The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced Wednesday that it is extending for another year its Green Technology Pilot Program to fast-track the evaluation of patent applications for "cleantech," including inventions related to environmental quality, energy conservation, development of renewable energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The program, initiated in December 2009, will now [...]

The presence of strong gusts and flat, wide-open spaces would appear tailor-made for the production of electricity from wind energy, yet the reality of harvesting renewable energy is never that straightforward. As Scientific American reported last week, Latin America is beginning to tap into the wind as a source of clean (or at least not [...]

Hawaii has been working for more than a year to map out concrete plans to harness the abundant—though unpredictable—winds that blow across the state’s numerous islands. As the state and its utilities draw up plans for wind farms and other green-energy facilities to help meet the goal of pulling 70 percent of power from clean [...]

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 [...]

Or, “Thank God there’s a North Carolina.” Yep. We have a new governor, which means new secretaries of this and that. Meet John Skvarla, new secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR, to tarheels). To cut to the chase, here’s your takeaway idea: maybe oil is a renewable resource. And he doesn’t [...]

Bricks, sticks, and hay are decidedly pedestrian building materials in comparison to a new building that just opened to the public last Thursday in Hamburg, Germany. Ambitious architects have built an apartment covered in a thin layer of living, breathing algae. The building, known as BIQ (for Bio Intelligent Quotient), meets the extremely stringent passive-house [...]