Energy

Biochar Blanket Turns Plant Waste Into A Kiln

When forests are logged, managed or selectively trimmed so they’ll be less susceptible to raging fires, there are usually huge piles of stumps, branches and other wood debris left laying on the ground. Now a group of researchers at the University of Washi ...

Article - Mara Grunbaum - May 22 2012 - 8:33pm

Solar's Just Deserts: Renewable Energy In Delicate Landscapes

When I was small, the word “desert” conjured images of towering Saharan dunes: windswept sand punctuated by rare oases, the only sign of life an occasional animal track quickly buried by the next sandstorm. Then, when I was 13, my parents took me to the S ...

Article - Holly Moeller - May 31 2012 - 1:02am

ET Solar Executes 12.6MW PV Plant Construction In Germany

NANJING, China, June 1, 2012-- ET Solar Group Corp. has announced construction execution of two ground-mounted PV power plants in Germany with total installed capacity of 12.6MW. ET Solar's subsidiary  ET Solutions AG is the EPC contractor for the 7. ...

Article - Newswire - Jun 2 2012 - 6:30pm

Cool Blue Manganese Compound Has 40 Percent Heat Reflectivity

A new durable, environmentally-benign (we all hope) blue pigment has also been found to have unusual characteristics in reflecting heat- it's much better at it than most blue pigments in use.  The compound just received patent approval and was discove ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2012 - 3:00pm

Generating Solar Power...Underwater

It sounds like a child’s question: can you generate solar power underwater? The answer, according to Phillip Jenkins and his team at the US Naval Research Laboratory, is yes. The researchers recently demonstrated a method for harvesting solar power underwa ...

Article - Ysabel Yates - Jun 14 2012 - 11:48am

Transparent Solar Film Uses Tinted Windows To Generate Electricity

Heliatek GmbH, a technology company in the field of organic photovoltaics, has announced that its transparent solar films could be used to be integrated between the glass sheets of double glazed windows. These windows would look like tinted glass as the u ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2012 - 12:44pm

Anti-Shale Gas Activists "Study It To Death" Strategy Threatens Natural Gas Development

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s rumored retreat on fracking shows just how powerful an anti-science, fear-based campaign can be. If reports are correct, Cuomo will restrict fracking to a few counties in which gas shale is far below the water table, and a ...

Article - Jon Entine - Jun 15 2012 - 10:41am

French Company Gets $25 Million From U.S. Department Of Energy For Solar Plant

Soitec, part of Euronext Paris, has announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is giving them a SUNPATH award in the amount of $25 million to support its new North American solar manufacturing facility in San Diego, California. SUNPATH, which stand ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 18 2012 - 2:47pm

Photosynthetic Algae- Green Factories For Alternative Fuels

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have shown that ramping up the overall metabolism of algae by feeding in more carbon increases oil production as the organisms continue to grow- and that may point to new ways to turn photosynthetic green algae ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 19 2012 - 8:30am

Ocean Energy Development Could Get Less Dangerous

Tapping ocean energy sources like tides and offshore wind sound fine to people who understand nothing about science (the Anything But Oil contingent) but in reality it requires pile driving, the practice of pounding long, hollow steel pipes called piles in ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 21 2012 - 3:00am