Since the Industrial Revolution our civilization has depended on fossil fuels to generate energy—first it was coal; then petroleum. But there are two problems: the first is that petroleum isn’t an infinite resource; and the second is that burning coal and oil puts billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping heat. Temperatures [...]

Yes, today is the 43rd annual Earth Day recognition worldwide. A number of live and online events are taking place; see a list below for some unusual items. But in 2013, to me, the day raises a central question about how to power the human race without killing the planet in the process. Two recent [...]

Early in his state of the union speech, President Obama renewed his call of last year for investments in clean energy. Unbowed by the troubles with Solyndra, Obama said he would direct the defense department to throw its buying power behind clean energy supplies for the U.S. military. The U.S. military constitutes a huge market [...]

As the U.S. and China endure record-breaking floods this spring, there is a risk that is being overlooked amidst the inundated towns, evacuations and rising waters. Dams in the U.S. boast an average age of 50 years, and the American Society of Civil Engineers continues to give the nation’s dams a D grade overall in [...]

It may seem slightly ridiculous to consider the prospects for a future solar-hydrogen economy at an institute for theoretical physics in Waterloo, Canada. After all, Canada is the capital of unconventional oil, also known as oil sands, also known as tar sands, which supply more than a million barrels of oil per day to the [...]

The smart grid. Sounds good, right? But what exactly is it? And does that mean we have a dumb grid now? "The grid, it is smart today," Laura Ipsen, a senior vice president at Cisco, told the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-e) conference on March 2. "The weaving of IT [information technology] and [...]

China and the U.S. combine to spew a whopping 43 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, so it’s no surprise that presidents Obama and Hu will spew a bit more CO2 talking about climate change and energy during the state visit this week. It’s the latter that’s responsible for the two countries’ outsized emissions: [...]

Following the lead of presidents from George W. Bush to Jimmy Carter, the Obama White House—or specifically the Obama family’s living quarters—will get solar panels. While Carter’s solar thermal panels are long gone (one of them is in China and the Obama White House last month rebuffed the return of another), photovoltaics installed by President [...]

Photovoltaic cells remain woefully inefficient at converting sunlight into electricity. Although layered cells composed of various elements can convert more than 40 percent of (lens-concentrated) sunlight into electricity, more simple semiconducting materials such as silicon hover around 20 percent when mass-produced. And, at best, such cells could convert only a third of incoming sunlight due [...]

Take a good look at the intense power of the oil spill.     That’s right. Setting a small patch of it ablaze was enough to create a vortex of fire—a tornado of flame that makes the ships fighting the slick look like toy boats. Nor is that the only way this spill boggles in [...]

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a federal blessing for the controversial Cape Wind project today—clearing a path for mammoth wind turbines to be built offshore of the Massachusetts vacation destination, the first such offshore wind farm in the U.S. Given that the United Kingdom (alone) has 1 gigawatt of such offshore wind [...]

I don’t have time for this. I am busy. I am on deadline for a project that actually pays the money that puts the macaroni and cheese in my children’s mouths. So as much as I love this blog I don’t have time to update right now. Except here goes. North Carolina? You remember: the [...]

A partnership between the Interior and Defense departments will reopen 16 million acres of land to renewable energy development. The goal? To help ensure reliable energy supplies for the nation’s military bases, while protecting the environment and saving taxpayer money. In a conference call earlier today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the signing of a [...]