Industry news

Africa is experiencing a huge spike in elephant deaths due rising demand for ivory in China and other Asian nations. A new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that poachers killed an estimated 100,000 elephants across Africa between 2010 and 2012. A decade ago 25% of all elephant deaths were due to illegal

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What’s the world’s largest solar plant to do when its massive mirrors start frying all of the birds flying by? If the solar plant is Ivanpah, the apparent solution is to institute a sort of cap and trade system for bird death. Ivanpah’s owners have decided that in order to offset the number of birds killed by the Ivanpah Solar

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Toyota is one of the most outspoken proponents of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, even ditching its partnership with Tesla Motors to focus on the Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. But even with generous incentives, fueling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles won’t be cheap, with a full tank of the clean-burning fuel costing around $50, reports Ecomento. That’s what Toyota’s Senior VP

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The south Indian state, which recently saw its boundaries redrawn, is drawing up a new renewable energy policy with an aim to attract investment and boost power generation capacity. The state government is working on a comprehensive renewable energy policy that would see 5,000 MW of solar power and 4,000 MW of wind energy capacity installed by 2019. The policy

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Recent news about improving the efficiency of solar panels often has focused on exotic technologies and materials. All of them show promise – otherwise they wouldn’t be news – but for now, at least, they can’t be built inexpensively and come to market quickly. It seems that many researchers have somehow overlooked simplicity. Not so for one startup, Semiprius, based

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The SmartThings platform relies on an Ethernet-connected hub capable of communicating with ZigBee, Z-Wave as well as IP-accessible devices. Once dispatched to the internet router, the info can be processed on the cloud and fed back to smartphones via a control application. The hub can be paired with a multitude of sensors such as presence sensors or motion/actuation sensors (very

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When I bought my Chevrolet Volt I became that person that doesn’t stop talking about their no-sugar, no-thrills lifestyle. That middle class urbanite buying vegetables from the grocer and edamame beans from Waitrose. The domestic goddess with the bread-maker next to the microwave. Of all of the lifestyle contradictions that exist, I had decided I was not going to be

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Portable solar power has already taken off, but what about when the sun goes down? Could massive wind turbines be scaled down for personal use? Poznan, Poland-based 3D printer manufacturer Omni3d has developed a 3D-printed, foldable wind turbine that can generate up to 300W of clean electricity — enough to power multiple smartphones, laptops, lightbulbs and other small appliances. The

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In June, Bill Gates published an article on his site, gatesnotes, titled “We Need Energy Miracles.” Mr. Gates notes that much like breakthroughs in vaccines have helped create miracles, society needs to drastically increase the amount of spending on R&D in clean energy. Ironically, there are only a few people in the world that could actually generate a true clean

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Queensland businesses are being hit with daily service charges of more than $500 a day on their electricity bills, in a move the solar industry says is designed to kill the roll-out of commercial-scale rooftop solar across the state. The charges were quietly unveiled by the Queensland Competition Authority and the state government in July. But their implications are only

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