Daunted by high up-front costs, U.S. homeowners continue to shy away from residential solar power systems, even as utility-scale solar projects are taking off. But with do-it-yourself kits and other innovative installation approaches now on the market, residential solar is having modest growth.
A rapidly expanding universe of citizens’ groups, researchers, and environmental organizations are making use of social media and smart phone applications to document changes in the natural world and to mobilize support for taking action.
This post asks the provocative question whether solar PV is really market ready yet. It goes on to suggest that it might be counter-productive for the long term growth of the sector to push solar photovoltaic adoption rates through the use of government subsidies, making the point that this may in fact be slowing down the adoption of needed innovation and process improvement that should ultimately make renewable energy more affordable.
A detailed review of 12 U.S. based synthetic biology, biofuel & biochemical companies that are developing third and fourth generation biofuels, bioindustrial & household chemical, and food additive products; using synthetic biology to produce engineered microorganisms and specialty enzymatic products. Each company is examined in turn, looking at its financials and the uniqueness and strength of its processes and technology as well as at any important partnerships or alliances that have been formed.
The clean energy sector is entering a phase of dramatic change in which business models are being transformed against a backdrop of regulatory uncertainty, as the industry emerges from a challenging period caused by the global economic downtown. Technologies and business structures that were once abandoned, are now being revived in several key sectors.
This post, a part of five part series on green building regulation looks at the anatomy of green building regulations identifying three main types of regulations, which are command and control, in other words building codes and such; financial incentives, like tax breaks; and non-financial incentives such as increases in floor to area ratio, building height or density for building green.
This post looks at fifteen kinds of utility or grid scale energy storage solutions that are either in wide use or have significant potential to supply the energy storage capacity that will help make the grid both more efficient and more robust. These range from pumped hydro, which is by far the most prevalent form of energy storage at this scale to compressed air, thermal storage, advanced batteries, fuel cells and purely electric storage systems.
As part of our Green MBA Success Series, I am interviewing Green MBA graduates to uncover what steps they took to transition to green careers using their degrees. Meet Robin Connell, Manager of Sustainability Programs at Del Monte Foods. Prior to transitioning to a career in sustainability, Robin worked seven years in media publishing in a consumer marketing role, after having spent having spent three years in that industry in a human resources capacity. Read our interview with Robin, in which she shares her story of how she transitioned from a career in media marketing to one in sustainability.
In this post, which is part of a series of posts on the hot button topic of rising gas prices and record oil company profits, Robert argues against the powerful temptation to tax Exxon/Mobile’s recent windfall profits. Doing so will do nothing to lower recent high gasoline prices, which in reality are driven by global supply and demand and will risk driving more of the oil business overseas. He goes into some depth on each of the main tax breaks and subsidies that the oil sector now enjoys and argues the case that these need to be continued and that the oil sector should not be singled out. He poses the question if it is fair for ExxonMobil to pay even more income taxes, than why not Apple or Google, which have much higher profit margins?
