Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience. // // The study, by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of [...]
Propel Fuels, which wants to build 75 alternative fuel gas stations in California, unveiled one in Oakland yesterday, according to several news reports. The company already operates stations in Oakland and Seattle. One of the big problems with ethanol has been the availability of pumps dispensing E85, the 85 percent ethanol/15 percent gas blend. While [...]
The retail giant’s 2,700 supercenters have a combined roof area that exceeds 500 million square feet — a blank slate that would make any solar installer or module maker salivate. Starting with twenty to thirty sites in California and Arizona, SolarCity will install MiaSolé CIGS and First Solar CdTe panels on these flat roofs. SolarCity [...]
Earth is now home to more than one billion vehicles. That number is expected to hit the two-billion mark within 15 years. In January 2009, more cars were sold in China than in the U.S. Dan Sperling spoke a bit about the future of automobiles at a VC summit hosted by Matt Trevithick of Venrock [...]
Yahoo will unveil a new data center in Lockport, New York tomorrow that boasts a power-use effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.08, which means that 92 percent of the power consumed by the data center goes toward computing functions. Only 8 percent goes to lights and operational equipment. Less than 1 percent of the power gets [...]
Getting individuals and businesses to change the way they interact with their thermostat has become one of the primary goals of utilities, regulators and energy startups. To spur adoption of renewables, incentives have to be properly calibrated. But what works? One of the most successful companies so far in bringing behavioral dynamics to energy is [...]
Helsinki — Later this week, the first servers in an experimental data center here that proponents say will be the world’s most energy efficient will go into their racks — and bigger plans are on the way. When formally launched in August, the data center will generate the equivalent of a megawatt of energy for [...]
The bus, which the company calls “Solarve,” is equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels, LED lamps, and a system for viewing the surroundings of the vehicle. “This is the world’s first public bus that is equipped with solar panels,” said a representative of Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, which supplied the PV panels. The PV panels are [...]
A snippet: Myth #4: One person can’t make a difference. Does it really matter if you don’t recycle or if you throw your food waste away instead of composting it? Yes. Much of what is in our landfills could have been reborn as a new product had it been reused. According to the EPA, 63.9 percent [...]
SolarCity today announced that it is taking a $21.5 million round of funding led by Mayfield Fund, and the company’s previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DBL Investors and Generation Capital. The company’s prior funding totaled approximately $134 million, and included investors First Solar, JP Morgan and Elon Musk. SolarCity helps businesses, home owners and government [...]