How does a solar panel system really work? A guide for the layman and beginner.

Just in time for the Olympics, a report from an international non-profit group has crowned China the world’s current leader in terms of installed renewable capacity. The report, “China’s Clean Revolution,” was released August 1—the final version will come out on August 8—by the Climate Group, an organization based in the USA, Australia, the UK, [...]

Living in Beijing right now has made me rather ambivalent toward China’s environmental policies. It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the PRC isn’t the poster country for eco-consciousness. Almost everybody drinks their water either boiled or from a bottle, and a blue sky day in Shanghai or Beijing is a rare day [...]

The Bureau of Land Management has put a freeze on applications for solar installations on public land in the Southwest.

China may not have as advanced a solar program as Germany (although, as Eric’s noted, Germany’s solar subsidies recently underwent a drastic slash) or Spain do, but a few pockets of land both to the north and to the south have become shining beacons of light for the rest of the country.
Take Jiangsu province, for [...]

Last week, I had the fortune to tour a production site of Beijing Tsinghua Solar Co., Ltd., one of China’s biggest manufacturers of solar hot water systems. While the facility itself lies in the brownish, dusty outskirts of Beijing, where the grass grows sparsely and the sky remains a stubborn gray from sunup until sundown, [...]

OK, kids. Time to scribble down a list of all those books you’ve been meaning to read, grab a towel and head for the beach. Who needs U.S. Weekly, trashy romance novels or (God forbid) fiction, when you’ve got a slew of great titles on coal, corporate social responsibility, climate change and investing in the [...]

We’ve always known that our institutions of higher learning are home to some of our brightest citizens. Galvanize them with the prestige of an award and the thrill of competition, and it’s likely that the results won’t disappoint. Perhaps this is precisely what the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency reasoned when they [...]

Yesterday, the U.N. and the World Blank announced plans for a task force to address skyrocketing food prices worldwide (Forbes.com).
The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world’s poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain [...]

Remember wind energy in 1975? No? Well, read this National Geographic article and refresh your memory.