What’s cleantech? It’s often dismissed as a playground for solar panel and wind turbine makers.
But in fact, green technology startups and researchers and have transformed the field into a hotbed of innovation. From Facebook’s renewables-powered data center, to Nest’s iPod-inspired smart thermostat, cleantech pioneers are bringing their energy-saving techie passions home. And don’t worry, and those solar and wind are making big strides too.
Now’s the perfect time to catch up on what’s happening on the cleantech front. Click below for some highlights or can always follow ecoINSITE on Twitter for the latest updates.
Video: The arrival of technology-laden EVs promises to empower and liberate car fleet managers in ways they could only just imagine a few short years ago. Just ask Rolf Schreiber, Google’s Electric Transportation Manager. As you know, Google is big on cleantech. And one of the ways it promotes this is by keeping a fleet [...]
Read more OnStar app brings cloud-based EV fleet management to Google
My non-meat-eater friends may want to skip this post. But the rest of us carnivores will be pleased by this new discovery. It turns out that those LEDS that are popping up at supermarket display cases don’t just bathe your food products in a crisp, energy-saving glow. They also extend the shelf life of some meats! [...]
Read more Go meat! LEDs prolong shelf life
This is eerie… Lately, the topic of infographic burnout has been making the rounds. This is mainly due to clumsy (and copious) marketing attempts, flimsy ‘facts’ or firms that are pushing outright lies using pretty pixels. I was just thinking today how this infographic on wind turbine noise from GE was the exception. Simple. Eye-pleasing. [...]
Read more Wind turbines quietly win over skeptics
It’s been a great year if you’re the kind of techie that likes to dream up tomorrow’s gadgets. Mind you, it’s hard not to get caught up in this year’s stunning gear like the Nest smart thermometer or LG’s prototype OLED HDTV. But 2011 also brought us advancements in materials technology that could soon make [...]
Read more Quantum dots, battery boosts cap year in green materials
Even surrounded by the visual overload that is Times Square on New Year’s Eve, the Ball is hard to miss. Yes folks, not only is it big — 12 feet in diameter and weighing 11,875 pounds — it’s also very, very bright. Now, thanks to Philips, the supplier of its lights, you also know exactly how many [...]
Read more Philips: Times Square Ball glitters with 32,256 LEDs
One of the biggest complaints levied against wind turbines — apart from them “ruining” idyllic views — is that they’re noisy. It’s an understandable fear. Whereas you can turn your back on an eyesore, an incessant drone will drive anyone batty. Thankfully, this infographic from GE Reports — a site from a company that knows [...]
Read more Infographic: The deafening silence of wind turbines
Thanks to some sleuthing by a reporter at the Charlotte Observer, we now know how Apple plans to make its massive, billion-dollar data center in Maiden, North Carolina greener. While some vital specifics concerning the new solar farm are still shrouded in mystery, engineering plans (called Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded) call for a [...]
Pictured: Lulea mayor Karl Petersen (left) and Facebook’s Director of Site Operations, Tom Furlong – Image Credit: Lulea data center Facebook page Facebook is poised to take free cooling and clean energy to new heights. Up into the Arctic Circle, in fact. The social networking behemoth announced today that it was siting its first data center outside [...]
Read more Facebook bets on cool, renewables for Swedish data center
What does a former Apple exec that’s responsible for the iconic iPod do when the thermostats on the market are too lame for his new green home? He brings design and software savvy to bear on the problem. The result is the puck-like Nest, from Tony Fadell’s startup of the same name. It’s a learning, connected thermostat [...]
Read more Nest: The iPod of smart thermostats
At $50 to $100 per square foot, smart glass — glass that reacts to a brief charge to change color — is too big of a budget-buster for most home and business owners. For now, one of the most common uses of this technology called thermally insulating fenestration are used in auto-dimming mirrors in high-end [...]
Read more Smart glass costs set to drop
This work by Pedro Hernandez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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