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How to fight climate change with drones? It’s the trees, stupid!
Planting 36,000 trees in a day for about 15% of the cost of traditional methods: that’s the promise of BioCarbon Engineering, an Oxford-based company that aims to fight climate change through effective reforestation. Drones can survey land for restoration potential, and plant up to 10 Read More...
Germany’s Solar Village produces four times the energy it consumes
Global investment in solar energy has been soaring while the cost of solar has been tumbling, yet we barely have scratched the surface of what’s possible. A German development of 52 homes and some commercial buildings that was built over the past decade near Freiburg, currently generated four Read More...
How I save $24k a year growing my own food
Disclaimer: having access to a half-acre piece of land and enjoying the kind of year-round, growing-season climate that South Carolina (or California) provides, helps. This being said, this story of self-taught hobbyist gardeners who have turned their backyard into an extraordinarily productive, Read More...
Homegrown low-emission and electric car projects sprout in Africa
Is the eco-friendly car the future of transportation in Africa? Engineering students and innovators in Nigeria, Ghana, Lagos and Uganda have recently come up with prototypes of zero-emission or low-emission vehicles. The Abucar II, a highly fuel-efficient vehicle which was built over five months in Read More...
ADM to fight deforestation in South America through its suppliers
After a marked deforestation slowdown over the past decade or so, tropical forests are under threat again, with the Amazon a primary target. In this context, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland is emerging as a powerful force to counter the trend throughout the whole South American continent. Read More...
Attention innovators: the era of graphene is here
Graphene is the thinnest and strongest material known to man. The pure carbon substance is 200 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond and thin enough that an ounce could cover twenty-eight football fields. It's also transparent, more conductive than silicon, flexible like rubber and cheap Read More...
Portland bans insecticides containing compounds harmful to bees
Over seventy out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90 percent of the world's nutrition, are pollinated by bees. The steep decline in honey bees population has been fueling fear regarding food security, and spurring a flurry of research activity into the cause of their demise. Read More...
4 simple steps to forge new habits
We all wish we could make changes in our lives. The good news is, we can! We are in control of so much, and yet we behave like we don’t have a choice. We make excuses. We beat ourselves up or complain that we eat poorly, don’t exercise enough, don’t crack open that French textbook. Or we Read More...
MIT develops an algorithm to solve traffic jams, saving time and carbon
Traffic congestion wastes time, gas and money. According to the most recent Urban Mobility Report by the Texas Transportation Institute, it cost US commuters 5.5 billion hours and 2.9 billion gallons of fuel in 2011 (all $121 billion worth), as well as an additional 56 billion pounds of carbon Read More...
Global investment in renewable energy grew 17% last year
Developing countries led the trend with a 36% surge at $131.3 billion, followed by China with $83.3 billion, according to a new study by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance. Solar and wind still dominate the field, although geothermal enjoyed Read More...