energy
You can’t have an energy internet without internet-like open standards, and that’s what the smart-grid industry now has. The “energy internet” refers to the smart grid, an in-the-works electricity infrastructure in which utilities, customer meters and other devices on the power network can all “talk” with one another
weather
Climate and weather aren’t the same things, but Heidi Cullen sees how they’ll come together as the planet warms … and the vision isn’t encouraging. “Weather is what gets us,” says Cullen, a senior research scientist and interim CEO at the non-profit Climate Central and author of the
solar energy
Sanyo this week unveiled a new solar cell that boasts a world-leading efficiency of 21.1 per cent. The release of the improved HIT (hetero-junction with intrinsic thin-layer) solar cell comes at a time when the UK is seeing a rapid increase in demand for solar power in the UK,
csr
While the world’s political leaders still can’t hammer out a new global climate change agreement, some of the planet’s top companies are wholeheartedly embracing the need for carbon emissions reductions. Among the five corporations scoring highest in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) latest rankings, released today,
From iPhone and Android apps to help you debate climate change sceptics to online tools to calculate how much feed-in tariff cash your solar panel could generate for you, there’s no shortage of widgets, wizards, counters, gadgets and doodads out there to provide users with guidance and insights for
smart meters
Over the next 10 years, markets across Europe could spend up to $25 billion to meet mandates for deploying efficiency-boosting smart electricity meters. That spells a huge opportunity for technology companies with the right products, services and know-how. The winning firms will be able to respond quickly to meet not
Greenbang Smart Grid European Conference 2010
With millions of smart electricity meters on their way to being deployed across Europe, the stage is being set for an even more intelligent energy network in the future … one in which home appliances, utility companies and devices on every part of the grid can “talk” to one another to
renewable energy
One of the interesting concepts explored during the recent IBM sustainability summit was how to encourage renewable energy in the poorest developing countries, in particular those in Africa. A large amount of aid is currently funneled towards developing economies, along with a lot of investment, particularly from China. With the
coal
What’s more important: fighting poverty or developing clean, renewable energy sources over fossil-fuel power that’s known to degrade the environment, contribute to health problems for the world’s poor and accelerate climate change? On a planet in which nearly 1.1 billion people live on a dollar or
biofuels
The cleantech company with the mystery microorganism it says can convert sunlight into liquid fuel announced this week it had been awarded a US patent for its “breakthrough” process. If it all sounds too good to be true, it’s worth remembering at this stage that there’s a looong
sustainability
Government and business leaders don’t disagree much over the need to build a much more sustainable society. It’s the “hows” and “whens,” though, that are much less certain at the moment. Some of the region’s top thinkers have been considering those questions during the IBM Start Summit
carbon capture and storage
Princeton University researchers Stephen Pacala and Robert H. Socolow include it in three of the 15 stabilisation wedge strategies they propose for reducing global carbon dioxide emissions. Economist Lord Nicholas Stern says it’s not optional for fighting climate change … it’s vitally necessary. The “it” in question is carbon
