China’s five largest power utilities, which depend on water-intensive, coal-fired stations to generate electricity, are vulnerable to water supply disruptions because they are centered in the country’s water-scarce northern regions, a new report says.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the five power generators — Huaneng, Datang, Huadian, Guodian, and China Power Investment — operate (more…)

A long-term genomic analysis of the common peach has revealed important insights into how scientists can improve the biofuel potential of other plant species, including the fast-growing poplar tree, a new study says.

Three years after a team of scientists first released a draft description of the annotated peach genome, (more…)

According to a new study, 16.7 percent of French employees were teleworking at least once a week in 2012. There has been a sharp increase since 2011, when only 12.7 percent were teleworking.

This comes only a month after Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, has asked her employees to stop telecommuting. However, as we shall see here, this (more…)

Alphabet Energy (Alphabet) is a Hayward, California, company that develops thermoelectric materials and products that convert waste heat to electric power.

Alphabet’s web site provides this overview of the concept of thermoelectrics:

Thermoelectrics are solid-state semiconductors that (more…)

An ambitious plan to expand the western Chinese city of Lanzhou into a regional industrial hub is raising concerns over what critics call lax government oversight of the environmental and safety impacts, including worries that it will siphon huge amounts of water from an already parched region and devastate nearby mountains. (more…)

All across the globe, communities are celebrating International World Water Day and according the UN’s World Water Day website, over 450 events have been planned this year!

This year’s theme is in part a reflection of the International Year of Water Cooperation. The day is (more…)

A team of researchers says it has demonstrated a method of underground carbon storage that reduces the risk of triggering earthquakes, a safety concern cited by some scientists about the emerging field of carbon capture and sequestration.

While often cited as a potentially key option in (more…)

China’s new premier, Li Keqiang, has vowed aggressive government action to curb the rampant pollution that has provoked growing public outrage, saying the country would phase out “backward production facilities” that have contributed to dangerous health conditions in numerous regions. (more…)

Making good on his promise to fight climate change more aggressively in his second term, President Obama is unveiling two major initiatives to reduce the U.S.’s reliance on fossil fuels, including a new $2 billion Energy Security Trust to fund the next generation of green vehicles, as well as new reviews of federal projects to assess their climate impacts. (more…)

Bloomberg news reports that European Union carbon permits dropped to their second-lowest close ever, after the bloc canceled an auction of permits for the first time as bids failed to reach a secret reserve price.

The sale was called off because the price would have cleared “significantly” below the prevailing (more…)