A number of green patent complaints have been filed in the last several weeks in the areas of biofuels production, recycled food service products, LEDs, reusable diapers, water conservation, and gas conversion technology.
Biofuels
The Texas House and Senate passed Senate Bill 385 in May. If Governor Rick Perry approves the bill, the state will break new ground by developing plans for commercial and industrial property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs. This bill will redesign Texas’s approach to PACE, focusing on the commercial and industrial sectors rather than on
In recent years, there has been a lot of activity in the green movement. More and more people are beginning to realize that their lifestyle choices can make the difference between saving our planet and ruining it for future generations. Because of this, many people are altering their lifestyles to be more environmentally friendly. There is a big push to
Israel has always suffered from water deficiency, a fact which has fueled research and development in the field, and brought about a national practice of education regarding water conservation and advanced water management methods. Today, water management has been transferred to water corporations and the water economy is now based on desalination. Water prices
Sustainability is a big issue in the construction sector. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, 39 percent of the country’s CO2 emissions come from buildings, which also account for 40 percent of energy consumption, 13 percent of water consumption and 15 percent of GDP. Such impressive figures spell opportunity for the sustainable building sector.
IBM is teaming up with the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA), which supplies water to more than 600,000 people in Northern California’s wine country, to provide innovative “smart water analytics” solutions for water conservation. IBM’s research center in Haifa Israel has developed a water pressure management solution which enables water pressure adjustments
Earlier this year Ontario’s Greater Peterborough Innovation Cluster (GPIC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Regional Development Agency East Netherlands to develop opportunities and advance research in the water technology field. Energy Refuge recently caught up with Lisa Saroli,
When the Arizona campus of the Nature Conservancy, a global charitable environmental organization, announced it was going solar, it seemed like a no-brainer. And Arizona is tops in the nation for solar insolation values.
So it was no surprise when the
International drink and snack giant PepsiCo has vowed to cut the carbon emissions and water consumption of its UK operations by 50 percent in five years. PepsiCo, which is the parent company of Britain’s biggest-selling brand of potato chips, says it will switch to potatoes that require less water and are grown using more efficient methods of irrigation. Through these improvements,
Several stories recently have highlighted the other side of the regulatory coin–regulations are only effective if they are enforced.
On Monday, the Department of Energy issued 27 penalty notices to companies for failure to meet energy efficiency and water conservation standards.
Water agencies facing droughts and shortages of freshwater, such as in coastal California, have been turning increasingly to desalination this year.
However, current desalination methods can be expensive and energy inefficient. Watchdog groups prefer water conservation and efficiency efforts, and charge that tapping the oceans for potable water can pollute waterways and kill marine creatures.
Yet could desalination become more viable and efficient? The Global Cleantech 100 list anointed several companies with that aspiration as technology innovators earlier this month.
Chris Tobias recently wrote about waste to energy in Singapore, illustrating the city’s exemplary response to fly ash left over from the incineration process. I just read an interesting French book on water, and one of the most interesting parts of the book was about Singapore.
Written by Erik Orsenna, a member of the prestigious Académie française, L’Avenir de l’eau (Water’s future) enables us to travel all around the world (albeit reading) and gathers facts and figures on how water issues differ from country to country.
Perfectly located between East and West Asia, Singapore is an important local hub for 4,000 international companies. The city’s geostrategic importance led to an important population boom, with the number of inhabitants climbing from 1.5 million at the time of independence in 1965 to more than 4.5 million today.
Despite receiving a lot of rainwater (there are 2,415 mm of precipitations per year, compared to roughly 500 mm for San Francisco and 1,200 mm for New York City), the city lacks water.
The precious liquid comes from four main sources: rain, water treatment, desalination and imports from Malaysia.