On Dec. 16, the Obama administration is expected to finally release new standards for protecting us from mercury and other toxic heavy metals from power plant emissions. All of us have reason to be glad, but parents (and anyone who might ever want to be a parent) should especially welcome this long (more…)

The World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, has allocated $110 million to Kenya to finance increased production of geothermal power.

The World Bank released a statement commenting, “MIGA has increased its coverage against the risks of transfer restriction, expropriation, and war and civil (more…)

The Andalucia region of Spain has developed many solar firsts: the world’s first commercial solar power tower (PS10), the largest (PS20), as well as the world’s first solar power plant that generates solar electricity past midnight.  Andalucia will soon add another first to that shiny list: the world’s first commercial baseload solar power plant. (more…)

As a country with enormous potential for both wind power and solar energy, India has been steadily working towards building up the respective technologies to establish their renewable energy reputation. One of the areas they have yet to consider, however, is tidal and wave based energies and India is about to make a change for the better in that department. With plans to (more…)

Singer Bjork Iceland’s most famous export, joined her fellow countrymen and women last week as part of a three-day karaoke marathon protest against Canadian firm Magma Energy’s growing stake in Iceland’s HS Orka power plant.

Magma Energy is a geothermal exploration power company founded in 2008. It says on (more…)

We think we know how smart grid technology will change the utility industry. But do we really?

Take a look at this documentary made in 1969. It’s a view of how the world perceived the coming Internet (It’s also a pretty amusing look at how sexist our society still was at that point.) (more…)

By year’s end, regulators are expected to approve a host of solar energy projects in California that could eventually produce as much electricity as several nuclear plants. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, John Woolard, the CEO of the company that has begun (more…)

After years of delay, things are finally heating up for large-scale solar thermal power plants in California’s remote deserts. In the last month, a California Energy Commission (CEC) siting committee has recommended at least five solar plants for approval. Last week the first of these projects gained official go-ahead from the agency. The Beacon Solar Energy project (more…)

Want to lower your utility bills or even get energy for free? Companies like Dow Chemical are developing solar shingles and other innovative technologies to turn your home into a personal power plant. Energy will be essentially free.

Three decades ago information was expensive and scarce. Data processing was autocratic, monolithic, and centralized. There were big mainframe computers ‘out there’ and ‘dumb’ users here. The personal computer, the internet, and mobile telephones changed all that.

Today information is essentially free.

Scarce data turned into the Internet torrent and now data is so abundant that the first company who helped us intelligently filter this onslaught of information became the most successful company of the last decade: Google. Today information technology is distributed, grid-independent, and scalable. Now billions of people with a mobile phone, personal computer, and internet connection can generate, store, process, and publish data. The basic architecture of information technology changed.

Energy is where data was three decades ago.

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HelioFocus Ltd., an Israel-based solar thermal systems start-up, has raised more than $10 million from China’s Zhejiang Sanhua Co. and existing investor IC Green Energy.

HelioFocus announced the investment last week at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, where HelioFocus is developing its solar thermal technology to boost electricity production of existing power plants.

HelioFocus CEO Ory Zik said Sanhua, the Chinese maker of appliance components whose stock is traded on the Shenzhen stock exchange, would be not just a financial investor in the company, but will also produce some solar thermal components.

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