renewable energy

The past couple of weeks have seen the convergence of two troubling trends. Perhaps most troubling, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography released data last week from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere have reached record levels...

If electric cars are supposed to clean up the environment and reduce global warming—and they are—EV drivers would like to rely on 100 percent renewable energy to do charge. And charging networks are striving to provide it. Many, including Tesla with its Supercharger stations, are...

A new transmission line between Wyoming and the Hoover Dam could help solve some of the issues regarding renewable energy production and demand.

Researchers find that there are many more sites conducive to pumped hydro for encouraging renewable sources.

Tech giant Qualcomm sells its Halo wireless charging business to rival WiTricity. GM and Amazon could be in talks to invest in startup electric pickup-maker Rivian. A new computer model tests how a 100-percent renewable power grid would have held up to the recent polar vortex. And results of last...

Last week, two prominent Congressional Democrats released an outline of a "Green New Deal" that they hope will spur discussion and even commitment to eliminating fossil-fuel use. The Resolution picked up support from a wide range of other Democrats in Congress, while others expressed caution. The...

For electric-car drivers looking to emit less pollution as the drive, 2019 could be a banner year. The U.S. electric grid has been getting gradually greener as utilities replace coal fired powerplants with primarily wind and natural gas. That trend is due to reach a tipping point in 2019, according...

Sit down before you read this. Good. With all the dire warnings about climate-change coming from the most recent studies—from the Fourth National Climate Assessment released on Black Friday to an October report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which showed that catastrophic...

Americans want renewable electricity, and they want it now. That's the conclusion of a new study that has large power providers buzzing with nerves, according to a recent report on Vox. The report, done for the Edison Electric Institute and presented at a recent meeting of the utility trade group...

There's a lot of good data to be found in public reports from national labs and other government research papers, but it's not always easy to find or easy to parse. For years, federal Department of Energy collected and published that information—but it has eliminated that effort under the...

Drivers who buy an electric car that plugs into the power grid to recharge the battery often start to consider the source of their energy. A 2012 analysis from California, in the earliest days of modern electric cars, indicated as many as four in 10 electric-car drivers were already using or...

Today, there are roughly 750,000 plug-in electric vehicles on U.S. roads and about 3,800 powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Proponents of each type of vehicle argue strenuously that their powertrain is a better way to produce vehicles with zero emissions from the tailpipe. Electric cars can be charged...

A majority of the photovoltaic solar panels used in the U.S. are imported from such countries as China, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Now, environmentalists and energy analysts worry that the new 30-percent tariff on solar-panel imports announced last Monday by President Donald...

Renewable-energy generation costs are falling like photons onto a solar panel. By 2020, it's expected all types of renewable-energy generation will be able to compete with fossil fuels on cost. That's right: saving our environment will actually save electric utilities some money, too. DON'T MISS...

For much of last year, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry pursued a plan that, in essence, would prop up the financially challenged U.S. coal and nuclear industries. His proposal, submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last fall, provided financial subsidies to electric-generation...

Five years ago, an electric-utility think tank issued a dire warning to its members: Your century-old business model is ending. The continually falling costs of renewable energy generation, especially solar panels, would begin to erode utilities' business from its most profitable customers, the...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a bet that he'd build the world's largest lithium-ion battery in Australia in 100 days. If his company failed, Musk would personally pay for the project, but the battery is now ready for its first test ahead of full operation—and on schedule. The massive...

Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. In the case of the rapidly rising rate of solar installations for electricity generation, numerous forecasts by internationally respected bodies have proven woefully conservative. The chart in the tweet below, created by Auke Hoekstra at the...

Earlier this month, the 30th World Solar Challenge kicked off in Darwin, Australia, with 42 competitors vying for victory. At the end of the 3,022-kilometer (1,880-mile) race from Darwin to Adelaide, one team emerged victorious in the highly contested Cruiser class. Solar Team Eindhoven, from the...

Although a car powered solely by solar power is far from reality, the 30th anniversary of the World Solar Challenge showcased just how far the technology has come. World Solar Challenge kicked off its celebrations with this year's iteration of the solar-powered car race in Darwin, Australia, on...