Why would a company buy thousands of trucks and vans fresh off the assembly line and install a bulky and expensive new fuel system? As I report in my latest piece for National Geographic, it comes down to the bottom line.
In a time when natural gas is relatively cheap, but manufacturers build mostly gasoline and diesel models, companies like AT&T and Verizon have calculated it’s worth the expense to convert some gasoline vehicles to burn compressed natural gas. Read the full article here.
Posted in Auto, Energy, Transportation
Tagged AT&T, Fuel, Fuel Costs, Natural Gas, Trucking, Verizon
Google is making its largest investment yet in clean energy, setting up a $280 million fund to finance home solar rooftop installations.
The search giant announced it was teaming up with the Silicon Valley’s SolarCity—a company chaired by Paypal co-founder and Tesla Motors executive Elon Musk—in an effort to break down the biggest barrier to solar energy adoption: the cost. Continue reading
Tagged Elon Musk, Google, National Geographic, Solar, SolarCity
In the weeks after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in early 2011, I wrote a series of stories for National Geographic Digital Media exploring three critical questions:
For decades, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have served as shorthand for the nightmare of nuclear power generation gone awry. In the wake of Japan’s deadly earthquake and tsunami last week, the still-unfolding disaster of Fukushima Daiichi has come closer than any nuclear crisis in history to making it a fearsome trio. Yet key differences key differences that set the current Fukushima situation apart from the 1979 Three Mile Island emergency near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, that unfolded seven years later. Read more>>
Would brand-new reactors have fared better in the power outage that triggered dangerous overheating at one of Japan’s oldest power plants? The answer seems to be: Not necessarily. The vast majority of plants under construction around the world, 47 in all, are the same 1970s vintage as Fukushima Daiichi, and without integrated passive safety systems. Read more>>
The Metsamor power station is one of a mere handful of remaining nuclear reactors of its kind that were built without primary containment structures. All five of these first-generation water-moderated Soviet units are past or near their original retirement ages, but one salient fact sets Armenia’s reactor apart from the four in Russia. Metsamor lies on some of Earth’s most earthquake-prone terrain. Read more>>
Posted in Energy
Tagged Armenia, Chernobyl, Earthquakes, Fukushima, Japan, Metsamor, National Geographic, Nuclear, Three Mile Island, Tsunami
What would lead a company to walk away from negotiations for a coveted federal loan guarantee, as solar company Suniva did recently? As I learned while reporting this article for Earth2Tech, it has to do with the terms of the government deals, the time it takes to obtain one, and the recovery of private markets. Continue reading
For decades, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have served as shorthand for the nightmare of nuclear power generation gone awry. In the wake of Japan’s deadly earthquake and tsunami, the disaster of Fukushima Daiichi has come closer than any nuclear crisis in history to making it a fearsome trio. Continue reading
Posted in Energy
Tagged Analysis, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Japan, National Geographic, Nuclear, Three Mile Island, Tsunami
Just about one year into his role heading up the Department of Energy’s loan program office, former venture capitalist Jonathan Silver believes the agency has come a long way from it’s first few years of neglect and delays.
For this piece published by GigaOM’s Earth2Tech, I sat down with Silver in San Francisco and got his take on Solyndra’s shuttered factory; a leaked memo from White House officials expressing concern about the DOE loan guarantee program; and the importance of the 1603 tax-grant program for big renewable energy projects (just extended), among other topics. He also offered some hints about what lies ahead for the green car loan program in 2011.
What if every gallon of gas in our cars and lump of coal in our power plants did extra duty? What if we could get more work out of our fuel? That’s the basic idea of waste heat recovery systems — a topic I’ve explored (and explained) over on National Geographic in this article about a high-tech startup that aims to give a boost to decades-old cogeneration technology.
By providing a thermoelectric chip that can be inserted into any exhaust flue or engine to convert heat into electrical power, San Francisco, Calif.-based Alphabet Energy hopes to become the “Intel of waste heat.” The company’s efforts fit into a larger drive by researchers, entrepreneurs, and trade groups to make use of heat energy that’s currently thrown away by factories, power plants, cars and even laptop computers. This article is part of a special National Geographic series that explores energy issues.
Chip equipment maker Applied Materials announced today that it is acquiring 7-year-old startup Advent Solar. While the amount for the Advent deal has not been disclosed, Lux Research analyst Ted Sullivan told me for this Earth2Tech post that it, “was done very cheaply….Investors did not get their money back — pennies on the dollar is a very safe assumption.”
“Inventing disruptive manufacturing innovations is every bit as hard as inventing new materials,” says Frank van Mierlo, President and co-founder of 1366 Technologies. Solar power, if it’s going to compete on cost with coal and other fossil fuels, needs both. It’s on that premise that 1366, a developer of new machines and processes that can be easily integrated into solar companies’ existing manufacturing lines, has based its business model. Read more over on Earth2Tech. This post also appeared (through syndication) on BusinessWeek.com.
Tagged 1366 Tecnologies, BusinessWeek, Earth2Tech, Solar, Startup Profile
