LED Flashlight Combines Solar and Pull Power So You’re Never In The Dark
Image via Essential Gear
Solar powered flashlights are great, but you have to wait for a charge. Pull-cord flashlights are great but you have to work for a charge. But what about one that combines both so if you’re short on light or short on energy, you still get a charge? The ECOPower Solar Pull Light combines two sources of reliable alternative energy to make sure you’ve always got a light in a pinch. …Read the full story on TreeHugger
Acer Unveils New Aspires As Their Greenest Laptops
Image via Acer
Acer has launched two new notebooks, Acer Aspire 3811TZ and Aspire 3811TZG. They’re part of the Timeline series, which touts a 40% energy efficiency improvement over traditional laptops, and these two notebooks are free of two toxic materials that many companies either have, or are working to eliminate from their laptop lineups as well. …Read the full story on TreeHugger
Renewable Energy Developers vs. Local Communities
Why Can’t We All Get Along?
Our friends over at TriplePundit has an interesting piece about why renewable energy developers must first win community support. Indeed, too many projects are derailed because local people protests, and it often seems like nobody took the time to get them on board in the first place. It might seem harder to have to involve communities, but in the long run, it will probably avoid many problems (though on the other hand, local communities should le…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Gloria Reuben on the Dirty Lie of Clean Coal
When people describe their first time seeing mountaintop removal coal mining, the response is invariably the same: dropped jaws and sunken hearts. Along with her prolific work in film and television (ER, Raising the Bar), Gloria Reuben is a tireless backer of clean energy, global public health, and climate sanity. She talks with TreeHugger Radio about the myth of clean coal, the grim tale of mountaintop removal, and her hopes for Copenhagen.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click <http://…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Solar & Construction Industries Demand Robust Support for Solar (Video)
Image credit: We Support Solar
The We Support Solar campaign has long been pushing for a solar feed-in tariff in the UK, and the Government is indeed instituting one in 2010. But the question is, just how ambitious will this plan be? Earlier this week, I posted on a report that argued a more robust feed-in tariff could see the UK generating 6% of its energy from micro-renewables like wind and solar. Now We Support Solar has taken…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Three Letters That Mean A Lot–MRV
China made big news this week when it announced that at the upcoming climate negotiations it will offer to reduce its “energy intensity by 40-45 percent by 2020, relative to 2005 levels. Some see this as a positive development while others are left scratching their heads and asking, “What does ‘energy intensity’ even mean?” Well, first a definition. Energy intensity refers to energy output per unit of gross domestic product. So the Chinese are saying that as their booming econ…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Top 4 Energy & Environment Untruths in Sarah Palin’s ‘Going Rogue’
Photo via Newsmax
Well, that didn’t take long. Sarah Palin’s hotly anticipated memoir, Going Rogue, is hardly out the gates, and it’s already facing a torrent of criticism from mainstream news sources for including various untruths and flat out lies. It appears that everyone’s favorite vice presidentia…Read the full story on TreeHugger
What Will It Take to Get EVs on the Road (Really)
Solving the chicken or egg dilemma for electric vehicles. Image credit:Photobucket,Goodstuff1852
Electric cars have the potential to improve our energy system, resuscitate the automobile industry, and dramatically reduce America’s oil use.
At least, that’s the goal.
President Obama has called for one million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. One million! Sounds huge, right? Well, not exactly. That’s less than one-half of one percent of the entire U.S. fleet–a prett…Read the full story on TreeHugger
Fischer Produces Skis With 100% Renewable Energy
We’ve had a few stories about smaller snowboard and backcountry ski companies heading off down a green path. I think this is the first time we’ve had a mainstream ski manufacturer on side. The Fischer Sports Group have just announced that the thermal energy for the production and heating of their plants which make Fischer Skis has gone 100% renewable.
Their Ried, Austria factory has been into this gig since 2001, but recently their other plant in Mukachevo, Ukraine, which has 950 folk pumping out 700,00 pairs of skis (alpine and nordic), also joined the…Read the full story on TreeHugger
The Best of GOOD: The Future of Cities, the Gasoline Price Conundrum, the Environmental Toll of Divorce and More
Our friends over at GOOD share some of their finest offerings of the last week.
This week saw the launch of a bold (and dare we say beautiful) new series about the future of cities and how we can reinvent them. Topics included energy, traffic, water, <a …Read the full story on TreeHugger