Green Tech

Dealing a blow to the solar and wind industries, the U.S. Senate is expected to pass an energy bill later on Thursday that strips out a tax provision to encourage investment in renewable energies.

The House last week passed an energy bill that extended tax incentives beyond 2008 for businesses and consumers who purchase renewable energy systems.

On Thursday, the Senate delayed passage of the bill until later today, a move which will lead to the removal of the tax provision, according to industry executives and published reports.

The centerpiece of the energy bill is an overhaul to the … Read more

Solar thermal company Ausra will cut the ribbon on a large factory in anticipation of a construction boom in solar power plants in the Southwest United States.

Flanked by government officials, Ausra executives are scheduled to dedicate a 130,000-square-foot facility capable of turning out enough thermal collectors to generate 200 megawatts every month. That translates into about 70 megawatts of electricity capacity per month, according to the company.

At that rate, the plant will be be able to manufacture enough electricity capacity to power half a million homes per year year at equivalent prices to gas-fired power plants, said … Read more

Correction at 3:30 p.m. PST Thursday: Blame my Rust Belt ignorance. The Ohio river that burned is the Cuyahoga.

SAN FRANCISCO--I've been spending some time at the the American Geophysical Union conference here, and I've had a recurring thought: When it comes to apocalyptic predictions, geophysicists have the Book of Revelations beat, hands down.

Sometime in the last few years, the idea that global warming is a reality and that it's caused in large measure by people has finally started sinking in. But perhaps because of the remaining skepticism, and more likely because of the … Read more

CNET News.com feature: The IT revolution sparked on the East and West Coasts of the United States and spread from there. But in green tech, the heartland got an early invitation.

Over the last three years, an avalanche of venture capital has flowed into start-ups developing technology to use natural resources more efficiently. Incumbent fuel producers and energy utilities are also investing in alternative fuels and power sources.

Most of the new company creation is rooted in the traditional financial investment centers in Silicon Valley and the Northeast U.S.

But the middle of the country is playing a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Warmth may not be an attribute you associate with a place where the sun doesn't shine in the winter and the sea freezes over, but all things are relative. And compared to earlier years, the Arctic was downright sweltering this year.

According to new research presented here at the the American Geophysical Union conference, the Arctic Ocean reached record high temperatures, arctic ice diminished to a record low, and ice melted on Greenland for a record number of days.

"In 2007, we had off-the-charts warming" of the Arctic Sea in the summer, said Mike Steele, an … Read more

Last week, I traveled to Berlin with a delegation representing Northern Ohio's Regional Energy Development Task Force to attend the European Offshore Wind Conference and Exhibition, put on by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). We visited to learn about the status of offshore wind energy technologies, as part of the Task Force's assessment of the proposed Great Lakes Wind Energy Center, which is envisioned to accelerate the development and emergence of offshore wind in the United States.

With offshore currently just a tiny niche of the booming wind industry, I expected the audience to be on the … Read more

IBM has partnered with two other companies to build an application that they say can accurately measure corporate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The software, called GreenCert, is built on IBM's infrastructure software and tools from C-Lock Technology, which can accurately measure reductions in greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide. The companies are expected to detail the application on Wednesday.

Many companies are undergoing initiatives to reduce their carbon emissions, as part of corporate social responsibility or environmental programs.

Having a method to measure and certify those reductions is significant because it will allow those companies to sell those … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Scientists are trying to peer a bit further into the future than the typical five-day weather forecasts available today.

Forecasting weather is a notoriously tough challenge that combines physics modeling, data collection, and computer processing--and unlike many scientific problems, pretty much everyone on the planet cares how well it's done. But forecasts today peter out after a few days, leaving a cloud of uncertainty (forgive me) that only lifts when it comes to predicting seasonal weather phenomena such as El Nino.

Scientists are now getting a handle on intermediate-term forecasts by computer models of a particular type of … Read more

Tempted to obsess over how another personal habit helps or hurts the Earth? Keep surfing with cable or DSL and you might save carbons in the process, according to the American Consumer Institute.

The world would be spared 1 billion tons of greenhouse gases within a decade if broadband Internet access were pervasive, the group's report (PDF) concluded in October.

Broadband is available to 95 percent of U.S. households but active in only half of them, the study said, noting that near-universal adoption of high-speed Internet would cut the equivalent of 11 percent of oil imports to the … Read more