Finally ….Sensible Green Nuclear Technology

Finally, someone has spent the time to create a sensible nuclear, green energy source that can be mass-produced. The Guardian reports today that nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed [...]

Solar Cells Get to 20% Conversion Efficiency

I am becoming a big fan of solar power as it begins the long march toward parity with current power supplies — I would love to get off the Commonwealth Edison grid and not have to pay that big electricity bill every month. So I was excited to see today that Suniva Inc. announced that [...]

Solar as Alternative?

I am beginning to look into solar options but I live in Illinois (never really known as the land of the uninterrupted sun) so I wanted to find out how to calculate whether an investment in solar makes sense in Chicago.  I learned that the total solar energy available to the earth is approximately 3850 [...]

Global…..Cooling?

This past April, the USA had an average temperature of 51 degrees, which was one of the coolest in the last 114 years — where is the global warming? Look at the data here.

The Sustainable House

I am a big fan of using the sun and wind as energy sources rather than paying the local utility, and working to create a sustainable house. I love to imagine what one of these “energy-free” houses would be like and I think I found one in Enertia. I saw them tonight on the Science [...]

“Green Houses”: The Inconvenient Truth

As energy prices continue to increase, I have searched for ways to reduce our cost of energy in our house — I am currently looking at solar power, wind energy and geothermal (although running a 300 foot deep pipe in the backyard doens’t seem feasible in the city) . If you like this stuff, check [...]