The world is waiting for a clean revolution, a shift away from the greenhouse gas-emitting, mountain-leveling, air-polluting, fossil-fuel burning way of life. The world may have to wait a long time if past energy transitions are anything to go by, according to environmental scientist Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba—especially since fossil fuel energy [...]

Can cleaner sources of energy not only power our economy but also drive a recovery from the Great Recession? That’s the question confronted by policymakers across the U.S.—and by debaters in the Intelligence Squared series held March 8 at New York University. The list of political proponents of a clean, green energy economy is long, [...]

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: [...]

Pittsburgh and other metropolises of the Rust Belt are littered with the remnants of U.S. manufacturing: old car factories, old smelters, old steel furnaces, even old rail lines that once brought materials in and out. Earlier this year, I visited the Homestead Works, a sprawling collection of foundries and furnaces that once graced the cover [...]

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 [...]

BOSTON—Economic bubbles are now famous, and the collapse of the dot-com business a decade ago made the bursting of bubbles infamous. A panel of experts here at the Going Green East conference yesterday ended up in a lively, entertaining and, at times, contentious debate over whether the growth of so-called clean tech–renewable energy and environmentally [...]

The U.S. launched this week a historic program to advance clean energy in India—where simply moving the 40 percent of the South Asian nation’s citizens who still burn coal, dung or wood to electricity could deliver major improvements for development, clean air and climate. Last week, it was a similar historic program to advance clean [...]

When the presidents of the two nations that are responsible for 40 percent of Earth’s climate-changing greenhouse gases sit down to talk, big things can happen. In the case of Barack Obama and Hu Jintao on Monday and Tuesday, that meant flatly stating that emission reduction targets should be set at an international negotiation on [...]

President Obama’s second term has begun with a strong stance in support of a U.S. transition to a clean energy economy. In the second-term President’s inauguration speech yesterday, he zeroed in on climate change and its implications for future generations.  Weaving together themes from the U.S. Constitution and the 2009 carbon cap-and-trade debates, President Obama [...]

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a zoomable, draggable Google-style map that allows users to explore where clean energy resources are located within the United States. Included in the available list of resources are hydro, biomass residue, geothermal, solar PV, solar thermal, off- and on-shore wind, and wave power. One can zoom [...]