At the end of March, Arctic sea ice had re-frozen to an unusual degree -- there was more ice than average. The last three months have brought the story of Arctic sea ice back on depressing track. There's never been so little ice in the Arctic in June, and there's never been more ice lost during the month of June, not since humans started measuring it anyway.
When we think of wind power, we mainly think of large, sprawling wind farms, but in developing nations, smaller, distributed wind projects could be a perfect fit.
Several thousand villages across India are not connected to the national grid. In those rural areas, one small wind turbine could generate enough electricity to cover the basic needs of a home, like cooling and lighting. Localized, distributed wind power would also carry the advantage of not needing expansive transmission lines to carry electricity from centralized power plants to remote villages.
PAYERNE, Switzerland — At the pace of a fast bicycle, a solar-powered plane took to the skies for its maiden flight Wednesday, passing an important test on the way to a historic voyage around the world – a journey that would not use a drop of fuel.
The Solar Impulse lifted off from a military airport at a speed no faster than 28 mph (45 kph) after briefly accelerating down the runway. It slowly gained altitude above the green-and-beige fields and eventually faded into the horizon as villagers watched from the nearest hills.
Every so often there comes about a concept design that has potential to make big changes for a community or demographic. It's rare, and even rarer to see those designs come to fruition. However, the Solar Pebble hopes to be just such a design.
It is being touted by several green-minded gadget blogs as a "game changer." Inhabitat even says it has the potential to replace kerosene lamps, which are harsh on the environment and rather dangerous for users.
The clean tech news of the week is going to be dominated by Bloom Energy's emergence from stealth. I can hardly believe that it was almost four years ago that I first wrote about Bloom. Reading that 2006 EcoGeek article, I'm proud to say that we got got the broad picture right, but the details are still tantalizing.
Ten 200 ton buoys—each measuring 150 feet by 40 feet—are being installed off the coast of Oregon to build America's first wave power farm. They'll power 400 homes by harnessing "the energy of wave motion." Worth $60 million?
Of course, of course. Clean, renewable energy is almost always worth it. The trouble with wave farms is that they haven't shown much success yet. They're currently about six times as costly as wind farms, are easily damaged by large waves, and the first ones didn't work out so well:
Building a home that is inexpensive and unique in same time is real challenge today. A perfect example how home can be built with less money is this house which is designed by architects Claire Helene Drouin and Jean Marie Sanchez.
The entire house is built with 15 recycled shipping containers. After it is finished, you would never notice that it is built from containers and it has a very fashionable design.
COPENHAGEN - Danish police fired pepper spray and beat protesters with batons outside the U.N. climate conference Wednesday, as disputes inside left major issues unresolved just two days before world leaders hope to sign a historic agreement to fight global warming.
After a flurry of activity over the past several weeks, the Solar Impulse team have finally taken their first steps towards solar flight. The prototype of the aircraft designed to be the first to fly around the world powered only by the sun, has completed the first taxi tests down the runway at its home airport in Switzerland.
With the four electric motors running on sunlight, these first tests were slow, only getting up to about 10 knots. Initially the team used safety gear to protect the aircraft in case of a failure of the landing gear. But eventually the aircraft was able to taxi without the use of safety gear, just as it would for a normal takeoff.
We’ve seen some pretty energy efficient homes here at Inhabitat, but houses that actually give back to the grid seemed to be a thing of the future — until now. Swedish designers are currently constructing Villa Akarp, a residence that aims to combine energy conservation, energy recovery and energy generation technologies. If all goes as planned, the home will actually produce more energy than it uses and provide the excess to the grid.
Shop for Solar Panels
