solar power

News & Comments, Renewables February 20, 2018

Meet the new ‘renewable superpowers’: nations that boss the materials used for wind and solar

Imagine a world where every country has not only complied with the Paris climate agreement but has moved away from fossil fuels entirely. How…

Renewables, Solar November 30, 2016

Europe’s climate policy goals hinge on renewables, solar power

The Paris Agreement on climate change is an international commitment that can only be kept by the European Union if effective, consistent policy drives the…

Articles Current Issue Policy & Strategy

India’s third way

From death came life. Cremation, a traditional ceremony for the 8.5 million Hindus dying each year in India, is emotionally and environmentally fraught. An estimated 50 million trees are felled to build the pyres. The fires meanwhile emit about eight…

Articles CCS Current Issue

The Allam Cycle fires up

Last April the town of Laporte, Texas, was the setting for what could prove to be a turning point in the losing battle against carbon emissions. In this otherwise nondescript Houston suburb, tech start-up Net Power successfully fired up a…

Articles Current Issue Innovation

Environmentalism 4.0

Global leaders at the latest World Economic Forum 2018 Meeting in Davos were talking about “the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the drastic changes that technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) are having across the global economy. When we talk…

Articles Current Issue Innovation

The true carbon footprint of photovoltaic energy

The sun is an inexhaustible energy resource to generate electricity apparently without toxic pollutants or effects on global warming. Certainly, solar energy systems (photovoltaics, solar thermal, solar power) offer significant benefits in comparison to the conventional energy sources, but that…

Articles Current Issue Nature & Environment

Pleistocene Park: protecting the future by returning to the past

It is a well-known fact that burning fossil fuels causes the buildup of greenhouse gases which leads to global warming. This results in melting permafrost producing even more greenhouse gases which further accelerates climate change. Permafrost is defined as ground…

Articles Current Issue Last Exit

Cockatoo Island

Located in Sydney Harbour, Australia, Cockatoo Island, between 1839 and 1869, operated as a convict penal establishment, for convicts who had re-offended in the colonies. But Cockatoo Island was also the site of one of Australia’s biggest shipyards, operating between…

Articles Current Issue Nature & Environment Policy & Strategy

From Australia to El Salvador to Vietnam, the environment is finally getting its day in court

When the improper disposal of wastewater from the construction site of a joint shopping center and apartment complex threatened to contaminate hundreds of residents’ water in Sonsonate, El Salvador, activists and community leaders filed a lawsuit through the country’s specialized…

Advanced Tech Articles Current Issue

These are the world’s most innovative cities, and here’s why

Innovation is seen as a key ingredient for successful cities in the 21st century economy, as new technologies constantly emerge to disrupt the status quo. The idea of an “innovative city” can cover a broad range of different styles, sectors…

Articles Climate Change Current Issue

Antarctica has lost 3 trillion tonnes of ice in 25 years

Antarctica lost 3 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, according to a new analysis of satellite observations. In vulnerable West Antarctica, the annual rate of ice loss has tripled during that period, reaching 159 billion tonnes a year.…

Articles Climate Change Current Issue

Amid High-Tech alternatives, a reckoning for Iceland’s glacier keepers

A 30-meter, Komelon-branded measuring tape, a pencil, and a yellow paper form are all Hallsteinn Haraldsson carries with him when he travels to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in western Iceland. But unfurling the measuring tape before me at his home in…