EcocentricNatural Gas
Natural gas is riding high. Long an overlooked energy source, gas is suddenly front and center in the energy picture—in a presidential address, in the business world, on the cover of Time magazine. That’s mostly due to shale gas—new deposits of natural gas found throughout much of the country, and tapped via hydraulic fracturing. …
EcocentricPolitics
As I write this, House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama seem to still be engaged in last-minute negotiations to stave off a government shutdown. Will it work? I have no idea—this is one of those days when I’m glad that I’m not a DC reporter. But it’s worth noting that one of the key stumbling blocks to an agreement …
EcocentricUncategorized
On Friday, Japan faced another round of assessing the damage from a massive aftershock — the strongest in over 400 in the last month — that struck off the north coast late last night. At least three people were killed in the quake and more than 140 injured, and as of Friday evening, millions in the disaster-struck region were again …
EcocentricEnergy
It’s a question we ask all the time: when will green energy scale up? After all, renewable power won’t really make a difference until it can provide a bulk of the country’s energy supply. That hasn’t happened yet—while technically renewable sources provide around 20% of U.S. power, nearly all of that is biomass or hydro. Wind …
EcocentricHealth
Crossposted from Healthland:
It’s no secret that air pollution — besides damaging the pulmonary system and blackening the skies — can also lead to cardiovascular problems and even heart attacks. But a new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) indicates …
EcocentricUncategorized
Each day seems to bring more news of the huge challenges facing the emergency workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As if adding insult to injury, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit the region on Thursday. Though Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) reported no serious incidents as a result of the quake, the tremor was a reminder …
EcocentricSolar Power
I’m just back from the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference, wanted to note a new ranking of global solar companies coming from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC). It’s not a ranking of the best solar panel companies, or the ones with the biggest sales. Instead, SVTC has analyzed which solar companies do the best job of minimizing …
EcocentricEnergy
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 …
EcocentricUncategorized
There was good news of a sort for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Congress on Wednesday. The Senate voted down several bills that would have blocked the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. That collection included one bill—co-sponsored by Republican Senators James Inhofe and Mitch …
EcocentricUncategorized
Emergency workers on Tuesday managed to stem a leak of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean by injecting a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent into Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima power plant. It was a minor victory in what will certainly be a prolonged battle to safely cool fuel and spent fuel at four crippled …
