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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

Identifying Common Fire Hazards in Your Building Is An Environmental IssueA fire in your building can have a devastating effect on your property and the surrounding area; and can even place people’s lives in danger. When a building blaze occurs, the fire produces not only heat and smoke, but also toxic emissions and gases harmful to the environment. Buildings contain a wide variety of synthetic materials, including insulation, electrical equipment, carpeting, and soft furnishings and, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the potential for severe health impacts from smoke inhalation during building fires is continuously increasing. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Regulating Emissions: In the US, Nothing Comes EasyYesterday morning, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey led a coalition of 24 states in filing a lawsuit to prohibit the EPA from implementing its groundbreaking limits on the amount of harmful carbon pollution power plants can spew into our air.

Now I’m sure that those (38%) of 2GreenEnergy readers residing outside the US may think that this is impossible, that perhaps I just tried to slip one in on you to see if you were paying attention.  I only wish that were the case.  West Virginia (pictured) is arguably the most scenic state in the union; it’s a shame it doesn’t share the same beauty in terms of wisdom and morality.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

photo UC_Santa_Barbara_zps8a51d53b.png2GreenEnergy intern Fabio Porcu and I spent a good portion of the day yesterday with my colleague John Perlin, scholar in residence at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Last year, I conducted a series of interviews with John in which he walked me through the highlights of his popular book on the history of solar power:  “Let It Shine, the 6000 Year Story of Solar Energy.”

In our talk with him yesterday, John not only showed us UCSB’s new 420 KW solar PV array whose construction he had overseen, but he walked us through some of the peripheral technology that enables huge quantities of solar to be integrated into the grid mix, e.g., this energy storage device, the “charge controller.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Glenn Doty: As a Senior Energy Analyst, He’s No Stranger To Doing the NumbersI’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with some enormously bright people in my day, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone with a stronger facility for math and science than our frequent participator here Glenn Doty (though a possible exception is Glenn’s father David).  Numbers play a big role in almost every conversation that I’ve ever had with Glenn (pictured); normally we’re discussing things like gigatons of CO2 emissions, terawatts of energy generation, or stoichiometry (the part of chemistry that uses quantitative data to understand chemical reactions). (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Lesson in Sustainability--Green CleaningLeading a sustainable life is something that we are all striving for. Sustainability can appear in all kinds of different ways. In order to achieve the sustainable lifestyle, it is certain that we as people have to make some adaptation and changes when it comes to our lives. Going green in every aspect of our lives is crucial not only for our wellbeing but for the wellbeing of the complete planet. It is important to start with simple things. For instance, if everyone could adapt a more green way of cleaning, it would be a small step for an individual but a huge step for the planet. Here are a couple of tips on how to switch to green cleaning. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

What Does Being Energy Efficient Mean? As a homeowner, you’ve probably heard the phrase “energy efficiency” before—whether at a home department store, on the news, or from your homeowner’s association. But what exactly does this phrase mean, and how can you implement it in your own home? Read our blog below to learn more.

What Is Energy Efficiency? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Everything New Seemed Impossible—Until It ExistedAccording to the Writer’s Almanac, it was on this day in 1897 that the first comic strip appeared in a newspaper.  Why is that worth mentioning here? It was a new dimension, a new modality to our civilization’s capacity for expressing itself, a statement to the effect that: I have a new way of communicating something of value to the world around me.

Not too far into the future, we’ll find it in ourselves to get across to one another something that today seems impossibly distant: the notion that war is obsolete.  We simply won’t do that anymore; we will no longer endorse the ceaseless death and dismemberment of brave, young soldiers and the innocent people around them that we refer to as “collateral damage.” (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Marketing: Giving Something To Get SomethingI’ve spent my career of 30+ years developing skills at telling stories.  In particular, I learned how to take a product whose benefit set is potentially confusing, or may be something of a snooze, and explain in riveting detail how it has the potential to change the customer’s life.  Most of my experience is in the business-to-business realm, working for clients like IBM, H-P, 3Com, Sony, Microsoft, and Fujitsu; normally, I was tasked with marketing information technology and communications products and solutions to a corporate, professional audience.  More recently, of course, I’ve focused on cleantech–but my point here is that most of the principles at stake here are universal, and apply equally to consumer marketing.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

In Canada: Ding Dong, the Witch Is DeadThe landslide victory of Justin Trudeau (pictured with wife Sophie) in Canada this week and the end of Stephen Harper’s reign marks a wonderful moment in world politics, particularly for those of us who believe that climate change is an important issue.  Harper’s mission, i.e., extracting every molecule of shale gas from New Brunswick and tar sands from Alberta will immediately be replaced with the application of reason and compassion for the fate of our civilization here on Earth.

It’s a good reason to celebrate, and it’s one of the many reasons that we can rationally expect more progress from the upcoming meetings in Paris than we had in any previous meetings.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

How Hot Does It Have To Get?

It’s interesting to see the world reaction to news like this, i.e., that 2015 is far hotter than the previous hottest year on record (2014). It makes one wonder: exactly what average temperatures do we need to achieve before we figure out that we have a serious problem? Maybe this information, in conjunction with the news that ExxonMobil has been deliberately deceiving the world about anthropogenic climate change for the last 35 years, will stimulate some real action in this space.

(More legible graphic below) (more…)

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