Tag: 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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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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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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Over the course of the next two columns, I plan to finish up the recent look at BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. The final two columns will focus on renewable energy, and carbon dioxide emissions. Today I want to provide an update on the natural gas picture, as prices declined sharply at the end of July. I have

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Reducing the renewable energy target would cost the federal budget about $680 million more to meet Australia’s target of 5% emissions reduction by 2020, according to modelling released today by climate and conservation groups. The modelling found that cutting the RET would increase the profits of coal power stations while boosting the costs for the public through more pollution without

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Do you remember Twin Creeks Technologies? The VC-funded startup was attempting to commercialize an ion-implant machine that would allow solar manufacturers to produce super-thin photovoltaic cells from crystalline silicon. It was a wildly ambitious bet, and the company went from unstealthing in early 2012 to having its assets purchased for approximately $10 million by GT Advanced Technologies in late 2012.

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