By Stephanie Yang 23 December 2019 BEIJING (The Wall Street Journal) – China’s efforts to wean itself off coal are losing steam, as the world’s biggest carbon emitter is putting economic growth and energy security above its ambitions to be a leader in combating climate change. Coal consumption is back near peak levels after rebounding […]
By Annie Kelly 16 December 2019 (The Guardian) – A landmark legal case has been launched against the world’s largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla […]
By James Temple 19 November 2019 (Technology Review) – A new report from the MIT Energy Initiative warns that EVs may never reach the same sticker price so long as they rely on lithium-ion batteries, the energy storage technology that powers most of today’s consumer electronics. In fact, it’s likely to take another decade just to eliminate […]
By Laura Mallonee 3 November 2019 (Wired) – Less than two miles from Iceland’s Reykjavik airport sits a nondescript metal building as monolithic and drab as a commercial poultry barn. There’s a deafening racket inside, too, but it doesn’t come from clucking chickens. Instead, tens of thousands of whirring GPUs perform the complex, exhaustive calculations […]
By Kody Allen 18 September 2019 CASPER, Wyoming (Wyoming News Now) – One wind farm in Glenrock and two from the Saratoga area have partnered with the Casper Regional Landfill to dispose of their old wind turbine blades. More than 900 blades will be brought to the landfill beginning now until the end of next […]
By Chris Martin 31 July 2019 (Bloomberg) – Wind turbines may be carbon-free, but they’re not recyclable. A photograph of dozens of giant turbine blades dumped into a Wyoming landfill touched off a debate Wednesday on Twitter about wind power’s environmental drawbacks. The argument may be only beginning. Fiberglass turbine blades — which in some […]
OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]
By Sam Arie 17 July 2019 (Financial Times) – Few things should make you as optimistic — or as pessimistic — as the rise of renewable energy. Optimism comes from a new sense of urgency as the UK, Germany, and Spain set record highs for use of wind and solar power, and record lows for […]
By Alan Neuhauser 1 July 2019 (US News) – There’s a reason nuclear plants are built close to water. Harnessing the enormous power of nuclear fission, plants generate steam, which shoots through pipes to spin a turbine that generates massive amounts of electricity. To keep from getting dangerously hot, the plants suck up surrounding water […]
IRVINE, California, 1 July 2019 (UCI News) – The nations that have signed agreements to stabilize the global mean temperature by 2050 will fail to meet their goals unless existing fossil fuel-burning infrastructure around the world is retired early, according to a study [pdf] – published today in Nature – by researchers at the University […]
