Efficiency

Google acquires Makani

It’s been a long time since we covered Makani Power, the company developing kite-like wind turbines. In fact, it has just been bought by Google, for development under its Google[x] division.[read more]

US energy supply

In order to navigate these conversations about sustainable energy and climate change, it helps to have a look at our current consumption patterns. So how much do we consume? And what do we use energy for?[read more]

renewable energy storage/shutterstock

 

Wind and solar power generated 3.5% and about 0.1%, respectively, of US electricity last year. To what extent could more and cheaper storage enable wind and solar to function as the equivalent of high-utilization, baseload generation?[read more]

power of the Web

The internet cannot climb onto your roof to install a solar panel. But there is a movement afoot where social media, IT, big data and mobile communications could upend how we use limited resources in the future.[read more]

DOE Secretary Moniz

In his first official remarks as Energy Secretary Tuesday, Ernest Moniz focused on an aspect of energy policy that lends itself to consensus perhaps a bit more easily than others: the need for greater efficiency.[read more]

solar energy in UK/shutterstock

In last week’s Guardian Jeremy Leggett had a post that seems to argue that solar energy is the UK’s best option for keeping the lights on. Well, how about solar?[read more]

bound by oil prices?

So, when gas prices go up, we all suffer and our economy lags. What we really need are more choices to break the iron-clad grip that oil prices have on our lives and our economy.[read more]

new energy efficient glass

China’s building sector accounts for more than 25 percent of China’s energy use. Improving the efficiency of its buildings, new and old, is a key part of China’s strategy to reduce energy demand.[read more]

Philly's Naval Shipyard/wikimedia commons

Philadelphia's new GridSTAR Center will serve as a "hub for workforce training, building performance testing, energy management research and ‘smart’ microgrid modernization deployments.”[read more]

E15 fuel/shutterstock

EPA approved E15 for the marketplace knowing that automotive and fuels experts were still studying its impacts. Rather than acknowledge approval was premature, EPA and DOE instead attack the research and the researchers.[read more]

wind energy and the grid

Wind only sets the market price if it is the most expensive resource on the system, and that almost never happens because wind has a zero fuel cost. If wind is setting the price, everything else in the area has been turned off.[read more]

German solar production

This idea, that you build wind farms where it is windy and solar panels where it is sunny is a curiously controversial one. Some would even lobby accusations of you being “anti-renewables” if you put it forward.[read more]

reducing wireless energy demand

The GreenTouch consortium outlines energy efficiency measures that could reduce the net energy consumption of global data and communications networks up to 90% by 2020, compared to 2010 levels.[read more]

buildings and the smart grid/shutterstock

The Smart Grid will transform roles from consumption to prosumption – producing electricity as well as consuming it. One of the most prominent enablers to engage as prosumers are the buildings where we live and work.[read more]

energy choices/shutterstock

It’s time we stopped wasting time with brain dead energy saving mantras and got on with the real task of building a clean energy infrastructure so we can use far, far more electricity.[read more]