Green news harvest: Wal-Mart sustainabililty push, a green New Deal?
Ideas for new materials to reduce electronic waste, a critical look at green guru William McDonough, digging into Blacklight Power's clean energy claims, funding for wind projects dries up, Wal-Mart and Duke Power duke it out of solar plan.
- Wal-Mart to toughen standards--NYTimes.com
Wal-Mart to perform environmental and societal audits on suppliers. The business logic: poor business practices (dumping toxics, employing children) lead to lower-quality products. - Green guru gone wrong: William McDonough--Fast Company
Fast Company takes a critical look at famed green architect and clean-tech VC who created "cradle-to-cradle" certification. - Cracking the case of recycled gadgets--Science Daily
Rather than manually disassemble electronics for recycling, a special material would allow them to disassemble by themselves under high heat. - New Deal approach needed for climate change: U.N.--Reuters
The opposite view to stalling energy initiatives because of economic downturn. - Blacklight Power bolsters its impossible claims of a new renewable energy source--VentureBeat
One of these "is-it-too-good-to-be-true?" energy companies claims an initial validation. - Energy financing gone with the wind--Greentech Media
As we've reported, financing renewable energy projects with debt is not happening, echoed here by BP wind exec. - Wal-Mart says Duke's solar roof plan unfair--Environmental Leader
When business models collide. Wal-Mart contends that Duke's $100 million solar plan discourages panel ownership at big-box retail outlets. - Daimler starts mobility concept for the city: Car2go--press release
Interesting effort to reinvent meaning of "car company." Electric city cars, rented by time, in Germany. - Evergreen Solar files suit against Lehman Bros.--Boston Globe
Some unexpected fallout from Wall Street meltdown: solar company says that Lehman Bros. transferred Evergreen stock to Barclay's after acquisition, allegedly violating terms. - Alternative energy suddenly faces headwinds--NYTimes.com
Falling gas prices and the credit crisis, in addition to intense competition for government spending, mean difficulty for clean tech sector. - Cobalt Biofuels raises $25 million to commercialize next generation biofuel: Biobutanol--press release
Unlike ethanol, butanol doesn't corrode pipelines and can run in a gasoline car, say backers. Probably not the last butanol firm to form.
Solar panels at an experimental Wal-Mart store in Texas
(Credit: Wal-Mart)
