Remember DuPont’s long-used slogan, “Better Things for Better Living … Through Chemistry”? Or its parody counterpart, “Zinc Oxide and You” from the comedy film “The Kentucky Fried Movie”? It wasn’t that long ago that it seemed we were all too ready to extol the virtues of chemicals in everything.
A green utility firm in the UK has bucked the odds by winning an award for customer service, something small-business owners have graded utility providers poorly on. Green Energy UK, which supplies green and renewable electricity to homes and businesses in Britain, was just named “Customer King 2010” at Cisco’
feed in tariffs
An initiative from the Department of Energy and Climate Change due to launch across the UK on April 1 looks set to boost demand for solar energy on an unprecedented level. Known as the feed-in tariff, the proposal suggests that, despite some scepticism and reports to the contrary, Britain is
energy savings
How influential is Arthur Rosenfeld in the field of energy efficiency? So influential that a group of scientists have proposed naming a unit of energy savings after him. One “Rosenfeld” would equal an electricity savings of 3 billion kilowatt-hours per year, as much as is produced annually by one 500-megawatt
cleantech
Do you remember that wonderful moment when the internet was invented? Or when mobile phones suddenly appeared everywhere? Of course you don’t. That’s because these life-altering technologies didn’t spring up ready for market overnight, but evolved, often behind the scenes, for years before we were ready to
carbon emissions
Just like you can’t judge a book by its cover, it turns out you can’t judge how carbon intensive a country is by its reported carbon emissions alone. That’s because, whenever it imports goods from other parts of the world, a nation is effectively “outsourcing” its carbon
cleantech
There’s good news and bad news on the cleantech and environmental business front. The good news first: more venture capitalists and private equity investors see an initial public offering (IPO) being likely for one of their green investments in the next year or two. And now the bad news:
US researchers say they might have found a way to more easily recycle plastic bottles or make them safely biodegradable in the environment. In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal Macromolecules, scientists from IBM and Stanford University describe how they’re working to develop green organic catalysts
rising energy prices
A lot of attention is given to one of the big problems with renewable energy source: intermittency, which refers to the fact that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. It’s hard to run a civilisation on a power grid that works only
“Green” and organic might be in at the grocery store, but they’re not labels shoppers want to see in the wine aisle. At least, that’s what researchers in California have found after studying thousands of different wines from California vintners. Seems that, when a nice bottle costing $25
climate
A record number of companies were put in the shareholder hot-seat last year by US investors who they say the firms aren’t doing enough to disclose and manage how their business will be affected by climate change. “Investors cannot remain silent to the threats of global climate change, which
wireless communications
In the not-too-distant future, all the communications devices in your home and car could go completely wireless, thanks to an innovative technology being developed by researchers in the US. The “chip-based spectral shaper” under development at Purdue University converts ultrafast laser pulses into bursts of finely-tuned radio signals that can
