SunPower, one of the world leaders in solar power, launched a new “highly social and sharable” solar knowledge contest on Facebook this morning, the Solar Discovery Game. In combination with the game, the company will give away a solar power system worth up to $25,000 at the end of the summer.
A recent survey conducted by the Institute For Building Efficiency showed that while interest in energy efficiency is increasing among building owners, energy cost savings remain the driving factor behind organizational energy efficiency decisions.
The Energy Efficiency indicator is an annual survey of global executives and building owners responsible for energy management and investment decisions in commercial and public-sector buildings. The 2011 survey included almost 4,000 respondents across North America, Europe, India, China, Australia, Brazil and South Africa.
On this 2011 summer solstice (the longest day of the year) in the Northern Hemisphere, I thought I’d break out of my normal, obsessive news coverage and commentary tendency to step back and reflect a little more than usual. Here on CleanTechnica, that means reflecting on the clear benefits of solar energy and the clear question I think anyone not yet hooked up to solar could be asking themselves, reflecting on today….
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is going all out for its upcoming 100 Year Star Ship Symposium, and they want to hear from anyone with an interest in space travel. The agency has issued an open call for abstracts and discussion topics on everything from energy harvesting to religious and philosophical issues. If you don’t have a tech background, don’t be shy, because according to DARPA “this is a great opportunity for people with interesting ideas to be heard, which we believe will spur further thought, dreaming, and innovation.” Yeah that’s right — it’s like a Star Trek convention, only for real.
After a long hiatus, I’m back to building on our relatively comprehensive page on World Wind Power. Subsidies is a complicated topic, but I think it’s quite clear that wind power’s subsidies don’t compare to those given to the fossil fuel or nuclear industries.
I’ve been seeing stuff here and there on solar stocks and controversial comments regarding solar or cleantech stocks. Now, I am not much of a stock market guy, so I’ve stayed out of the discussion, but a piece I read last night on MSNBC (which a loyal commenter also dropped in a comment this morning) really got my attention. Let’s start with the seemingly nonsensical issue…
We’ve got ~15,000 subscribers on RSS, thousands of followers on Facebook (yes, that’s our Facebook page), thousands of followers on Twitter (.. yes, that’s our Twitter page), thousands of email subscribers, and tons more daily readers who just come straight to our site or even have our site set as their homepage. But, beyond some basic demographic information, what we’ve learned from the handful of readers we’ve gotten to know quite well, and what we can glean from examining which posts get popular and how you react to them, we don’t know much about you!
In an interesting marriage of clean and dirty tech, Deutsche Welle is reporting that the state government of Lower Saxony in Germany is looking into repurposing old abandoned coal mines inside the Harz mountains as pumped storage for wind power.
I know, solar panel records are set almost everyday these days, it seems. One reason solar power costs have already dropped over 20% this year. But who doesn’t love a “new solar panel record set” story?
Paul Browning, Vice President at General Electric, came out this past week saying that a move to natural gas and renewable energy will be the global long-term trend.
At one level, this is a rather uncontroversial statement. The major options for electricity generation include coal, natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy options like wind, solar, hydro and biomass.
