Green Options

A new report by Environment North Carolina’s Research and Policy Center, “Growing Solar in North Carolina,” found that North Carolina (home of my UNC Tar Heels) could be a solar power giant soon.

The new report found that North Carolina has a lot of solar energy potential due to its “vast” solar energy intensity (which is nearly as much as Florida’s) combined with other economic, policy and technological factors.

Total, a French oil company, recently agreed to give the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) $4 million for a 5-year research project to develop stationary batteries that can more efficiently store solar energy.

More efficient energy storage has been a difficult issue for scientists to crack. It is a major issue preventing more widespread use of renewable energy, and solar energy in particular.

Is this project, one funded by a true oil giant, the one that will make it happen?

Conventional drag racing is pretty much the furthest thing from a green sport, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of it. Yet even this tire-melting, gas-wasting sport is diving into the realm of alternative fuels for a variety of reasons.

Roush, a leading builder of aftermarket Mustangs, is developing two Mustangs for the drag strip powered not by gasoline, but clean-burning propane.

This picture is a picture of the beautiful Monterey, California coastline. This is where I grew up. It is famous for it’s beautiful sea life. Sea otters, jelly fish, sea lions, kelp forests all populate the Monterey coast.  The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world. Yet, with all that mass of water, we humans are changing the chemical properties. The acid levels in the pacific ocean, as well as every ocean around the world, are rising. If things keep going this beautiful coastline, my home, will become a wasteland of acid. Habitable to only the most extremophiles.

Rewind our story. Fossil fuels are not just a problem for our atmosphere. When we burn fossil fuels carbon dioxide falls down into the sea. The carbon dioxide is quickly converted into carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has been known to be corrosive to corals and shellfish, and now scientists are discovering that rising acid levels in the ocean are effecting other animals as well.

In a recent Zogby telephone poll conducted to gauge public opinion on the the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the results showed that a majority of Americans are finally behind climate legislation.

Bankruptcy? What bankruptcy? New GM emerged from a gov’ment cradled bankrupcty filing just a month ago, but it seems like business as usual at the former American manufacturing giant. At a press conference this mornig, New GM CEO Fritz Henderson wasted no time explaining a recent marketing campaign involving the numbers 23 and a smiling electrical outlet.

230 “composite” miles per gallon for the Chevy Volt, city rating of course. 230 miles per gallon? What kind of voodoo magic are they putting in those batteries?

As it stands, most vehicles in the world right now run on one of two fuels: gasoline, or diesel. While they perform the same function, and on the outside the engines look the same, they work in very different ways. While diesels have made progress in becoming cleaner burning, gasoline cars still dominate America’s highways.

But what might happen if someone mixed these two fuels up in the same engine? According to a research group from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the engine not only becomes more thermally efficient but cleaner burning, too.

Our race to find alternative fuels is critical not only because gasoline-powered vehicles emit lots of CO2–it’s also important because we’re running out of the sticky stuff. But what if the Earth could produce fossil fuels without the fossils?

Last Monday, 29th of June, in Viareggio: Axle failure on a wagon carrying liquid gas caused a rail disaster in central Italy.

Three more car companies received sizeable loans from the federal government yesterday, but don’t worry; it’s not another bailout. In fact, the$8 billion is just the start of a larger $25 billion project called the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVM for short) that was thought up back in 2007 and funded by Congress in late 2008 during the Bush administration. The project, overseen by the Department of Energy, is a federal grant and loan initiative bent on providing [...]

Salt Lake City, UT - The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) announced that on May 28, 2009 an agreement was made with Equity Oil Company (”Equity”) concerning oil and gas leases on lands in Utah’s San Juan County.

The agreement “gives SUWA certainty that oil and gas development in an important part of the Hatch Point proposed wilderness area will be subject to the applicable Resource Management Plan and additional restrictions,” said Stephen Bloch, Conservation Director and Attorney for SUWA.