It’s that time of year again, when the Sugar Plum Fairies have put away their dancing shoes, and the season’s stage — in Las Vegas, anyway — becomes home to a whirling mass of technotopian dervishes. Yes, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is back again. Never mind US unemployment,
natural gas
We mentioned in an earlier post that the size of the global gas-flaring problem is massive – 150 billion cubic meters per year of flared gas is roughly equivalent to gas use in all US residences for a year (Source: GE report). If you don’t know what gas flaring is
Check out the video below to see some of the world’s gas flaring stations. There are two excuses for gas flares, say the oil and gas industries: the first is that there is no other way to transport or process the gas for further use. The second is that
solar energy
The company name Eight19 doesn’t seem to suggest anything … until you hear the reason its founders called it that: “It takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for light to reach the earth from the sun.” Aha, solar energy. Not just any kind of solar energy, though, but solar energy
electricity
It’s a strange thing to expect a business to try and sell less of what it traffics in, but that’s precisely what energy-efficiency standards focused on utilities aim to do. What’s more, utility companies are becoming very good at selling less of their top product: electricity. But
Technology
Why is smart-grid technology — smart electricity meters in particular — being met with such opposition, even fear, from some people? You can’t explain it away by saying opponents are ignorant, uneducated, uninformed or technophobic. While there are probably some people you could call Luddites or worse, the outcry over the
fossil fuels
The US power sector is set for dramatic change over the next several years, as electric utilities work to meet new federal regulations on mercury and other toxic pollution from power plants. In the closing days of 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its first-ever national standards for
How much impact can smart-grid technology really have on our energy consumption and carbon emissions? How about enough to eliminate the equivalent of all the greenhouse gases produced by Berlin, Delhi, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo combined? That’s how much global technology giant Siemens says
transport
Rising levels of obesity and the McMansion trend of the real-estate bubble era already provide evidence enough that the US has a “Super Size Me” problem. But the love of bigness has also derailed efforts to curb the nation’s thirst for imported oil. Between 1980 and 2006, cars sold
africa
African nations still rank at the bottom in terms of human well being and development, but 2011 brought at least one reason to hope change is coming: a massive investment in renewable energy. Total spending on wind, solar, hydro and other clean-energy development in Africa shot up to $3.6
The Illinois city of Naperville has become the latest noisy battleground in the war between smart-grid proponents and opponents. Just before the start of the new year, a non-profit advocacy group called Naperville Smart Meter Awareness (NSMA) filed a complaint in federal court seeking to stop the installation of smart
sustainability
A looming but hidden energy crisis in Saudi Arabia could wreak havoc both at home and internationally, throwing world oil markets into ever-more volatility, a new report warns. “The world’s largest exporter of oil is consuming so much energy at home that its ability to play a stabilizing role
