Energy
Transitioning to a world powered by renewable energy is key to tackling climate change. Here you can find the latest good news related to our clean energy transition, covering wind, solar, green hydrogen, hydropower, and more.
A glowing highway without street lamps
If you drive about an hour south of Amsterdam you’ll find yourself on a stretch of road that looks like you are in a science fiction movie. This piece of a Dutch highway is completely void of streetlights—replaced by strips of glowing paint. The highway is being used to test alternative ways of Read More...
Poorer countries use more renewables than rich
While most renewable energy sources are invented in the developed world, a new study found that developing countries use green energy sources at nearly twice the rate of the western world. The study looked at 55 countries and found that between 2008 and 2013 the use of renewable energy grew 143 Read More...
World’s greenest economies
The 2014 Global Green Economy Index ranked the world’s nations into two lists: what countries are green, and what countries are perceived to be green. While perception is obviously less important than performance, the differences in the two lists are interesting. The US scored 6th on perception, Read More...
India’s expanding power grid hardly impacts emissions
For long, environmentalists have argued that bringing electricity to poor peasants may accelerate greenhouse emissions. They’re right, but the environmental impact is substantially lower than most think. According to a new study, the addition of 650 million users to India’s power grid over the Read More...
Majority of Australians thinking about switching to solar
The prices of solar installations are falling faster than anyone can keep up, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that solar will power the future. That future might be closer than you think. A recent survey found that 90 percent of Australians are considering a switch to solar energy. Read More...
Battery investment makes wind and solar more viable
Yesterday we reported that wind is the cheapest form of energy. A major hurdle for wind and solar energy to overcome is power storage—peak wind and solar production hours often can’t handle peak usage time and storing energy has been too costly. Now an energy utility that powers 14 million Read More...
Wind power is the cheapest energy source
Clean energy sources are slowly taking over, and though the prices of solar adoption are falling at record rates, wind power is actually the least expensive source of energy. An EU analysis reported that on a per megawatt/hour basis onshore wind energy was cheaper than gas, coal, and nuclear power Read More...
Inventors of low-energy LED win Nobel prize
If you remember LED lights from about 10 years ago then you know what they used to look like: Harsh, bright, and fluorescent—unsuitable to be used as a main source of light. Now LED lights produce almost the same color as incandescent bulbs—made possible by the invention of blue LEDs, the last Read More...
Solar cells that store their own power
A major problem with solar power is that they lose 20 percent of their energy when transferring electrons from the solar panel to the battery. A new solar design has solved that problem by combining the two and creating a solar cell that stores its own electricity. The panels are made up of a Read More...
Sharing economy lets you buy power from your neighbor
Airbnb lets you rent a room from a stranger, ride sharing service Lyft and Uber are cheaper, and often faster than taxis. Now a Dutch company called Vandebron lets you buy and sell electricity to and from your neighbor—cutting out the utility company middleman. The way it works is consumers go to Read More...