EarthBlips - Latest Energy/Transportation News Articles

Exclusive: BWEA set to rebrand as Renewable UK

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:30:00 +0000

James Murray, BusinessGreen , Friday 27 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Repositioning of British Wind Energy Association raises prospect of battle with Renewable Energy Association The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) looks set to park its tanks on the lawn of the Renewable Energy Association (REA) with proposals to rebrand the trade association as Renewable... > >

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A Competitive Boost For Solar Energy

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:13:07 +0000

With expanded production bringing down panel prices, a green energy outfitter claims price parity with grid power is near.

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Kevin Grandia: Show me the email Morano! Climate spindoctors throwing stones in glass houses

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:55:42 +0000

The climate conspiracy theorists are enjoying their moment of glory with the hacked emails that were made public late last week. And who can blame them, given that many of them were relegated to the fringe years ago? I suspect that most mainstream media will not buy the overblown rhetoric. After all, it is ridiculous to assert that stolen emails from a few climate scientists somehow refutes decades of research by thousands of experts. The emails will batter the reputation of a few scientists, but they contain no evidence to undermine the theory of man-made climate change. But that hasn't stopped the denial industry from pushing the line and at least one outlet in San Diego has fallen for it. The coverage came in a story on The Copenhagen Diagnosis , a summary of the latest climate science research put together by 26 researchers, citing over 270 research papers. The original new story had no mention of the hacked emails. But I noticed this afternoon that the story has been ...

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Norway debuts world's first osmotic power plant

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:34:07 +0000

James Murray, BusinessGreen , Wednesday 25 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Statkraft debuts osmosis-based power plant, talks up prospects of 25MW facility In what is being hailed as a world first, Norwegian energy giant Statkraft yesterday formally opened a prototype plant capable of generating zero-carbon energy through the power of osmosis.... > >

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Rebecca Solnit: Remembering People Power In Seattle In 1999 And Berlin In 1989

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:34:38 +0000

Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward off the devastation of our planet by heat and chaotic weather. Their leaders will probably promise us teaspoons with which to put out the firestorm and insist that springing for fire hoses would be far too onerous a burden for business to bear. They have already backed off from any binding deals at this global summit. There will be a lot of wrangling about who should cut what when, and how, with a lot of nations claiming that they would act if others would act first. Activists -- farmers, environmentalists, island-dwellers -- around the world will try to write a different future, a bolder one, and if anniversaries are an omen, then they have history on their side. A decade ago, and a decade before that, popular power turned the tide of history. November 30, 1999, was the day that ...

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Nuclear Power Gains Support From Unlikely Places

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:15:02 +0000

Nuclear power -- long considered environmentally hazardous -- is emerging as perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it.

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The Case Against An Energy Comeback

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:15:50 +0000

Demand needs more than recovery to surge.

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Chauncey Zalkin: The Forest For The Trees: 2 Women Leading Biomimicry In Design

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:11:56 +0000

When I was in the thick of my New York life and not taking many vacations out in the greenery, I was invited to go white water rafting. My main occupation at the time was observing street style and finding order and meaning in all of that gritty, gloriously imperfect urban beauty. Mid-afternoon, we pulled our raft into a cove and sat in silence staring up at the stone walls covered in a vivid algae. The colors, the shapes, the water, the rock, the trees, it all took me by surprise. It felt like the first time I'd ever seen such a thing, a beauty that doesn't need any explanation. A perfection that is plain for everyone to see. Without nuance in the sense of a warbled connotation but at the same time bursting with subtlety. Is it possible that somewhere along the way we forgot to look to nature? The ecosystems that spin, thread, swim and fly around our planet, that make up life as we know it, are the ones that have fixed their bugs and adjusted their processes so that they could survive, ...

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China's biggest wind power producer aims for $2.2bn IPO

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:46:00 +0000

Yvonne Chan in Hong Kong, BusinessGreen , Tuesday 24 November 2009 at 08:46:00 Longyuan offers foreigners first chance to invest in wind energy sector at the generation level China Longyuan Power Group, the nation's largest wind power producer, has announced that it plans to raise up to HK$17.5bn (US$2.2bn) through an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange....

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Government feeds biomass supply industry with new £1.5m grant

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:37:41 +0000

James Murray, BusinessGreen , Tuesday 24 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Extended grant scheme to help fuel development of UK's emerging energy crop industry The biomass feed stock industry received a boost yesterday with the announcement the government is to extend its Bio-energy Infrastructure Scheme with the launch of a new £1.5m round of... > >

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Alex Higgins: The Maya Really Did Warn Us About Our Future (Unintentionally)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:45:25 +0000

Roland Emmerich's enjoyably silly CG destruction-fetish flick '2012', featuring more ruined cities and panicked statesmen than any of his previous offerings, takes its cue from the cranky claim that the Maya calendar predicted the apocalypse, and we're now due. The premise is that the astronomers of the doomed medieval Central American civilization figured out that an alignment of the planets in the solar system on December 21st 2012 would somehow cause the sun to emit excessive radiation that would mess up Earth's core, in turn tearing up the ground we're standing on. If I take time from your life now to point out that the Maya did not make such a claim, and that solar-system-wide planetary alignment would not so much as disturb your cable reception, I can only hope you will forgive me for insulting your intelligence so egregiously. But as with many such fanciful claims, there is a real, actually interesting, story lurking in the background, brought to us by history and science. And it tells ...

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Tony Sachs: Luxury Travel For Budget-Conscious Big Shots? Fame Route Has The Answer

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:58:59 +0000

What do you get when you combine luxury travel with carpooling and membership discounts? A new company called Fame Route, a company aimed at execs and celebs who want to travel in style but without busting their bank accounts or pissing off their shareholders. And what do you get when you fly me in a private jet with a bunch of celebrities to attend a fashion show in Miami? One very confused writer. But more on that later. Fame Route was started up by venture capitalist Gil Peter, who also happened to be a frustrated frequent flyer. "My homes are in New York and Florida, so I shuttle back and forth," he told me. "And the funny part is, I did this a little out of selfishness, because I was so fed up with flying that I said, 'Man, this is a good idea, because it's going to preserve my life a little bit.'" Fame Route outsources its entire business. Other licensed carriers provide the planes and pilots; Peter says, "We don't have any middlemen. We buy hours in bulk so we get a great deal." ...

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Tesla rumoured to be seeking IPO

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:36:00 +0000

Tom Young, BusinessGreen , Monday 23 November 2009 at 11:36:00 Move would be latest in line of IPOs signalling increasing strength of clean tech sector US electric car firm Tesla is reportedly planning to make a public offering in the coming months, in a move that would further boost the profile of the headline-grabbing sports... > >

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Radiation Found At Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, Site Of '79 Partial Meltdown

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:34:49 +0000

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the small amount of radiation detected at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is not significant. Specialist John White has told ABC News that there is no indication that radiation at the plant exceeded or even approached regulatory limits. The commission sent investigators to the central Pennsylvania plant after a small amount of radiation was detected. About 150 employees were sent home Saturday afternoon, but officials say there is no public health risk. Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman Beth Archer says the radiation was quickly contained. The unit has been shut for refueling and maintenance since Oct. 26. Workers are being tested for radiation exposure. A partial meltdown occurred in Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor in 1979.

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Sacramento Fisherman Arrested In Sea Lion Shooting

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:39:13 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Authorities arrested a Sacramento fisherman Saturday in connection to shooting a sea lion in the head. California game wardens said they arrested Larry Allen Legans, 43, on misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty, negligent discharge of a firearm, and take of a marine mammal. Legans told authorities he grew tired of competing with the protected animals so he fired his 12-gauge shotgun at the sea lion, injuring the creature. "He said he was tired of watching sea lions take his fish," said Warden Patrick Foy. About a half-dozen sea lions have started to spend time farther up the Sacramento River, competing with anglers for fish as far inland as Rio Vista, just southwest of Sacramento. An injured sea lion was first spotted on a dock in Sacramento on Nov. 12 with a wound near its right eye. A witness told authorities Legans fired on the sea lion a day earlier when it surfaced in the river near Verona. Authorities arrested Legans at his home Saturday morning ...

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Andrew Kimbrell: New Report: GMOs Causing Massive Pesticide Pollution

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:50:28 +0000

There is one fact about genetically engineered foods that there is no debate about: no one wakes up in the morning eager to buy gene-altered food. There's good reason for this. Genetically modified foods do nothing for the "eating public". They provide no extra nutrition, flavor, safety or any other trait that people actually want. Instead, these food products only offer risks, which include potential toxicity, allergenecity, and lower nutritional value. This presents a tough problem for the Monsantos of the world, who are pushing these GM foods. How can you sell something to the public that offers no benefits to them? And, because of their lobbying power, the biotech companies have ensured that their products are not labeled. So Monsanto's real request of the public is "be unknowing guinea pigs for foods that make us a lot of money and offer you nothing but risk." Obviously this message is a PR nightmare, so Monsanto has come up with a spin that is old as public relations itself: "accept ...

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Tulsi Tanti: COP15 is in danger of being hot air

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:03:10 +0000

I am a natural optimist; as entrepreneurs tend to be. But I fear that the international excitement in the run up to COP15, with supporters and naysayers drawing battle lines and crossing swords, is perhaps masking reality. The truth, regardless of your views on the issue, is that the renewable targets set - from Australia's and EU's 20 percent of all electricity by 2020; India's 15 percent by 2020; and certain U.S., states' targets ranging up to 20 percent - are unachievable unless a significant and immediate change occurs in the international community's approach to properly tackling climate change. The forecasts are sobering. World energy consumption is set to increase by a staggering 45 percent between 2006 and 2030. In contrast, the International Energy Agency's 2009 report estimated renewable energy growth at an average of just 2.9 percent a year for the same period - barely keeping up with demand growth. So, if we consider "20 by 20" as a global target we need to build toward, we will miss ...

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Pete Altman: The US Chamber's Chronic Reliance on Biased Policy Analysis

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:34:55 +0000

The US Chamber's recently exposed interest in commissioning a study to put health reform in a bad light isn't the first time the federation has shown its willingness to trumpet questionable analyses about proposals it doesn't like. Heck, the US Chamber has been peddling bad studies on the economic impacts of climate policy for years. For instance, they've had David Kreutzer, a Heritage Foundation economist, do three presentations before local Chambers in Michigan , Missouri and Virginia . We've pointed out before ( here , here , here and here ) that Kreutzer is a co-author of the deeply flawed Heritage Foundation "analyses" of last year's Lieberman-Warner bill and this year's Waxman-Markey bill. Even though the Heritage Foundation presents its results as though they actually modeled the bill in question, they have a funny tendency to leave out significant parts of the proposed legislation. As my colleague Laurie Johnson explained in May , looking at Heritage's "analysis" of ...

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Graham Hill: Get Smart

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:25:02 +0000

Remember sometime back in the roaring '90s when the idea of electronically controlled "smart" homes first popped up? Back then it seemed pie-in-the-sky and Jetson like. But the advent of smart metering and ongoing work to create a smart grid truly are first steps to that fabled smart home. Amazingly, Italy is far ahead of most of the world on getting smart. Who knew a whopping 85 percent of Italian homes have smart electricity meters? Way back in 2001, Enel, the country's largest utility, started a program to upgrade its grid and equip 40 million homes with smart meters. The result? Enel is saving 750 million each year from being able to run plants more efficiently based on user data from the meters and time-of-day pricing, according to an article in Spiegel International . And, a fast deployment of the smart meters helped Enel recoup its 3 billion investment faster. Perhaps as important, smart customers who check their in-home meter monitors and plan some energy-intensive tasks ...

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Low carbon bus fund gets EU green light

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:43:22 +0000

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen , Friday 20 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Commission rules new £30m fund for low carbon bus technology does not breach state aid rules The government's plans for a new £30m fund to help promote the adoption of low carbon buses was given a green light from Brussels yesterday after the European Commission concluded... > >

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How NRG Energy Wants to Revive Nuclear Industry

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

One small power merchant thinks it can revive the faltering nuclear renaissance. How? Offload the risk.

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Mike Signer: Drive Like a Jetson

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:55:39 +0000

When you watch an episode of "The Jetsons," what gets you isn't so much that Elroy wore an antenna on his head or that the family spent their time in cars that levitated. What still resonates about the show is the extreme ease of transportation -- they always just seem to get up and go. For many of us in the modern world, where gridlock and wincing at gas pumps are facts of life, the Jetsons seem spectacularly free of commuter woes. But it's a cartoon. Ambitious clean technology schemes have usually been condemned as the province of dreamers. But this week, a new organization threatened to convert Jetson-esque schemes for powering electric cars from futurism into reality through a network of charging stations and new fleets of affordable electric cars. The Electrification Coalition is a group of prominent companies who have committed dollars and workforces to creating the infrastructure to make electric cars. (We previously wrote about electric cars here.) At a lavish launch in D.C. featuring ...

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James Hoggan: Climate Denial Industry Costs Us $500 Billion a Year

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:50:53 +0000

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced in its latest World Energy Outlook that every year of delayed action to address climate change will add $500 Billion to the price tag of saving the planet. The climate denial industry should foot the bill, since they are responsible for causing the delay. In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit , a growing number of government leaders from around the world -- and even high level United Nations representatives -- have suggested that an ambitious, legally binding agreement is all but impossible to achieve in Denmark this December. Some have indicated that it may take six months to a year beyond Copenhagen to cement a global agreement. Nearly all point the finger at the United States for causing this delay. But it is not President Obama’s fault, a fact that is difficult for many outside the U.S. to comprehend. Shouldn’t the U.S. president, often considered the “most powerful man in the world,” be able ...

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Joseph B. Treaster: In Land of Holy Rivers Getting Rid of Pollution May Have Low Priority

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:19:49 +0000

NEW DELHI--Bhola Nishad spends his days on a dusty bluff overlooking the Yamuna River. Like so many Indians, Mr. Nishad regards the river as a holy place. It is also his place of business. All along the river as it winds through New Delhi, the capital of India, devout Hindus stop to toss into the dark, slowly moving water, bouquets and garlands of flowers, money and sometimes statues and framed pictures of Hindu gods. When they want their offerings taken to the middle of the river, they come to Mr. Nishad. In exchange for a few coins or a plate of food, he swims out to mid-river with the offerings. The hope is that they will stay in the river and not immediately wash up on shore as do so many gifts thrown in from the banks. Mr. Nishad's work is dangerous business. The Yamuna, especially as it drifts past New Delhi, is polluted beyond belief. Most of the city's raw sewage pours into the river. Factories dump chemicals and garbage into the water. When it rains, fertilizer and pesticides used ...

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The New Arms Race

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:11:22 +0000

Hobbled by opposition from the carbon incumbents and their short-sighted allies on Capitol Hill the Obama administration acknowledged this week that it would not return from Copenhagen with any groundbreaking commitment to control green house gases. Meanwhile, Congress is backsliding on the administration's wise commitment to impose a rational price on carbon. Behind the logjam, a treacherous U.S. Chamber of Commerce, always willing to put its obsequious scraping to Big Oil and King Coal ahead of its duty to our country, has battled every effort to accelerate America's transition to a market-based de-carbonized economy. The Chamber has continued to argue, idiotically, that energy efficiency and independence will somehow put America at a competitive disadvantage with the Chinese. Meanwhile, the Chinese have shrewdly and strategically positioned themselves to steal America's once substantial lead in renewable power. China will soon make us as dependent on Chinese green technology for the next ...

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Daimler's Curious Love Affair With Tesla Motors

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:21:14 +0000

The mighty Daimler is falling for tiny Tesla's battery technology.

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Jake Schmidt: Key World Leaders Agree to Two-Step Process for Finalizing International Agreement

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:36:09 +0000

Monday morning (Singapore time), leaders from 19 countries -- including the US, China, Mexico, Australia, South Korea, and Japan -- joined a last-minute breakfast to discuss the upcoming global warming meeting in Copenhagen. The breakfast meeting, hosted by the Presidents of Mexico and Australia on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, reportedly agreed to a framework being called "one agreement, two steps". This framework would result in a political agreement with some key details being reached this December and a deadline for finalizing the full legally binding agreement in a short timeframe. This outcome for the meeting in December began to arise more seriously over the last two weeks and was a key part of the discussions at the recent climate negotiations in Barcelona (as I discussed here ). So it isn't a huge shock, although the fact that these key world leaders agreed to such an outcome may come as a surprise to some (as you can see from this ...

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The Preferred Play On FPL

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

If you think that FPL is a good stock to own down the road, get paid while you wait to own it.

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Kerry Trueman: Bats: The New Canary In The Coal Mine?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:02:32 +0000

You may think bats are scary, but what's truly terrifying is the mysterious fungus that's decimating the bat population, according to an article by Stacy Chase in last Sunday's Boston Globe : At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed "white-nose syndrome" in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn't slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade. This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, "We're at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe." Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we'll have an ...

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Renewables take the lead in Australia's new power developments

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:41:00 +0000

Yvonne Chan in Hong Kong, BusinessGreen , Thursday 19 November 2009 at 09:41:00 Government study credits renewable energy law for flurry of wind farm projects Wind farms will account for 20 per cent of Australian power projects coming online in the next few years, according to a government report thast credits the introduction renewable energy...

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John Passacantando: Fossil Fuel Companies Block Climate Treaty

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:34:51 +0000

The announcement by President Obama that the US would not seek a comprehensive climate deal at an upcoming global meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark next month is a gut punch to anyone who cares about the fate of the planet. A reading this past weekend of the elite press on this breakdown (The New York Times and The Washington Post for example) would have you believe it was just too tough politically to pull off. Yet again activists are reduced to being happy that there is still another day, the next meeting is in Mexico, so a failed Copenhagen can be spun as an "important step forward." We are all starting to sound like co-dependents. This pattern has been consistent since the beginning of this process, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (the Earth Summit). How can it be that after almost twenty years, scores of meetings, thousands of participants and calls to action by millions of people around the world the only reduction in greenhouse gas emissions ...

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Report: UK skills inadequate for low-carbon economy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:51:05 +0000

Tom Young, BusinessGreen , Thursday 19 November 2009 at 00:15:00 All major environmental policies should be accompanied with a corresponding skills strategy, recommends Aldersgate Group report The UK does not have the necessary skills to transition to a low-carbon economy without the help of foreign companies, according to a major new report from the Aldersgate Group... > >

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California Requires TVs To Be More Energy Efficient

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:39:21 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand. On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient, beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, with only a quarter of all TVs currently on the market meeting that standard. The commission estimates that TVs account for about 10 percent of a home's electricity use. The concern is that the energy draw will rise by as much as 8 percent a year as consumers buy larger televisions, add more to their homes and watch them longer. Commissioners say energy efficiency standards are the cheapest and easiest way to save electricity. "We have every confidence this industry will be able to meet the rule and then some," Energy Commissioner Julia Levin said. "It will save consumers money, it will help protect public ...

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Renewables industry hails end to planning red tape

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:27:00 +0000

James Murray, BusinessGreen , Wednesday 18 November 2009 at 16:27:00 Experts predict extension of permitted development rights will remove one of the main barriers to adoption for onsite renewables The government's plans to exempt a large number of small-scale renewable energy technologies from planning permission should remove one of the major costs related to installation of onsite renewables and...

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Government launches low-carbon equalities group

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:15:00 +0000

BusinessGreen.com staff, BusinessGreen , Tuesday 17 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Forum for a Just Transition aims to ensure the benefits delivered by the low-carbon transition are shared evenly The government yesterday formally announced the launch of a new body designed to ensure its low-carbon transition plan fits in with the UK's equality agenda and distributes the opportunities and... > >

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Kevin Grandia: Energy industry front group plans "teabagger" protest at Gore's event in Portland

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:23:20 +0000

I just got word that Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is planning on protesting a presentation Al Gore is making tomorrow night in Portland, Oregon. Under the guise of the "teabagger movement" AFP will do what it does best, which is protesting clean energy and green jobs. It's hard to believe this is much of a grassroots "teabagger" movement when the organizers get so much money from the largest private energy company in the United States. Below is everything you need to know about AFP and their president Tim Phillips that I've pulled from our research database. All this will be passed on to the local Portland media to ensure that they include this important context in any reporting they do on this story. If you're from Portland or know anyone from the area, please pass this around to local bloggers and media. Highlights: - Here's a complete rundown of AFP's funding. - AFP is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, manged by Charles G. Koch who runs ...

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Is That A Car Or A Millennium Falcon?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:44:07 +0000

I'm sitting in a Toyota Prius, testing out the new HALOsonic External Sound Synthesis technology, which could both save lives and liven up the morning commute no end.

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Mike Signer: Why Retrofitting Should be Sexy

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:12:43 +0000

You've doubtless seen ads recently offering you a $1,500 "stimulus federal tax credit" for 30 percent of the cost of putting in new windows. How the stimulus is related to windows might not be transparent to anyone less than wonky. But it's an important facet of the Obama administration's broader attempt to place retrofitting at the center of a new national energy policy. The sexy side of environmentalism has never been about houses. We generally focus on cute animals (e.g. polar bears marooned on ice floes) or Hollywood disaster scenarios (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow). But the fact is that retrofitting houses to make them more efficient, through means that will create jobs, is the low-hanging fruit of the new environmental movement. The new path was amply revealed in an exciting (if this is your sort of thing) report recently released by Vice President Biden's Middle Class Task Force and the White House's Council on Environmental Quality titled, "Recovery through Retrofit." The report puts the ...

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Paula Crossfield: A New Report Reveals that GM Seeds Encourage Pesticides Use, Contribute to Growth of Superweeds

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:46:42 +0000

A new report out today, Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years [pdf] authored by Dr. Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center , reveals that the use of genetically modified (GM) corn, soy and cotton crops has increased the amount of pesticides used in the past 13 years by 318 million pounds. This information comes to light as the industry struggles to position itself as providing environmental benefit through use of bt technology -- insecticide producing seeds -- savings from which are diminished in light of a six times greater herbicide usage. Farmers have become increasingly critical of both GM seed as it goes up in price, and herbicides like Roundup, also known as glyphosate, as ' superweeds ' become prevalent in treated fields. The growth of pigweed, which can quickly reach widths of 6 inches at the stalk, and other invasive, glyphosate-resistant species increases farmers reliance on more high-risk ...

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Government launches low-carbon equalities group

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:44:28 +0000

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New funding aims to provide firm anchor for offshore wind farms

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:44:28 +0000

Tom Young, BusinessGreen , Tuesday 17 November 2009 at 00:15:00 Seven new foundation designs secure Carbon Trust funding to help them bring down the cost of offshore wind turbines Seven offshore engineering firms will today each receive up to £100,000 in funding from the Carbon Trust to help them accelerate the development of new offshore wind turbine foundation designs... > >

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Andrea Chalupa: How to Get a Job in Clean Tech

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:15:31 +0000

Jobs in the clean technology industry are growing twice as fast as the national average. So that's where the jobs are. Walletpop spoke with Ron Pernick, co-founder of West Coast-based Clean Edge and the author of The Clean Tech Revolution , to find out what these jobs are, how to land one, and, most importantly, how much they pay. Here are some highlights from Clean Edge's recent report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, which I highly recommend you read if you want to know if this industry is for you. There are lots of resources for clean tech job trainings, education and job search engines, after the jump. According to the report, jobs vary from accountant -- there's one we've heard before -- to wind turbine technician. From the report, here's a sample of jobs and their salaries: Hardware Design Engineer, Smart Grid $87,700 Mid-Level; requires Engineering Bachelor's Welder, Cutter, Solderer, or Brazer, Wind Power; salary: $50,300 ...

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Slimmer Devon Could Set Exxon Salivating

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:07:56 +0000

With the business environment worsening overseas, U.S.-focused Devon could be a tasty prize for the energy giant.

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China's Energy Priorities

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:39:19 +0000

Considerable investment is being pledged to renewable energy projects.

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