Developers and facility owners are aware of their ability to make a building more sustainable – solar installation, timed lighting, metered water usage, to name a few. However, the price tag of “going green” can make someone stop and think twice.

That’s where LEED comes in. By adhering (more…)

Scheduled for a 2012 release date, the V60 is the first diesel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in the world.

According to Technologic Vehicles, the V60 features three driving modes: Pure (electric only), Hybrid (default mode) and Power, when the engines act together.

It also features a four-wheel drive mode: at (more…)

What does solar cost? Pricing on utility contracts is often opaque–and there are some good reasons for this (e.g. to promote competition). An exception to this is in Nevada, where there are legal requirements to reveal contracts. Our friends at Evolution Markets recently sent out an email that culled some publicly available data. (more…)

New Jersey’s universities have been making significant strides to become greener facilities, and Kean University (Kean) prides itself on being at the forefront of that effort. Kean has signed an agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enhance sustainable environmental practices at the school. As part of the agreement, Kean has pledged to reduce (more…)

The microgrid market today is in flux. Most projects being implemented around the world feature teams with a variety of players – large and small – each contributing specific components and services to pilot projects, the majority of them still considered to be in the R&D phase.

The lack of operating experience of (more…)

Pythagoras Solar, an Israel-based, venture-backed company developing transparent, energy efficient windows that also generate solar power, announced that it has been chosen by Willis Tower, formerly Sears Tower, the tallest building the Western Hemisphere, to collaborate on a pilot project to help deliver on the building’s renewable energy and energy efficiency improvement goals.

The pilot project, deployed in November 2010 on (more…)

If you’ve been searching for an environmentally friendly excuse to head to the pub for a pint, a group of scientists from Cornell University may be able to help. The scientists looked at over 400,000 gene sequences from brewery wastewater. Uncovered, were the genes of the microbes best suited to converting the wastewater into biofuel. (more…)

California’s energy-efficiency policies will create over 200,000 jobs by 2020, but the state could be creating more and better-quality jobs.

The Don Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy, part of the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, released a (more…)

It recently became official news that solar power is cheaper than electricity from gas-fired power plants. I asked myself: if natural gas is below grid parity and solar is cheaper than gas, doesn’t that mean that solar is also below grid parity? Let’s look at the numbers. (more…)

Valence Technology (Valence) is an Austin, Texas, energy storage technology developer that makes lithium iron magnesium phosphate battery modules.

According to this piece in the Austin Business Journal, Valence recently won a four-year patent infringement suit against Montreal-based Phostech Lithium (more…)