Recently, Belgium created the Belgium Plan, providing the required steps the European country will need to achieve in an effort to meet their renewable energy and energy efficiency objectives. As the capital of Belgium, the city of Brussels is looking to do its part to streamline the objectives and have Brussels (more…)

Solar power tends to be big because it covers a large amount of area with its panels. The world’s largest solar thermal power plant (by physical size) is nearly double the size of the original largest in Denmark — is now online in Saudi Arabia, reinforcing the notion that this Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and a lot of sunlight. As long as the sun shines this sort of power is virtually (more…)

For many villagers in rural areas of India, personal banking comes at a high cost. In addition to the expense of traveling to the nearest branch, often in distant cities, they must often forgo a day’s work. Vortex Engineering, a start-up incubated at Chennai’s Indian Institute of Technology, has come up with a solution that not only saves rural Indians the day’s (more…)

Water and wasterwater facilities in California, Arizona and Nevada will be enjoying the benefits of solar power thanks to a new partnership struck with Kennedy/Jenks. Water treatment is an energy-hungry method, therefore introducing clean, renewable energy can reduce its environmental footprint. (more…)

At this week’s Plug-In Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Conference I had a wonderful conversation with a senior player at Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I began by validating him for coming to a show like this; to me it shows, at a minimum, a kind of progressive, forward-thinking approach to the business. (more…)

First Solar, Inc., the U.S.’s biggest solar manufacturer, will lay off 2,000 workers and close its German factory, citing what the company called fundamental changes to the industry and “deteriorating market conditions” in Europe.

The Arizona-based company, which had been the (more…)

The Philippines, formally known as the Republic of the Philippines, is an island country located in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. It is surrounded by a number of countries, including Taiwan, Vietnam, Borneo, and Indonesia. It is located right on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Its tropical climate may make the country prone to typhoons and earthquakes, but it (more…)

More than two-thirds of U.S. adults believe global warming made several recent extreme weather events even worse, according to a new survey.

According to the report, released by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change (more…)

All CFLs contain mercury, typically about 4 mg. Some manufacturers have reduced the amount to as little as 1 mg in some types of CFLs, and more manufacturers are following suit. Today, very few household products contain any mercury. Before the 1980s you could find mercury in paint, pesticides, dental fillings and fever thermometers. (more…)

Earlier this week, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) of Brazil launched a pilot program to accelerate green patent applications (see the Folha news piece here).

The goal of the program is to reduce the period of examination of patent applications related to green (more…)