Last week I had the chance to talk on Skype with Kevin Smith, the CEO of SolarReserve, which is building the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant in Tonopah, Nevada. It is the same technology as one that came on line in Spain last year that can ship power 15 … [continued]
The U.S. has 78 GW of hydropower – that supplied about 63 percent of all the power from renewable sources last year. But there are also 80,000 navigation locks, dams and high river flows that could be utilized to generate electricity. The Ohio River and the Mississippi River are especially rich in this untapped renewable resource. … [continued]
German energy giant Siemens has a solution in the works to tap the unused wind-powered electricity that goes to waste at night because no one is up and about. The planet’s daily temperature swings stir up night-time winds, just when no one needs electricity. Solving the storage issue is especially … [continued]
Joining world leaders in climate laws, Mexico just passed new legislation that catapults the poor neighbor to the south of the U.S. to a leadership role on a par with its northern neighbor, California. Mexico’s General Law on Climate Change was just passed by an 128-10 overwhelming vote in its 500 member … [continued]
In a study published in a recent issue of Chemical Communications, a team of researchers from Virginia’s George Washington University explain a revolutionary way to make lime cement that releases zero CO2 emissions – and costs less too. After coal-powered electricity, cement manufacture is the next biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, because … [continued]
Halotechnics, an early-stage solar-thermal startup and ARPA-E recipient, has developed two radical new materials for storing solar heat energy, using new kinds of salts and even a new kind of glass. These allow much higher temperatures than have been used to date to store the heat in solar thermal power plants … [continued]
Success in lowering emissions in the RGGI states has resulted in talk of tightening the pollution limits to further reduce greenhouse gases. In January, six of the nine participating states – Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Delaware and Rhode Island – announced they will permanently eliminate 72 percent of the … [continued]
Here’s a completely new approach to climate policy, from the always innovative China. Set a cap – not on carbon emissions, but – simply on lumps of coal. (Well, not on lumps of coal, exactly, but on tonnes of coal.) Once you use up your limit: that’s all there is. Stop … [continued]
Ucilla Wang over at GigaOm has created this extraordinary chart from Pacific Gas & Electricity (PG&E) numbers that clearly lays out its incredible expansion of solar between now and 2020. Amazing! PG&E solar goes from 1% to 51% of the renewable portfolio by 2020! It’s one thing for any of us … [continued]
Preparing for a future when a third of us will make our own electricity from solar on our roofs and ship that power onto the shared grid – the U.S. Department of Energy has funded the development of a solar community in Flagstaff, Arizona to help test how well the grid can … [continued]
