May 6th, 2013

The Associated Press reports that oil and natural gas companies are using more solar power to provide electricity to power remote monitoring stations after the hydraulic fracturing crews have left.

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March 27th, 2013

A retailer who’ve come to rely on for cough syrup, toothpaste and greeting cards has decided to push the envelope on green energy with a model net-zero store that hopes to turn a loss — of energy costs.

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December 20th, 2012

Coal. King Coal. The single dominant energy source powering our electricity grids, from the US to Great Britain to China and Australia. Because it’s plentiful. Cheaper. Politically connected. Easy. And yet, in a drizzly (good bet, that) hamlet in Wales, a historic switcheroo has taken place. The Wales’ National Coal Mining Museum in Big Pit, Blaenavon, Nr Abergavenny in south Wales, has adopted solar power.
The curators decided that installing solar panels on the….

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December 7th, 2012

Half Moon Ventures, a Chicago-based developer of solar and wind energy products, unveiled a rooftop solar installation the size of two pro football fields at i.Park Hudson, an office/industrial park in Yonkers, N.Y.

The solar project is expected to produce 1.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to power more than 120 homes and equivalent in reducing air pollution to taking 160 cars off the road.

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November 9th, 2012

To get back to some non-election topics…A couple weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed entitled “A Sad Green Story” about the (supposed) travails of the green movement over the last 10 years. The idea that the clean technology sector is failing, or that it’s a bad investment, is common enough in the business world and pundit class. But it’s patently false. So what is Brooks talking about and what’s really true here?

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October 3rd, 2012

A survey of likely 2012 American voters has found that they overwhelmingly support solar power, with nine out of 10 saying the U.S. should develop more solar power.

The survey, conducted by Hart Research in early September, also found that 85 percent of voters view solar power “favorably” or “very favorably;” and 78 percent said that the government should support the growth of solar power with incentives.

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September 12th, 2012

A growing number of major U.S. companies, led by the nation’s largest big-box retailers, are installing rooftop solar power systems to help cut energy costs and increase profits, a new report says. According to the report, released by the Solar Energ…

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August 31st, 2012

You know that argument about how the U.S. can’t really impact greenhouse gases because they’re spiraling out of control in other developing nations like China and India?
It’s illogical on its face, but that’s not stopping fossil fuel interests from pushing this idea.

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August 21st, 2012

Solar panels may soon be able to rely on more abundant minerals and metals, than some of the rare elements used today, scientists meeting in Philadelphia this week said.

These advances could make solar energy more affordable and easier to integrate into buildings, and hasten the day when the U.S. could get 50-100 percent of its electricity for buildings from the sun, the researchers said during a panel at the American Chemical Society meeting.

“Sustainability involves developing technology that can be productive over the long-term, using resources in ways that meet today’s needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs,” said Harry A. Atwater, Ph.D., a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, in a statement released by the ACS.

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August 1st, 2012

Other than the 2012 Olympics, it’s been a discouraging hot, drought-y month this July. Greenland ice sheets are melting ominously. India plunged into darkness and panic amid two days of massive electrical outages. Cargill recalled about 15 tons of tainted hamburger in the Mid-Atlantic and the New England states. And there are disheartening reports about crop failures in the mighty U.S. “bread basket”.

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July 24th, 2012

Musicians and concert events are increasingly finding ways to keep a greener profile.

Recently the Finger Lakes Grass Roots Festival organizers in Trumansburg, N.Y., (July 19-22) showed attendees how to sort their trash into recyclable, compostable and “utter trash” containers, something they’ve been doing for the last 14 years, according to promoters.

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February 13th, 2012

At the recent GreenBiz Forum in New York, I was surprised by an on-stage interview with Fred Bedore, an executive from Walmart. I’ve followed the greening of the retail giant fairly closely for years, so I wasn’t expecting a lot of new information from Bedore, Walmart’s Senior Director of Business Strategy and Sustainability.

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