Bricks, robot fish, and eco-warriors… this week’s green tech finds!
Find a green business… and a coupon:GenGreen Digital Media has just added a new feature to its Find Green iPhone app: coupons. Find a business that has what you want (and shares your values), and save some money in the process.
Online carbon reduction for builders: the Rocky Mountain Institute has just released Green Footstep, an online tool that allows builders to assess (and reduce) that carbon emissions of building and retrofitting projects.
Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has penned a modern classic in revolutionary thought. Titled Clean Energy, Common Sense, this book calls on us, as a nation, to rise to the challenge of climate change while there’s still time to act.
Did you know that last Friday (October 30) was National Weatherization Day? Me neither, but the US Department of Energy marked the occasion with the launch of a new website: Energy Empowers. The site is chock full of media telling stories about how simple home upgrades to insulation, windows, and heating systems are saving consumers money on their energy bills, and providing jobs in local communities hard hit by the economic downturn.
If you’ve gone as far as pricing a renewable energy system for your home, you may have suffered a bit of sticker shock: solar and wind systems can easily run $20,000 — $40,000 before any incentives. Now, imagine the prices on systems for large businesses and institutions. It’s no wonder that these big players have sought out alternatives to buying systems outright, and often entered into power purchase agreements (or PPAs) for energy produced by technology owned by others.
Harvard University went this route yesterday when it signed a contract with Boston-based wind energy developer First Wind.
You may take access to fresh, organic produce for granted: if there’s a nearby farmers’ market or high-end grocery store, you likely have you pick of fruits and vegetables grown by organic standards. However, if you live in a food desert, or have a tight budget, such items likely strike you as luxuries. Farmers and food activists around the US not only recognize the presence of regions where fresh food is scarce; they’re also building organizations and even working farms to address unequal access to high-quality produce in these neighborhoods and communities. Here are a handful of groups not only growing produce, but also working to ensure it gets to those suffering from food poverty.
A polar bear conservation and management agreement between Greenland, Canada and Nunavut was signed today at Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. The pact caps months of work by all three parties to protect bears in hunting areas shared by the Canadian territory of Nunavut and Greenland, including Baffin Bay and Kane Basin.
The U.S. Renewable Energy Group and Cielo Wind Power have entered into a joint venture agreement with China’s Shenyang Power Group to build a 600 megawatt wind farm across 36,000 acres in West Texas. This is the first time Chinese and U.S. entities have agreed to jointly develop a utility-scale wind power project.
The Obama administration is financing an expansion of the U.S. geothermal industry, investing $338 million in Recovery Act grant funding to support the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies. In addition, the grants will support the deployment and creative financing approaches for ground source heat pumps to heat and cool buildings.
Wind-powered techies, energy-capturing pavement, and DIY hybrid electric sports cars… it’s time for your weekly green tech finds.
This light rocks: Literally… kinetic energy from rocking the Murakami chair powers an attached OLED lamp. (via Gizmodo)
Plug-ins aren’t so weird: CNET editor Martin LaMonica takes note of the strides automakers are taking to make electric vehicles perform in a similar manner to their gas-powered counterparts.
Bike sharing programs are popping up all over the place — cities, corporations, and universities are all investing in making bikes available to commuters to ease traffic congestion and pollution. With almost all of these services, you can assume that the bikes themselves were delivered by trucks to their respective locations. This past Sunday, though, fourteen Worksman bicycles (based in NYC) were delivered by the most obvious method: cyclist rode the 55 miles from the factory to Princeton University.
