Here’s the common refrain from electric vehicle skeptics: electric vehicles aren’t necessarily that much cleaner than conventional vehicles and hybrids—even though they burn no gasoline and have no tailpipe. As the argument goes, electricity produces air pollution upstream, before a “zero emissions” vehicle even hits the road, and manufacturing
Renewable energy has been called impractical for its small scale and large expense compared to conventional power production methods. Now, one area of development is answering those criticisms by getting very big to cut costs. New offshore wind facilities now going online are equal in size to the largest gas- or coal-fired power stations.
We know that pollution is bad for us, don’t we? And we guess that living in areas with high levels of pollution is probably not good for our health, but we need to live near our job, and populated areas offer more employment opportunity, recreational and cultural opportunities and other advantages. But at what cost? And what can we do to reduce the levels of
Agence France-Presse reports that TEPCO’s handling of radioactive water at Fukushima has been like “whack-a-mole”, according to a minister who visited the plant, and he is pledging Japan’s government would step up its involvement at the site.
300 tonnes of highly radioactive toxic liquid has
In the depths of the Great Recession three years ago, California’s chief fiscal officer John Chiang gathered his deputies and posed a question: “Is there any way we can put capital on the ground in California to put people back to work in ways that would make sense for the long term?”
After some debate, they settled on what they called
WikiTrend is reporting an upswing in environmentally-friendly upcycling. The trend refers to the repurposing of large scale public and private spaces in creative eco-friendly ways.
While planting gardens on urban rooftops is not a new trend, in recent weeks, WikiTrend has seen a
Those who think that federal subsidies for renewable energy are an unacceptable extravagance will be pleased to know that, by 2025, they will no longer be necessary, according to this report by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Of course, this will create a certain irony: the
After a mild July and most of August, the hot weather associated with this time of year will finally make an appearance this week. In fact, we could hit an all-time peak load record today, and demand at least a couple of days this week. And although we don’t expect any problems meeting this demand, we’ve taken steps to continue to provide service without
Electric vehicles will catch on when there are enough charging stations to make their widespread use really practical, and manufacturers will offer more EV’s for sale when there is a market for them! I love driving my Tesla Model S, but have to admit that for some overnight trips I take an older internal combustion engine powered car since it is still hard
Maybe you’ve seen or heard an old 1980’s era car powered by diesel fuel rumbling by on the street from time to time. Probably the first thing that came to mind was how loud the engine was. The second thing that came to mind probably was how bad the exhaust fumes smelled. With the release of the 2014 A6, A7, and Q5 TDI models, Audi has shattered all the
Here’s a Business Week article whose point is that the relevance of our power utilities is disappearing. Not true. Unless there is a breakthrough in energy of unprecedented proportion, along the lines of cold fusion or something else that appears equally unlikely at this point, our electrical utilities will continue to play a critical role in our lives, largely
Usually we think of demolished concrete walls and floors as environmental contaminants, but in fact this material may turn out to be a valuable resource in nature protection work. This is the conclusion from researchers from University of Southern Denmark after studying the ability of crushed concrete to bind phosphorus.