Things Are Good

In really hot countries air conditioning in buildings might seem like a necessity; however, it is possible to design buildings that stay cool in the heat without even using electricity. In Burkina Faso there is a school that was specially designed to stay nice and cool by manipulating airflows.
There’s not much electricity to go [...]

Here’s an informative short video on energy entrepreneurs in a poor part of southern Mexico the provide sustainable electricity to locals. The generators are built locally and are designed to allow almost anyone build a generator. This is really good to see happening.

Solar power is a wonderfully sustainable source of energy and its biggest hurdle to wide adoption is cost (and going up against subsidized fossil fuels). Well, now the nuclear crowd can’t claim that solar is too expensive because the fact of the matter is that solar power is cheaper than nuclear!
It’s no secret that the [...]

Wind and solar energy generation is criticized for not being always-on, so people have been looking to batteries to steady the flow of energy. Over at Cambridge, there are some people who think that a new type of battery made out of gravel could help with the full adoption of sustainable energy.
Isentopic claims its gravel-based [...]

Lawns require a lot of maintenance and a lot of energy (think water, pumping that water, fertilizer, transporting that fertilizer, and so on) and if you have the space to grow a lawn you have space to do a lot of better things with plants. If you don’t have a garden, or even if [...]

A proposal making the rounds in the UK calls for modifying shipyards (which aren’t doing so well in the current economy) into modern wind farms. A good reuse of industrial space.
On a visit to Newcastle, the Liberal Democrat leader said that disused shipyards should be upgraded to allow them to produce the new equipment.
Under a [...]