By John DeFore

The most visible hiccup in oilman T. Boone Pickens’s well publicized green energy agenda is his decision to delay that enormous wind farm of his.

A new essay, though, suggests there’s more wrong with the tycoon’s plans than his having to rely on the credit markets to realize them. Writing for the Earth Policy Institute, Jonathan G. Dorn argues that modifying American autos to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) would be a waste of time and effort. [Read more →]

By John DeFore

The big, smooth leaves of a magnolia tree may not be the first thing that springs to mind when you hear the words “Christmas tree,” but a group of San Francisco tree-lovers are hoping some SF residents can modify celebratory habits for the sake of the environment.

The city government’s SF Environment department has teamed with Friends of the Urban Forest to sell area residents living “Christmas trees” that will sit in a pot during the holidays and be ready for replanting afterward. The groups realize that most urban dwellers don’t have yards to plant in, so the group says, “After the holidays, we’ll pick up the trees from you and plant them on our city’s streets.” [Read more →]

By John DeFore

While this past weekend’s Los Angeles Auto Show had autophiles lusting after tomorrow’s hot wheels, a very different California event just celebrated a company working to make yesterday’s cars a lot greener.

The winner in the Transportation division of this month’s California Clean Tech Open was a San Francisco company called ElectraDrive whose products are aimed at drivers for whom electric vehicles can’t arrive quickly enough. The company’s “ElectraMount” is made to “rapidly and inexpensively adapt almost any passenger vehicle to electric drive.” [Read more →]