Pro sports teams around the country are hyping their renewable energy use and promising to become more efficient. Will that …
renewable energy
EcocentricEnergy
Bright Times: Ranking the G20 Nations By Renewable Energy
A report grades the G20 nations on renewable energy. It’s depressing.
EcocentricSolar Power
Going Green: Why 2012 Will Be a Bad Year for Renewable Energy
My weekly Going Green column is up on the Time.com mainpage, and I take on the worrying state of the U.S. renewable energy industry. It’s not worrying now—2011, like the last few years, has been great for the wind and solar …
EcocentricSolar Power
The China-U.S. Solar War Heats Up
You might remember that a few weeks ago the U.S. Commerce Department opened up an investigation into alleged unfair trade practices by Chinese solar manufacturers. The investigation — instigated at the behest of some, though …
EcocentricEcocentric
Putting a Brand Label on Wind Power
Consumerism—perhaps more than any other factor—has driven the growth of green ideas and policies over the past decade. (Which, if you think about it, is a little ironic, but never mind that for now.) Whether it’s the near-vertical growth of the organic food movement, the spread of BPA-free bottles and other products for the concerned …
EcocentricOil
Beyond Petroleum. Or Not.
I made my writing debut over at Foreign Policy this past weekend, writing a piece on Big Oil’s checkered attempts to fund clean energy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I conclude that the major oil companies—while they may make some smart investments, especially in biofuels—will never be a revolutionary force for clean energy:
What
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EcocentricEnergy
Why Does the IPCC Want Us to Cut Down Trees?
Yesterday the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out with an early summary of a new report projecting the future of renewable energy. As with many international studies of the sort, readers were free to use parts of the results towards whichever conclusion they’d already reached on alternative power and climate …
EcocentricOil
Big Oil Invests in Small Renewables
With major oil players enjoying eye-popping profits on the back of high gas prices, there’s a growing political push to eliminate tax incentives for the petroleum industry. Senate Democrats and President Obama are behind a plan to strips billions in subsidies for the five biggest oil companies, with the money going either to clean …
EcocentricUncategorized
Geothermal: A More Grounded Power Source for Japan?
On Sunday, over 17,000 people took to the streets of Tokyo to let their government know they’ve had it with nuclear power. It was an unusual display of mass disgruntlement in the Japanese capital, but these are unusual times. Residents walked through the neighborhood of Koenji – reportedly the birthplace of Japanese punk – with …
EcocentricEnergy
GE Scales Up on Solar
It’s good news for solar advocates and bad news for competitors—General Electric is ready to break into the solar cell business in a major way. The $218 billion company announced today that it had built a solar module with the highest-ever efficiency rate for cadmium-telluride thin film—the most popular low-cost solar technology—at …
