High energy bills are only one side of wasting electricity, the other side of the coin being an increased carbon footprint and thus affecting the environment in the long run. Prices for utilities are likely to go up as time goes by, so you would do well to adapt accordingly with some smart approaches to the subject. The following tips will give you the knowledge you need: (more…)
A young reader of 2GreenEnergy asks for my reaction to Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk’ s decision to open up many of his company’s patents into the public domain:
Are you watching Chris Hayes on MSNBC? He just ran an interview with Elon Musk where Elon said he was opening up his patents to the public and would not pursue intellectual property charges against anyone that used his technology.
I respond: (more…)
I notice periodic comments and guest blogs on the prospect of beaming energy from space; linked here is one that went up today.
I feel I should point out that this will never happen. Why? Because it doesn’t need to happen. At all times during the day and night, 6000 times more power from the sun is directly incident on the Earth than all of us are consuming. Even if our population’s appetite for energy doubles, which is indeed likely, we still need a solution that captures only 1/3000 of the solar energy we’re receiving, and that’s discounting all other forms of renewable/clean energy, developed now and into the future.
Given that, we need to ask ourselves which sounds more practical: (more…)
We’ve all noticed the phenomenon associated with “things coming in clumps.” For example, we may have lived to this point in our lives without ever having come across a certain word, only to hear it used two or three times in an amazingly brief stretch of time. Or maybe we become aware of some model of car for the first time, and then start to notice them everywhere in our travels. (more…)
All around the world, companies working in different industries are seeing the benefits of going green, whether it is from a purely financial aspect or because they want to help Mother Earth by being more environmentally friendly. The food hospitality trade as a whole is a wasteful industry, due in large part to the considerable amount of water, electricity and paper that a restaurant uses on a daily basis. Thankfully, in recent years there has been a notable change in the amount of restaurants going green in a proactive attempt to curb the amount of pollution and waste that is starting to envelop our planet. (more…)
Drones, in spite of the stigma surrounding them, are proving to be an asset in the modern world. For all of the deaths that result from the deployment of drones by militaries, there are several ways that drones improve society, from delivering medical supplies in emergencies to collecting data for researchers – all with low fuel cost and little damage to the environment. (more…)
Recently, the United States Naval Research Laboratory put into plans to build solar panels that are to be placed in space with the capability to beam the energy collected directly to Earth. Sounds like a plot to a James Bond film? Nope. In fact, it’s becoming a reality. There are even plans in the works to use robots to assemble the solar panels which are estimated to be a kilometer long. If the US Navy is successful in this project, what kind of benefits could humanity see from future developments on a civilian scale? (more…)
My mother wrote to me earlier today about the need for immigration reform, noting that any successful political party needs to embrace the notion. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, I responded:
I agree, both that a) our immigration processes are broken, and b) everyone associated with law-making needs to participate actively in fixing this and all other broken processes (or at least appear like they’re participating), lest they leave voters angry, and anxious for retribution.
This is what has me so vexed about our energy (more…)
I can’t be the only one who keeps coming across a press release suggesting that the U.S. Navy is successfully making fuel out of seawater. Here is a conversation I had with a friend in which I explain why this has to be a hoax: (more…)
My friend Jon Lesage is an extremely senior journalist in the transportation space, and offers the following note on Uber.
Uber is public enemy No. 1 for taxis and other ground transportation companies. (more…)
