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EartherVirginia Passes Landmark Clean Energy Legislation
On Sunday, Virginia became the first southern state to commit to transition to clean energy by 2050 when Governor Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act into law. The law sets new requirements for energy efficiency among the state’s leading utility companies and establishes a deadline to phase out some of the worst culprits … Continued
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Tech NewsBest of the WeekThanos, CBD, and Disembodied Pig Brains: Best Gizmodo Stories of the Week
An awful lot happened this week—some of it good, much of it bad, and a bit of it just plain weird. In the good news category, the Hubble Space Telescope turned 29, New York City passed a world-first law requiring owners of large buildings to reduce their climate impact, scientists used a modified 747 to … Continued
By Tom McKay -
ScienceFrom the LabThis House Is a Living Experiment for the Future of Energy
Walking around Amsterdam, at times, feels like strolling through the city of the future. Solar panels abound. Electric vehicles fill the roads, and everybody else is on a bike. Meanwhile, tucked away in the western part of town, some 50 families have agreed to turn their houses into living laboratories to figure out a better … Continued
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EartherConservationBerlin’s Living Lab Project Helps CO2 Addicts Cut Back
We’re all fossil fuel junkies, and the dangerous byproduct of our habit—CO2—is killing the planet. We need to quit, but since we’re unlikely to go cold turkey, it’s probably time for an intervention. In Berlin, such an effort is underway with a year-long living lab experiment. One hundred households are aiming to cut their carbon … Continued
Bob Berwyn -
EartherClimate Change
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: What If We Just Turned the Hurricanes Into Electricity
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson had some seriously weird thoughts on hurricanes in an interview on Sunday, telling Sunday TODAY he believes man should harness the power of hurricanes for good rather than run from them, as one tends to do when 155mph winds and catastrophic storm surge are heading towards one’s beach house. While discussing … Continued
By Tom McKay -
EartherClimate ChangeFighting Climate Change in a Red State
ATLANTA — “The South” describes a vast, diverse group of people, ideologies and cultures linked, sometimes exclusively, by soupy, sweaty summers. Georgia’s right wing government that recently attempted to pass an anti-LGBT “religious freedom” bill, its Paris Accord exit-supporting senators and Bible Belt location make its largest city, Atlanta, feel like a progressive island in … Continued
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Tech News
China and India Are Surpassing the Climate Goals the US Can’t Be Bothered to Meet
President Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” will, ironically, put us far behind China and India in the push to modernize our energy grid. China and India are both on track to “overachieve” their Paris Climate Agreement goals of de-carbonizing their energy grids by 2030, according to the Climate Action Tracker study released Monday. Of the … Continued
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Tech News
Trump Wants to Bring Back Coal and Steel Jobs as China Cuts 500,000
In a Tuesday night speech full of half-truths, demi-truths, and of course, alternative facts, President Trump doubled down on his campaign promise to reinvigorate America’s long-ailing coal and steel industries, promising that under his administration “dying industries will come roaring back to life.” Sure. Meanwhile, in a move that more closely reflects market reality, China … Continued
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Tech NewsReport: Rick Perry Picked to Lead Energy Agency He Couldn’t Remember the Name Of
While seeking the 2012 Republican nomination, Governor Rick Perry famously proposed abolishing the Department of Energy before forgetting what it was called on live TV, naming it as “Oops” during the GOP debates. As luck would have it, however, Perry will be nominated as Secretary of Oops under President Donald Trump, CBS News reports. Having … Continued
By Hudson Hongo -
Tech News
China Is Going to Build a Solar Plant in Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone
A pair of Chinese companies are planning to build a solar plant in one of the scariest places in the world—the exclusion zone around the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Radiation from the 1986 meltdown is spread unevenly throughout The Zone, leading to government calls for population resettlement and renewed agriculture in regions deemed safe. As … Continued
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Tech News
This Proposal to Torch Dead Forests For Fuel Is Nuts
Drought and bark beetle infestations have not been kind to western forests in recent years. California alone has an estimated 66 million dead trees speckling its landscapes and waiting to become wildfire fuel. To prevent that from happening and help us kick our coal habit at the same time, a pair of scientists has put … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
SciencePhysicsThe Real Problem With Fusion Energy
The longstanding joke about fusion—that it’s the energy source of the future, and always will be—may be the field’s biggest problem. The quest to bottle the power of the sun has led to countless starry-eyed predictions of an imminent clean energy revolution. But the expectations for fusion have always been outsized, the trail of broken … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
The Crazy Ways We’ll Soon Mine Old Gadgets for Treasure
Last month, the internet flew into a frenzy over news that Apple recovered $40 million worth of gold from old gadgets last year. That story turned out to be wildly oversold. But our eagerness to celebrate a tech company’s recycling victory speaks to a disturbing truth. We’re terrible at recycling rare and important metals from … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
China’s Wind and Solar Energy Capacity Is Soaring
Smog-filled days may be a part of life in Beijing for now, but China is cutting coal and growing its wind and solar energy capacity fast, according to figures released yesterday by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Solar power generation capacity was up 74 percent in China last year compared with 2014 levels, while … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
Gigantic Wind Turbine With 650 Foot Blades Will Channel the Power of Hurricanes
The DOE wants to step up its wind energy game in a big way. And I mean big. Sandia National Laboratories has been tasked with the challenge of designing an offshore wind turbine that can spin out 50 megawatts of carbon-free juice—using 650 foot blades that harness the fiercest winds on Earth. Take a second … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
Desperate California Utilities Win Effort to Squeeze Money Out of Solar Customers
Outfitting your roof with solar panels can be a great way to save energy and money. Right? Well, you won’t save as much money in California, where new rules will force rooftop panel owners to shell over some extra money to their local energy provider—even if they don’t need them at all. In a vote … Continued
By Bryan Lufkin -
Tech News
Wind Power Generated Nearly Half of Denmark’s Electricity in 2015, Sets World Record
The Scandinavian nation is setting the global bar for harnessing wind energy: It’s been announced that Denmark broke a world energy record, using wind turbines to generate 42% of the country’s electricity in 2015. Those figures are the highest of their kind for any country, according to Energinet, the Danish national electricity operator. In 2014, … Continued
By Bryan Lufkin -
EartherClimate ChangeLA’s Gas Leak Is a Global Disaster
One of the worst environmental disasters of the decade is currently underway in a quiet community 25 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Putrid, methane-rich natural gas has been spewing into the air at an estimated rate of nearly 1,300 metric tons per day for over two months. Experts are calling it the climate version of … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
How Fast Can We Transition to a Low-Carbon Energy System?
Starting later this month, the world’s nations will convene in traumatized Paris to hammer out commitments to slow down global climate change. Any long-term solution will require “decarbonizing” the world energy economy – that is, shifting to power sources that use little or no fossil fuel. How fast can this happen, and what could we … Continued
Paul N Edwards
