February, 2020

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Super Duper Supercapacitors Could Accelerate Electric Car Revolution

CleanTechnica

Supercapacitors offer exciting new possibilities for electric vehicles. Here are two stories about advances in supercapacitor technology.

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We need to think beyond urban farming

GreenBiz

But the broader agricultural world can learn much from how those operations use data.

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Coronavirus Crisis: Tesla May Be One Of Least Vulnerable Automakers

CleanTechnica

The ongoing coronavirus crisis finally hit the stock market hard on Monday, as the Dow dropped by 3.5%, its steepest one-day loss in two years. Tesla took a big hit, losing almost 7% at the open on Monday.

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Japan’s Expert Panel Agrees That Dumping Radioactive Water Into The Ocean Is Best

Jim Conca

An expert panel is recommending that the Japanese government allow Tokyo Electric Power Company to release radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plants into the ocean. And that’s a good thing to do since a gallon of this water is as radioactive as a family-sized bag of potato chips.

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Electrofuels Are the Future: The Driving Force to Decarbonizing Heavy Transport

Speaker: Ayesha Choudhury - Senior Vice President, Head of Capital Markets at Infinium

With the first wave of the energy transition, renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind) have begun replacing coal power generation. However, some sectors are lagging behind and struggling to decarbonize more than others, including large-scale transportation like commercial aviation, shipping, and rail transit. Electrofuels (aka eFuels) are the next generation of solutions to help the hardest-to-abate sectors pivot from their reliance on fossil fuels.

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Airplane fuselage is converted into a minimalist tiny home with off-grid capabilities

Inhabitat - Innovation

The Tiny House Guys has breathed new life into a decommissioned Dash 8 airplane fuselage by converting it into the Aero Tiny — a 130-square-foot tiny home fully equipped to go off the grid.

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Five Young Black Climate Justice Leaders You Should Know

Defend Our Future

During Black History Month we celebrate and honor black leaders not only from throughout history, but also those who are doing life-changing work today. That’s why we wanted to help elevate some of the most influential young, black leaders doing exceptional work right now in the fight against climate change and who are lifting up the voices of those disproportionately impacted, including people of color and Indigenous peoples.

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Inside Bill Weihl’s quest to give employees and job seekers a 'ClimateVoice'

GreenBiz

A new initiative aims to press companies to have a strong and active voice on climate policy in the United States. Your company and its campus recruiters just may be a target.

Policy 544
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Exposé Shows Rise of Heartland Institute’s Climate Denial Efforts Overseas, Using Dark Money and a YouTuber

DeSmogBlog

Read time: 9 mins A recent German news report has shed light on the inner workings of the Heartland Institute’ s international efforts to sow doubts about climate science using the dark money group Donors Trust. Part of those efforts include the climate science-denying organization touting its newest representative, a young German YouTube “influencer,” Naomi Seibt , whom Heartland markets as the deniers’ answer to breakout youth climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Organic 145
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Texas perovskite company reaches 18% efficiency with its ink-based solar cell process

Solar Power World

Hunt Perovskite Technologies (HPT), a Dallas, Texas-based perovskite material developer, reached a milestone in the development of a highly-durable perovskite technology for the manufacture of low-cost printed solar cells. In December 2019, HPT successfully demonstrated that its ink-based process was able to produce a perovskite solar cell that exceeded key benchmarks recognized by the solar cell… The post Texas perovskite company reaches 18% efficiency with its ink-based solar cell proces

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Odd.Bot, the weed-pulling robot that could eliminate herbicides

Inhabitat - Innovation

The aging adage, “There’s an App for that,” is evolving into the idea that, “There’s a robot for that”. More and more automation is finding its way to the market for household chores like cleaning floors, and now that innovation is in farmer’s fields with Odd.Bot, an automatic weeding robot.

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AR/VR Simulations for Sustainable, Regenerative, Circular Cities

Speaker: Nik Gowing, Brenda Laurel, Sheridan Tatsuno, Archie Kasnet, and Bruce Armstrong Taylor

With 191 country signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement now hard at work in the race to zero carbon by 2050, much of the heavy lifting in ecosystem sustainability falls on the shoulders of the world's densely populated urban centers. This conversation considers how today's AI-enabled simulation media, such as AR/VR, can be effectively applied to accelerate learning, understanding, training, and solutions-modeling to sustainability planning and design.

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Tesla Cybertruck Gets New Electric Rival: Meet Nikola’s Hydrogen Badger Pickup

Forbes Green Tech

The electric vehicle startup aiming to shake up trucking with hydrogen-powered semis is also targeting drivers who want high-performance work trucks that don’t belch exhaust

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Mangrove forests protect coastlines. ‘Synthetic mangroves’ could do the same for cities.

Grist

Humans have lots of reasons to thank mangroves. These swampy, stilt-rooted trees store massive amounts of carbon on tropical shorelines, support nurseries for a wide variety of commercially important fish species, and protect coastal areas from storm damage. Besides these benefits for people, mangroves are unique among trees because they thrive in shallow seawater that’s too salty for most living beings to grow in.

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The low price of freed parking

GreenBiz

The 270 million vehicles in the United States are parked over 90 percent of the time. There are far more parking spaces than vehicles. How many spaces? The data is imprecise. There could be 500 million parking lot spaces and 1 billion spaces on streets. Add parking in home garages, carports and driveways, and another estimate is 2 billion parking spaces.

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Solar battery or generator? How to get through the next outage

Sunrun

How Batteries and Generators Stack up Blackouts are becoming more common across the country1. As people face an increased risk of power loss, it becomes important for consumers who want to take control of their own energy2 to include a home solar battery in a plan to go solar. A solar home battery system, such as Brightbox by Sunrun, avoids many of the pitfalls of traditional portable backup generators.

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How Digital Transformation will Bend the Curve of the Linear Economy Toward the Circular

Speaker: Bruce Armstrong Taylor, Co-Founder & Managing Director of SmartNations Foundation, Jimmy Jia, Venture Partner at Pi Labs, Fabienne Durand, Senior Advisor to the SmartNations Foundation, & Roger Strukhoff, Executive Director of the Tau Institute

The Climate 4.0 Economy. Climate change is here. We see it in many ways already. Weather catastrophes: Texas freezing over, the wildfires of California, the increasingly unpredictable violence and frequency of hurricanes, the rapid melting and disappearance of polar ice caps. Much more evidence all around us. What can we do in our corporate organizations, in our homes and communities, to change the current course?

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Just how concerned should the solar industry be about battery fires?

Solar Power World

Plane crashes rarely happen, but the fear of an accident is real for many people. Still, thousands of Americans fly every day. The NBC television drama “This is Us” showed that Crock-Pots can cause house fires, but we’re still cooking chilis and roasts while we’re away at work. The threat of energy storage systems causing… The post Just how concerned should the solar industry be about battery fires?

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Climate-adaptive park in Copenhagen wins Arne of the Year Award

Inhabitat - Innovation

One of Copenhagen’s newest green parks, the Sankt Kjelds Square and Bryggervangen, has just received Copenhagen’s most prestigious architecture prize—the Arne of the Year Award. Designed by Danish design studio SLA, the 35,000-square-foot urban park is most notable for its effective solutions to cloudbursts, a term describing sudden heavy rainfall that can trigger violent flash floods.

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Former UN Climate Chief Calls For Civil Disobedience

Forbes Green Tech

The woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement has called in a new book for political engagement on climate change that goes well beyond the voting booth.

Politics 145
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Circularity Challenge Spotlight: American Battery Metals Corporation

Greentown Labs

Ryan Melsert, CTO of American Battery Metals Corporation, speaks at the Circularity Challenge Final Showcase. The Circularity Challenge is a six-month accelerator program designed to advance innovative solutions to enable a circular economy. The five participants are disrupting the plastics, energy storage, and recycling value chains. The Circularity Challenge is run by Greentown Launch —Greentown Labs’ internal accelerator—and BASF , and supported by Stanley Black & Decker.

Batteries 138
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Conserving and restoring forests won’t be cheap and easy after all

GreenBiz

The corporate world has fallen for trees. But to be effective, the cost of offsetting CO2 emissions with the sequestration power of forests will have to go up. Are companies willing to pay?

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Malmö, Sweden orders 60 Volvo high-capacity electric buses

Charged

Scandinavian transport operator Nobina, which services Malmo, Sweden, has ordered 60 of Volvo’s 7900 Electric Articulated electric buses. Propelled by dual electric motors with a two-speed transmission, the buses have a maximum power output of 400 kW and maximum torque of 31 kN-m at the driven axle, with battery capacity have up to 396 kWh of storage capacity.

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Solar Games make installation a spectator sport at Intersolar 2020

Solar Power World

Team SPW volunteered on a residential solar installation in 2017, but our two-day 2.5-kW system was amateur hour compared to what I watched at Intersolar North America’s inaugural Solar Games contest. Installation teams from Colorado, Nevada and California competed to install a 3.15-kW system in under 90 minutes — and got extra points for getting… The post Solar Games make installation a spectator sport at Intersolar 2020 appeared first on Solar Power World.

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Home on a sloped ravine uses natural materials to blend into the landscape

Inhabitat - Innovation

Working directly with the nature-loving homeowners, the architects strategically focused on blending the minimalist home, which was built with natural materials, into the idyllic surroundings while reducing its impact as much as possible.

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8 Powerful Examples Of AI For Good

Forbes Green Tech

Many of the headlines about artificial intelligence warn of its dangers. However, artificial intelligence (AI) can be and is being used for good in many ways from improving the accessibility for people with disabilities to building our resilience to natural disasters.

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Cash is hot: Investors find new options to put deposits to work for community development

Impact Alpha

ImpactAlpha, February 12 – Denver-based and Native-owned Native American National Bank serves Native communities, governments and enterprises across the U.S. To boost the bank’s lending power, RSF Social Finance, Candide Group’s Olamina fund and other impact investors have created deposit accounts and CDs at the bank. “The best way to support our bank is through.

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Maersk is testing a biofuel that could alter the course of shipping

GreenBiz

The LEO Project, which includes BMW, Levi Strauss, H&M and Marks & Spencer, proposes using a commonly found paper production byproduct as the source of maritime fuel.

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Canadian Town Evacuated After Another Oil Train Derails and Burns

DeSmogBlog

Read time: 3 mins Early in the morning of February 6, an oil train derailed and caught fire near Guernsey, Saskatchewan, resulting in the Canadian village's evacuation. This is the second oil train to derail and burn near Guernsey, following one in December that resulted in a fire and oil spill of 400,000 gallons.

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National Solar Jobs Census: Solar employment up 2.3% after two years of losses

Solar Power World

The 10th annual National Solar Jobs Census was released today by The Solar Foundation, and it shows the U.S. solar industry increased employment 2.3% since 2018, employing nearly 250,000 workers in 2019. The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit educational and research organization, issues the National Solar Jobs Census each year to provide comprehensive and reliable data on… The post National Solar Jobs Census: Solar employment up 2.3% after two years of losses appeared first on Solar Power Worl

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Brazilian home uses solar energy for 100% self-sufficiency

Inhabitat - Innovation

Brazilian firm 24 7 Arquitetura has set a stunning modern home into a challenging mountainous landscape in Brazil’s Nova Lima region. In addition to the home’s contemporary aesthetic, which is comprised of several exposed concrete blocks, the residence is completely self-sustaining thanks to its massive rooftop solar array that generates all the power the home needs.

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Cities Step Up Emissions Cuts As Climate Change Starts To Bite

Forbes Green Tech

Cities are increasingly at the forefront of the battle against climate change – not only will the issue affect them disproportionately but they can have an outsize impact in tackling it as well.

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Believe it or not, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was even worse than previously thought

Grist

After the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the spring of 2010, oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months straight, resulting in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. More than 200 million gallons of light crude flowed into the sea, devastating marine life and fisheries. Ten years later, scientists are still uncovering new facets of the disaster and its aftermath.

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4 ways to scale regenerative ag

GreenBiz

This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription.This week, I want to talk about one of the most exciting options we have for reforming our food systems and tackling climate change: regenerative agriculture.

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Emerging impact fund managers represent an emerging source of impact alpha

Impact Alpha

ImpactAlpha, Feb. 25 – In impact investing, smaller and newer may mean bigger and better returns. Smaller impact funds and first-time fund managers face obstacles raising capital from investors who insist on seeing proven track records and writing big checks (but generally not more than 20% of the total fund). Such rule-bound investors may be missing.

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Midwest installer Moxie Solar to open 100-MW solar panel assembly plant in Iowa

Solar Power World

Iowa-headquartered solar installer Moxie Solar, which installed almost 5 MW of projects in 2018 and likely tripled its business in 2019, has announced plans to set up a 100-MW solar panel assembly operation in Iowa. “If we are going to continue growing solar in the United States, we believe installers need a more reliable supply… The post Midwest installer Moxie Solar to open 100-MW solar panel assembly plant in Iowa appeared first on Solar Power World.

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12 tips for a vibrant spring garden

Inhabitat - Innovation

When the frost begins to thaw and the first signs of spring appear, it’s time to start thinking about your garden. While it’s true that many of your plants won’t fully come to life for another six months, the more you can knock off your list before spring, the better off your plants, lawn, and schedule will be.

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