When it comes to sun energy, the focus is often on solar power plants or rooftop panels. But there's an increasing number of snazzy portable products that also draw juice from our nearest star -- things we can carry, wear or set on our desks.
The California Energy Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to become the first state to impose energy efficiency standards for televisions. The agency estimates the move will save consumers $1 billion a year in energy costs.
Community colleges have long held second-class-citizen status in the world of higher education. But they've suddenly become top tier when it comes to one important thing: training for new green-economy jobs.
At a nuclear power plant in Texas, two men dressed in combat gear are perched atop a steel-framed watchtower armed with assault rifles, firing on both moving and stationary targets some 300 yards away.
Whatever happened to all those new nuclear power plants the country was supposed to build?
At a Texas power plant, two men in head-to-toe yellow jumpsuits are perched above a pool filled with still, crystal-clear water -- and nearly 20 years worth of nuclear waste.
Top Democrats put the issue of climate change back in the spotlight Tuesday, debating legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions while announcing $3.4 billion in new clean energy funds.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday discussed Iran's request for nuclear fuel for a research reactor and other security issues, the White House and the Kremlin said.
Iran said Friday it needs more time to decide whether to sign onto a deal that could help end the international showdown over its nuclear activities.
There was no mistaking the target: the eight huge cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, sending plumes of steam high into the watery blue sky of the English Midlands.
When it comes to sun energy, the focus is often on solar power plants or rooftop panels. But there's an increasing number of snazzy portable products that also draw juice from our nearest star -- things we can carry, wear or set on our desks.
The California Energy Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to become the first state to impose energy efficiency standards for televisions. The agency estimates the move will save consumers $1 billion a year in energy costs.
Community colleges have long held second-class-citizen status in the world of higher education. But they've suddenly become top tier when it comes to one important thing: training for new green-economy jobs.
At a nuclear power plant in Texas, two men dressed in combat gear are perched atop a steel-framed watchtower armed with assault rifles, firing on both moving and stationary targets some 300 yards away.
Whatever happened to all those new nuclear power plants the country was supposed to build?
At a Texas power plant, two men in head-to-toe yellow jumpsuits are perched above a pool filled with still, crystal-clear water -- and nearly 20 years worth of nuclear waste.
Top Democrats put the issue of climate change back in the spotlight Tuesday, debating legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions while announcing $3.4 billion in new clean energy funds.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday discussed Iran's request for nuclear fuel for a research reactor and other security issues, the White House and the Kremlin said.
Iran said Friday it needs more time to decide whether to sign onto a deal that could help end the international showdown over its nuclear activities.
There was no mistaking the target: the eight huge cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, sending plumes of steam high into the watery blue sky of the English Midlands.
The "Valley of Death," in auto-industry-speak, is a metaphorical desert where emerging technologies reside while car executives figure out which of the experiments ought to make their way into actual cars.
If Congress won't get the job done on climate change, President Obama has a way to do it himself. But is he strong-arming the legislative branch?
There is a lot of rhetoric on Main Street and in our nation's Capitol these days portraying China as a job-stealing polluter whose economy is growing at the expense of the United States.
General Electric plans to give its solar business a charge in two years with the introduction of panels with the same solar cell material used by industry cost leader First Solar.
A rare meeting of U.N. Security Council heads of state, led for the first time by a U.S. president, adopted a resolution focused on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons Thursday.
On Tuesday, more than 100 world leaders gathered at the United Nations for a climate summit. They were called together by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to build momentum for the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December.
On an April day in Boulder, Colo., Michael Laine sat onstage in front of a large audience, struggling to hold back tears. That afternoon he was supposed to be presenting to the attendees of the Conference on World Affairs, but at the moment, Laine was finding it hard to concentrate. "Two hours ago I lost a $3 million building," he declared to the room. "And now I don't have a place to live."
In a recent CNN commentary entitled "Green jobs: hope or hype?" Samuel Sherraden argues that green job creation will be insufficient to bring America out of recession. But Sherraden narrowly defines green as a "sector," and fails to see its potential as a strategy for the revitalization of the entire economy.
What green gadgets are worth splashing out for?
What is the future for energy? Where will our power come from by 2020? Send us your thoughts and we'll print the best ones here.
After the release of a miserable June jobs report, President Obama stood with a group of green company CEOs and told reporters that "men and women like these will help lead us out of this recession and into a better future."
The answer to easing the energy crunch in one of the nation's most populous states could lie underwater.
One of the many jobs that Lee Edwards took on during his 25-year career at BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, was leading the energy giant's effort to re-brand itself. Today as the CEO of Virent Energy Systems, a seven-year-old biofuel startup in Madison, Wis., he is truly trying to move beyond petroleum. With a proprietary process it calls "BioForming," Virent says it can turn plant sugars from corn, switchgrass, and other crops into gasoline that has a higher energy density than ethanol.
Tuvalu, the fourth smallest nation on the planet, has announced it aims to be totally powered by renewable energy sources by 2020.
ExxonMobil is teaming up with the biotech research company run by genomics pioneer Craig Venter to produce algae-based biofuels.
In the high-stakes game of climate change, the United States and other countries are betting on the idea that technology can make dirty coal cleaner.
Billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens is shelving plans to build the world's largest wind farm.
Environmental businesses are everywhere these days, but Ecology & Environment was eco-friendly long before green was a hot property -- or a viable business model.
In the northwest of China's mountainous Yunnan province, among the world's most biodiverse areas, a green revolution is under way among rural residents.
Scientists in the United States are developing a "synthetic tree" capable of collecting carbon around 1,000 times faster than the real thing.
A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival.
Massive investment in renewable energy could ultimately create 4 million manufacturing jobs. But for the workers in the bottom rung of this movement, the shift to green jobs could very well mean a pay cut of nearly 60%, a trend spreading across the entire manufacturing sector.
About 200 miles south of Detroit, America's industrial heartland gives way to the Ohio countryside.
One is a assemblyman in California; the other a piano tuner in Pennsylvania.
Continental shelves beneath the retreating polar ice caps of the Arctic may hold almost double the amount of oil previously found in the region, scientists say.
President Obama on Thursday sent a civil nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates to the Senate for ratification, but its passage remains uncertain, thanks to a recently disclosed video.
We need to introduce simple arithmetic into our discussions of energy.
The minute a lightbulb burns out in your place of business, Don Howell can tell you about it. By e-mail, that is - the tall Virginian won't show up at your office door. His company, ADMMicro, installs power metering equipment that can tell when an air conditioning filter needs to be changed or whether a freezer door has been left open.
A videotape of a heinous torture session is delaying the ratification of a civil nuclear deal between the United Arab Emirates and the United States, senior U.S. officials familiar with the case said.
How much would you guess it costs to power a city's streetlights for a year? In the case of San Jose, Calif., the tenth largest city in the country, the answer is $3.5 million. Add in the price of maintaining and replacing those lights, and that dollar figure rises much higher.
Reviving an American car town has got to be one of the toughest jobs in the country. It may also be one of the most important.
Three new nuclear power plants in the next ten years, max. That was the consensus among the experts attending Tuesday's morning session on nuclear power at Fortune's Brainstorm: Green conference. Maybe five, said one lonely voice. Either way, that's far from the nuclear renaissance we were reading about just a couple of years ago. What happened?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country could be proud of two major nuclear accomplishments.
Iran's president will deliver some "good news" this week about the country's first nuclear power plant, a semi-official news agency reported Monday.
The Empire State Building kicked off a major energy-saving retrofit Monday, and promoters hope one of the world's most iconic skyscrapers can become an efficiency model for buildings worldwide.
Canada-based oil sands company Syncrude acknowledged that 1,600 birds -- 1,100 more than initially estimated -- drowned after landing on its settling basin in Aurora a year ago.
An estimated 50 million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients will receive their one-time $250 economic stimulus check starting in early May -- several weeks ahead of schedule, Vice President Joe Biden announced Thursday.
There were no champagne corks popping at Horizon Wind on the February morning when President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. Instead, 30 employees swilled coffee as they got down to work in the Houston energy startup's conference room. The emergency meeting reviewed the company's pipeline and decided to move a number of projects from Tier 2 (promising but on the back burner) to Tier 1 (funding), thanks to the stimulus plan's $50 billion in clean energy provisions.
The gale force of President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package could breathe new life into an emerging industry: small wind turbines.
With its energy-gobbling casinos, Atlantic City, New Jersey, isn't exactly known as a city that conserves electricity. Its motto: "Always turned on."
Global warming concerns took center stage Monday as two organizations held rallies to draw attention to an issue that President Barack Obama has promised to place near the top of his agenda.
When Rita Bryer sees 300-foot-tall wind turbines sprouting up from the prairie near her home in western Oklahoma, she can't help but wonder about the view from the top, where blades the size of semi-trucks spin.
Think of the future of green energy and the mental picture you may conjure up is one of vast solar plants glinting like a beetle's eye in the sun, or ranks of wind turbines turning in the breeze.
Imagine climbing 276 steps to change a light bulb. That's all in a day's work for Rian Harford.
Iran likely has enough material to make a nuclear weapon, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told CNN's John King on Sunday.
The Obama administration will work to stop any "illicit" nuclear aspirations by Iran, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.
Iran tested its first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a stride that prompted one Iranian technician to declare it was "independence day" for the Islamic republic.
Iran's first nuclear power plant will undergo comprehensive testing Wednesday in front of Russian and Iranian officials, Iranian Students' News Agency reported, quoting a nuclear expert.
Just west of Seville in Spain, a sea of giant mirrors is reflecting the sun's energy to provide "concentrated solar power" (CSP) while illuminating the path to a new wave of green energy projects.
We traveled by metro to the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where the phrase over my dead body takes on a new meaning; it's the first town in Spain that has placed solar panels in its municipal cemetery and has been attracting global attention and causing local discussion.
Bob Hertzberg's audience seems as muted as the dismal gray skies outside.
Nuclear power plants will likely add fortifications to future atomic power stations despite the cost involved, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted Tuesday to require any future nuclear power plants to be designed to withstand strikes from commercial jetliners, addressing a possible terrorist scenario that has haunted some people since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
A Colorado solar-energy company has high hopes for the economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama will sign Tuesday in Denver.
President Obama signed the $787 economic stimulus bill Tuesday in Denver, Colorado. Here is a full transcript of his remarks.
The $787 billion economic recovery package President Obama will sign on Tuesday contains more than $290 billion in tax provisions, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The $787 billion economic stimulus bill aims to create millions of jobs around "shovel-ready" projects.
On a chilly Saturday afternoon in mid-January, Shi Zhengrong, casually dressed and smiling as if he didn't have a care in the world, walked into the stunning new building that is now the headquarters of Suntech Power Holdings, the company he founded and built from scratch just eight years ago.
In a sharp departure from Bush Administration policy, the Obama Justice Department on Friday informed the Supreme Court it is dismissing a challenge on rules dealing with allowable mercury emissions from power plants.
A short-term booster shot for the economy? Or a complete rethinking of the way businesses and individuals consume energy?
Environmentalists are encouraged by President Barack Obama's focus this week on renewable energy and stricter emissions standards, although some economists are skeptical he can pull the country out of the recession while cleaning up the planet.
Toyota's third-generation Prius, due at dealerships this spring, will have an optional solar panel on its roof. The panel will power a ventilation system that can cool the car without help from the engine, Toyota says.
Inside a converted textile mill in Lowell, Mass., Rick Hess unfurls a roll of brown plastic film attached to a small electric meter. "Three volts," he says, smiling. "And that's just from the light in this room. Imagine what this reads when we're outside."
The new Congress and President Obama were talking big when it came to the green factor in any stimulus plan.
At the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and MINI showed the world what electric vehicles of the future will look like. And the future of driving looks fun.
President-elect Barack Obama on Friday stressed the urgency of a renewable-energy economy as he tried to shore up support for his stimulus package.
The United States signed an agreement Thursday on civil nuclear cooperation with the United Arab Emirates.
Never mind Joe the Plumber; meet John the Manufacturer. That's what President-elect Barack Obama will be doing Friday, when he stops in Ohio to pitch his $825 billion economic recovery and job creation package.
When SunPower, one of the country's largest makers of solar panels, went looking to build a factory a few years back, several countries vied for their business.
As lawmakers head into the second week of debate over President-elect Barack Obama's proposed economic stimulus plan, new details continue to shed light on what promises to be a sprawling and complex piece of legislation in American history.
Strange lights in the sky, mysterious flashes, dozens of witnesses, a missing wind turbine blade and a tabloid splash featuring the pun: E.T. farm harm.
Jyoti is the Hindi word for light. It's something Pranav Mehta has never had to live without. And he is lucky. Near where he lives in Gujarat, one of the most prosperous states in India, thousands of rural villages lack electricity or struggle with an intermittent supply at best.
James Bond would be lost without them -- those madcap gadgets merging two technologies that help him beat the bad guys and save the planet. The underwater watch with a built-in Geiger counter, for example; or the car that doubles as a submarine; or the exploding bagpipes and missile-launching wheelchair.
Researchers have developed a new anti-reflective coating that boosts the efficiency of solar panels and allows sunlight to be absorbed from almost any angle.
Of all the power supplies in the energy mix, nuclear has historically been the most criticized and controversial. But this most unpopular of power sources has recently resurfaced in political and economic dialogue.
David Crane is a man who isn't afraid of a challenge. When he took the helm at NRG Energy in the winter of 2003, the company was mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings -- just one of many companies caught in the meltdown of the U.S. power generation industry, instigated by the scandalous collapse of Texan power giant Enron in 2001.
Plans to rejuvenate a dilapidated London icon -- known worldwide to movie and music fans -- were unveiled last week.
The site has been secured, the tents pitched, banners raised and, most importantly, compost loos installed; there is little to do now but wait for thousands of campers to arrive for one of Britain's biggest environmental protests this year.
If there was a most wanted list for climate change culprits, coal-fired power stations would be number one.
Despite taking a beating from the credit crunch, the clean energy sector is being tipped as a golden opportunity for investors.
Twenty four hours before the greatest scientific experiment of our time gets underway at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, political and scientific dignitaries assembled at a site a few hundred miles north east of the French/Swiss border at a site in Germany to inaugurate another groundbreaking engineering test.
Former vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore has urged young people to protest against new coal-fired power plants that don't use carbon capture and storage technology.
Hydrogen and electric vehicles might be leading the charge, so to speak, towards cleaner transport, but will cars powered by air and the sun ever surpass the sales figures of gasoline cars?
Micro wind turbines are beginning to pop up all over our urban and rural landscapes. But is it worth investing your hard-earned cash in your very own wind machine? In short, it depends. Take a look at our quick guide to see if "small wind" could help you reduce your energy bills and your carbon footprint.
For a century the gasoline engine has remained largely unchallenged, seeing off all pretenders to its crown. But with concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and a host of new contenders looming large in the rear view mirror, is the gasoline-fueled automobile due to be overtaken by a fleet of cleaner, leaner rivals?
For the past few years, Dan Redmond has been on a mission to change the way his household uses energy.
Some Florida amusement park visitors may enjoy space-themed roller-coasters, but the first vehicle they board at Orlando International Airport may be the most futuristic ride of their vacation.
It looks like America may be getting a whole lot more energy-efficient as part of any new stimulus package.
It looks like America may be getting a whole lot more energy efficient as part of any new stimulus plan.
Back in the 1960s, when Bob Metcalfe was in college, he would drive to MIT in Cambridge, Mass., from his home in Brooklyn, call home once he arrived, allow the phone to ring three times and hang up, to let his mother know he'd arrived safely.
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