While the fossil fuel industry continues to wreak havoc over the American landscape in pursuit of coal, oil, and natural gas, U.S. utilities have started to make a collective shift toward safer and more secure sources of energy. Last spring, a utilities industry research group partnered up with the new … [continued]
If you’ve ever blown up a balloon and let it go flying across the room, you’ve got the basic idea behind a new technology for storing energy from wind power: use compressed air. ARPA-E, the federal agency charged with providing seed money for transformative energy technology, is so impressed with … [continued]
The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced $9 million in funding for research into the use of algae that occur naturally in seawater to produce a sustainable twofer: renewable algae biofuel and algae fodder for cattle, too. Hey, make that a threefer: studies have found that an algae diet can … [continued]
Lattice strain refers to a slight, atomic-level displacement in the structure of a material, and researchers at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology have just won research funding to investigate how this phenomenon can be harnessed to produce high efficiency fuel cells. The grants came from MIT, the Department of Energy, … [continued]
The University of Florida has come up with a new tool for property owners to make significant strides in water conservation: the peanut, or at least, a distant cousin called rhizoma perennial peanut. The colorful groundcover does not bear edible goobers, but it does have lush foliage and light orange … [continued]
The U.S. Army has just flipped the switch on its first wind power project, a single wind turbine at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah. That might sound like small potatoes but it’s a giant step forward for the U.S. military, which has been cautious about wind power primarily due … [continued]
While the fossil fuel industry has been busy destroying jobs in the Gulf Coast (to say nothing of destroying jobs in Appalachia), the federal government has been providing more support for creating more new green jobs in clean energy. This week, a group of small businesses, big companies, research universities, … [continued]
There they go again: right when the U.S. military completes yet another project to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel industry plays Debbie Downer. This week’s matchup involved our own U.S. Air Force, which has just announced its latest solar power installation with cheery pride, versus an industry group called … [continued]
It’s a sustainable cure for the industrial hangover: take those old abandoned factories, former mines and dump sites, and use them as sites for solar, wind, hydropower, and other clean energy. The EPA has powered up a formerly patchwork reclamation effort into a program called Re-Powering America’s Lands that is … [continued]
For what is believed to be the first time in the southern U.S., “peel and stick” solar laminates have helped a new house achieve official Passive House certification, meaning that the structure is designed to use 90% less energy than a conventional home. The laminates were manufactured by Whirlwind Solar, … [continued]
