NewWays for Environmental and Social Change

A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

There has never been a more important time to invest in green technologies, yet many of us believe these efforts are doomed to failure. What nonsense, writes Chris Goodall

Here are 100 steps we can all make to go greener in the coming year!
In Your Home – Conserve Energy
1. Clean or replace air filters on your air conditioning unit at least once a month.
2. If you have central air conditioning, do not close vents in unused rooms.
3. Lower the thermostat on your water heater [...]

Barack Obama should set drastic targets to force the US to switch to renewable energy in an effort to slow down climate change, according to the former vice president Al Gore. Gore said that one of Obama’s first acts as US president should be to demand a move to 100% renewable energy within 10 years.

by Rachel Nowak via thenewscientist

When it comes to repairing damage done to the Earth’s climate there’s no shortage of ideas, ranging from schemes to put “sunshades” in orbit to burying the offending carbon dioxide underground.
But ideas won’t be enough, so there is an urgent need to rank those proposals to work out which should undergo [...]

The X Prize Foundation, the same organization behind the Automotive X Prize and Google Lunar X Prize projects, has recently launched a YouTube search for people’s “crazy green ideas.” Called the Energy and Environment X PRIZE, it’s on a much smaller scale compared to the other two contests above worth $10 million and $30 million respectively. With a $25,000 prize at stake, contestants are required to film 2 minutes of video footage answering the main question, “What’s your crazy green idea?”

This is the year that the cost of electricity from solar power will drop below the cost of grid-generated power.The long-awaited fall in the cost of solar power is just around the corner. As huge amounts of additional manufacturing capacity come on stream over the next few months, the price of grid-electricity continues to rise.

Web giant Google unveiled a new national energy plan for the US Wednesday that it said would largely wean the country of fossil fuels by 2030. The 4.4-trillion-dollar plan was developed by Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which predicted that the county would reap net savings of 1 trillion dollars over the idea’s 22-year term.

A report said renewable energy markets were booming with turnover almost doubling in 2007 from 2006 to more than $70 billion. It said renewables could more than double their share of world energy supplies to 30% by 2030 and reach 50% by 2050.

A new approach has been developed to use several types of biowaste, including ordinary municipal sewage, to produce hydrogen at a much lower cost than the traditional “electrolysis” technology, and make it more viable for use in the hydrogen fuel cells that many believe will power automobiles of the future.

Now here’s something we can Digg. Google is thinking like NewWays in our quest to put people to work developing new ideas to help the world. “Project 10100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.”

The following speech was given at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin, Texas.
I have a little bit of whiplash. Thirty-six hours ago I was in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter. This is not a joke, you all. (Laughter) It sounds like a joke, right? You hear about the black guy in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter? [...]

More parks, fewer cars. The Zen-like philosophy behind Park(ing) Day — the annual event that attracts artists, urban planners and open space advocates interested in setting up ad hoc miniature parks in metered parking spaces on urban streets — appears to have hit a tipping point. What began as a quirky San Francisco-based project by [...]

As if the announcement of a high-speed rail line that will go from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes isn’t exciting enough, Navigant Consulting now claims that the bullet train can run with zero greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the energy consulting firm, the train’s expected usage of 3,350 GWh each [...]

The nation’s public transportation systems logged a 5.2 percent jump in ridership in the second quarter, according to industry figures to be released Tuesday, as record-high gas prices pushed people to take millions more trips on buses and rail systems.