company claims it will have some of the best EV range. The Spark EV will optionally offer a new fast-charge system which allows the b...
In addition to the direct atmospheric carbon extraction, the process also uses renewable energy to power the electrolysis process, so that the carbon debt is not merely transferred. Although the feedstock is free, the other costs of the process are likely too high for this to be an im...
"As a small added benefit[...] the process also results in slightly cleaner air." Instead of trying to argue how TOTALLY insignificant, dumb, and besides the point this argument is, I'd like to make a broader statement: Helping the environment through technology is all about understan...
Well, as good as this may seem, the Danish media has not angled it this way. The problem is, according to the electricity companies, that homeowners are given incentive to invest in solar panels in a way that negatively influences the electric market in general. It is actually more ex...
Organic food has never been about some perception of super-food with extra nutritional value, except perhaps to those who don't understand organic in the first place. But this study was so narrow in its definitiion of "nutritious" (which was taken to mean "containing more vitamins") t...
The US military is one of the biggest users of renewable energy, and the Pentagon is continuing to investment in a variety of renewable power systems. Eleven former 3- and 4-star generals have made a strong argument for renewables in a joint paper they have issued titled 'A National S...
Sweden is a country with an especially good national recycling program and broad public participation. It is so good that only 4 percent of household waste goes into landfills. Sweden also has a lot of district heating plants , which produce electricity and hot water that is distribut...
Although we continue to get press releases about new, green hotels being built, these few examples, even when they do incorporate extremely strong energy efficiency measures, are all too rare. A few good examples aren't enough to stem an apparent overall tide that seems headed in the ...
Frankly, I kind of like it as an art project. I wouldn't mind seeing a few of these buses driving around just to catch people's attention and add some flare to an otherwise bland cityscape. But it's not something I think should be done on a large scale. Once you get past the novelty o...
In conventional construction, the windows of a building are usually the weakest part of the thermal envelope. Well insulated walls can be built with a number of different kinds of construction and a variety of insulation materials. But windows, particularly ones that the inhabitants o...
While we usually look at wind turbines chiefly as a cleaner, better source of electricity. But in many parts of the world, electricity is only one of several needs faced by much of the population. In answer to a broader set of needs, the Eole Water WMS1000 turbine uses some of the pow...
With global production and distribution of goods a reality of 21st Century life, cargo ships are ubiquitous. They bring goods to consumers all over the world, and more and more ships are transporting goods and raw materials, all while burning some of the most polluting fuels. A recent...
Once it was invented in the late 1940s, the transistor began to replace the vacuum tube, and led to an amazing range of uses for solid-state devices and the variety of electronic gadgets we have today. Transistors offered savings in both size and energy. But one of the things that vac...
The analysis makes a bunch of assumptions, the worst and most ridiculous of which is that anyone would purchase an iPad primarily to read eBooks. This article should also really be titled: "Carbon Footprint of iPads Higher Than Printed Books", because that's all the author can really ...
has hit a troublesome milestone: the concentration of CO2 has surpassed 400 parts per million. Stations across the region in Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Iceland have recorded the measurements that have surged since the winter and spring have brought a decline in CO2-absorbing vegeta...
Civil engineers from MIT have completed a study in which they have determined that vehicle fuel consumption could be reduced by as much as 3 percent by having stiffer roads. Looking at the way forces interact between the tire and the road, the researchers conclude that, "This has the ...
The 'fuel' used to generate power from the sun or the wind is, of course, emissions free. But we realize that it is necessary to look at more than just the fuel input in evaluating the total impacts of various technologies. Life-cycle analysis (LCA) goes beyond the operational compari...
The proposed project is a high-voltage, direct-current subsea transmission system that would collect power generated by wind turbine facilities off the Atlantic coasts of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. The first such offshore infrastructure proposed in the Uni...
Nevada's Stillwater geothermal plant has added a solar array to become the world's first hybrid solar-geothermal plant. Enel Green Power North America installed more than 89,000 solar panels with a capacity of 26 MW to the site. The plant's combined capacity is now 59 MW of clean ener...
Japan Metals & Chemicals has established a process that can extract as much as 80 percent of rare earth metals in the batteries with purity as high as newly mined and refined metals. The metals will go on to be used in new batteries as well as other auto parts. Honda hopes to begin ex...
The turning point for this technology is all due to the biomimetic design that Mankins came up with, which mimics how flower petals collect solar energy. The petals would be covered with small, thin-film mirrors that could be curved to direct sunlight to solar cells. The satellite wou...
