Skip to main content

Clean Energy



Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven’t worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.


Due to steady technological and manufacturing advances, the price of solar cells has dropped 99.5% since 1977. Solar will soon be more cost efficient than fossil fuels. The cost of wind energy has also dropped to an all-time low, and in the last decade represented about a third of newly installed US energy capacity.


Forward thinking organizations are taking advantage of this. For example, in India there is an initiative to convert airports to self-sustaining clean energy.


Tesla is making high-performance, affordable electric cars, and installing electric charging stations worldwide.








There are hopeful signs that clean energy could soon be reaching a tipping point. For example, in Japan, there are now more electric charging stations than gas stations.


And Germany produces so much renewable energy, it sometimes produces even more than it can use.

Comments

Post a Comment

Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

The onesie that monitors your baby

High-tech helicopter parent, this one’s for you. The Mimo Baby Shirt measures infant respiration, skin temperature, body position, sleep patterns and activity levels. The organic (of course) cotton onesie is fitted with machine-washable sensors that can be monitored in real time through your home’s Wi-Fi network. It also includes a microphone, so that you can stream your baby’s sound to your smartphone, and the accompanying app allows you to crunch analytics about your baby’s sleep patterns. Originally marketed to medical device development companies, they had a direct-to-consumer eureka moment when parents began contacting them to use their sensors, and, according to their website, they “haven’t looked back since.” For $299 — a package that includes three onesies that come in only one size for infants up to 3 months — you can pick up one of these at your local Babies “R” Us.
2 comments
Read more

Better Food through Science

Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system. For example, entrepreneurs are developing new food products that are tasty and nutritious substitutes for traditional foods but far more environmentally friendly. The startup Impossible Foods invented meat products that look and taste like the real thing but are actually made of plants. Their burger uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and produces 87% less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional burgers. Other startups are creating plant-based replacements for milk, eggs, and other common foods. Soylent is a healthy, inexpensive meal replacement that uses advanced engineered ingredients that are much friendlier to the environment than traditional ingredients. Some of these products...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone

By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today’s smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers. Internet-connected smartphones give ordinary people abilities that, just a short time ago, were only available to an elite few: “Right now, a Masai warrior on a mobile phone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile communications than the president did 25 years ago. If he’s on a smart phone using Google, he has access to more information than the U.S. president did just 15 years ago.” — Peter Diamandis
2 comments
Read more