Blogs & Ecology

Europe's Leading Eco-Center Offers Clean Energy Surgeries
Here’s an exciting opportunity for any UK-based folks who are planning a renewable energy project of any kind. The Center for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales is launching a series of Renewable Energy Consultancy Surgery Days to allow renovators, home builders and anyone interested in harnessing the sun, the wind, biomass, ground source heat pumps, small scale hydro or a combination of the above to leverage CAT’s expertise, accumulated over 35 years of leading renewable en...

In part two of our interview with the author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, we continue our tour of the coolest, most promising, and most necessary green technologies alive today. Get ready for electric cars, carbon capture, and (I know it's your favorite) biochar.

Spanish Concentrated Solar Thermal Plants Set to Grow Exponentially

Image: Associated Press (AP)

A Spanish town outside of Barcelona has found a way to make the best of a cramped situation: lacking sufficient flat, sun-soaked land to implement their renewable energy program, they opted to install solar panels in their local cemetery.

Ancient Israelites collected morning dew from stones. There are prayers for dew in the Bible, and the recipe for the traditional Jewish bread –– challah –– includes how much dew to use in the batzhek (the dough). So it’s not a far-fetched idea that clean technology developers in Israel look to this ancient method of water extraction to solve water scarcity problems around the globe.

We can’t drill and burn our way out of our economic and ecological ills, but we can invent and invest our way out, says the author of The Green Collar Economy and founder of Green for All. In part two of our conversation with Van Jones, we talk greentech, politics, “eco-apartheid,” and (of course) his vision for a green economy. “The green Keynesians are going to win,” says Van Jones.

Image source: Namaste Solar

Starting Fall 2009, the incoming class at John Brown University, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, has a new focus of study - a Bachelor of Science in Renewable Energy. Students can choose from courses focusing on solar, wind, biomass and will then focus on one of three designations within the major: design, installation or international development....

Photo: Hotel Americana

When you live in a place where three-fourths of the population makes its living from tourism, it only makes sense to try to preserve what people come to enjoy. At the popular beach destination of Kos, one of Greece’s Dodecanese islands, "the concept of 'going green' is still fairly strange," says Hotel Americana proprietor Chris Kordistos, but she's been taking small, steady steps to reduce her business's impact on the island’s natural environment.

Do you love your hybrid, fear for the plight of the polar bears, dying to put solar panels on your roof? Then you might be a member of the eco-elite. Not that there’s anything wrong with you, says Van Jones, but for a green economy to be truly effective, it needs to be more inclusive.

Pickens is Campaigning for Energy Independence