SmartReads: Week of August 3
Happy Friday! As usual, SmartPower presents your weekly #SmartReads with all the latest in clean energy, electric vehicle and general green news. Please share the stories we’ve missed with us on Twitter at @SmartPower_org using the hashtag #SmartReads.
CLEAN ENERGY
Forbes: Coal-Fired Carbon Emissions Fall As Transition To Cleaner Energy Accelerates — It’s been a long hot summer of cataclysmic environmental events – drought, derecho, half of India in the dark – but here’s some good news: Thanks to cheap natural gas and a boom in renewable energy, the U.S. is accelerating a shift away from coal-fired power plants, resulting in falling emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants, according to a report released Tuesday. [July 31, 2012]
WESTFAIR Online: As Conn. “solarizes,” N.J. reaches milestone — Under a new zero-emissions renewable energy credit (ZREC) program and companion low-emissions (LREC) program, Connecticut plans to parse out more than $1 billion in funding to promote renewable energy systems over two decades. [August 3, 2012]
Bloomberg Business Week: Facebook Says 23 Percent of Data-Center Power is Green — Facebook Inc. (FB) (FB), owner of the world’s largest online social network, derived almost one-fourth of its energy for data centers from clean and renewable sources last year. [August 1, 2012]
Science Daily: Renewable Energy Potential in Every U.S. State, Study Shows — A new study of renewable energy’s technical potential finds that every state in the United States has the space and resource to generate clean energy. [August 1, 2012]
CBS News: First Solar profit surges on construction activity — First Solar, one of the world’s biggest solar panel manufacturers and developers, reported an 82 percent jump in net income as the construction of major solar projects in the U.S. Southwest ramped up. [August 1, 2012]
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Philadelphia Inquirer: ECOtality offers free electric-car-charging stations — A California company, infused with millions of federal dollars, is offering to install free charging stations in the homes of some Philadelphia-area owners of electric vehicles. [August 2, 2012]
GENERAL GREEN
San Francisco Chronicle: Green’s Sharp Design Move: Sunshades — Visual evidence of the quest for sustainable design can be seen on our landscape in more and more ways, from solar panels and rooftop vegetation to the lobby displays that tout a building’s “green” features. [July 31, 2012]
SmartPress: George Stephanopoulos Endorses Green Is Good — Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos has endorsed SmartPower President Brian F. Keane’s book, Green Is Good, giving it the editorial review, “Green is good—and Keane is Green!” [August 3, 2012]
