My weekly Going Green column is up on the Time.com mainpage. It’s an interview with Jim Rogers, the CEO of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, soon to be the most powerful utility chief in the U.S. Rogers formed key corporate support for cap-and-trade, but with the political chances of that looking slim, he’s favoring an R&D, innovation-focused …
Energy
A Documentary on Natural Gas Drilling Ignites an Oscar Controversy
If you watch the Academy Awards show on Sunday evening, you might notice Mark Ruffalo—nominated for Best Supporting Actor—and a number of other celebrities wearing a blue water droplet pin. The pins come from WaterDefense.org, a new campaign that is calling attention to the drinking water supplies that activists say are being …
The First Nuclear Battery?
This week I wrote a piece for the magazine on what many energy analysts believe to be the future of the nuclear industry: small modular reactors.
These mini reactors, which generate up to 300 megawatts compared to 1500 megawatts for traditional large nuclear power plants, are all the rage because they are versatile and cheap. …
Shoring Up the Elements of a Clean Tech Economy
Heard of germanium? How about neodymium? Or terbium? Or rhenium? They’re not extras from a Star Trek film—these are real world elements are some of the rarest members of the periodic table. But as hard as they are to find, these substances are increasingly important to green tech, clean tech and high tech—and the U.S. doesn’t have …
BP Doesn’t Want to Pay Full Price for Oil Spill Damages
You may remember, back when the oil was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in June, that then BP-CEO Tony Hayward apologized for the oil spill and promised that the company would “make this right.” Actually, you don’t have to remember—they made a TV ad about it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PGBSptYCI]
Wait, sorry, …
States Sue to Stop Storage of Nuclear Waste
Even if you love nuclear power (gee whiz, it’s carbon free!), you have to admit there’s a problem with using the energy that binds atoms as a source to power cities: nuclear waste. Fission produces isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years. And no one wants the waste anywhere near them. In December, the U.S. …
Ecuador to Chevron: Pay Up. And Say You’re Sorry.
A judge in Ecuador handed down a landmark ruling against oil giant Chevron this week, ordering the company to pay $8.6 billion and another 10% of that sum in reparations to the Amazon Defense Coalition for oil pollution damages in a remote rainforest on the South American country’s northeast border.
The ruling – one of the largest …
Energy: Why Biofuels Help Push Up Food Prices
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece about the connection between biofuels and rising global food prices, which hit a record level in January. The math is pretty simple—with 40% of the country’s corn crop going to ethanol, and palm oil plantations around the world displacing farms for biodiesel production, biofuels do exert an …
Energy: WikiLeaks Says That Peak Oil Could Be Coming Soon. Is It?
It’s the sort of news that would spoil an oil executive’s breakfast. Last night the Guardian reported that a cache of WikiLeaks cables from American diplomats in Saudi Arabia indicated that the Mideast country’s oil reserves could be overstated by as much as 40%. If true, that would have major implications for oil prices because the …
See-thru Solar Panels?
A neat press release popped into my inbox this week announcing the development of a solar power technology capable of generating electricity on see-thru glass.