In another move toward renewable energy in its operations, Google is going to use the electricity produced from a planned 72MW wind farm in Sweden to power its data center in Finland for the next ten years. A project to develop the new wind farm, consisting of 3MW turbines, at a site in northern Sweden has just met with planning approval, and thanks to Google’s recent agreement to buy the entire output of the farm for the next 10 years, has secured all the financing necessary for construction. The wind farm is being developed by O2, and will be owned… read more

Could you walk your way to a full battery charge? If you had a pair of these insoles in your shoes, you just might be able to. Producing energy from the movement of our own body is not a new idea, as a common bicycle generator demonstrates, but adding an energy harvesting device to something we do in our daily routines, without interrupting our natural flow, has not gotten a lot of attention. But lately we’ve seen some renewed interest in it, such as the PediPower, from students at Rice University, and PaveGen floor tiles show. The latest approach is… read more

Is it possible that an Italian engineer’s cold fusion project, which has been vilified in energy and tech circles, could actually produce clean energy as claimed? Cold fusion, or Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) devices are considered by many to be the domain of scammers and hoaxers, and are claimed to be complete bunk, but that hasn’t stopped the research. In fact, cold fusion projects may be just hitting their stride, if the data from a test on an Italian cold fusion device bears out. According to various reports on the web, the operation of Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi’s… read more

We have a staggering amount of food waste in our modern world, and while we can all do our part to reduce that on our end, there is still quite a bit of waste in the food system at the distribution level. But one supermarket company is taking steps to close that loop a little bit, by turning their food waste into biogas to provide clean energy for its distribution center. Kroger is now using an anaerobic conversion system at its 650,000 square foot Ralphs/Food4Less Compton (California) distribution complex to convert unsold food into renewable energy, which will also greatly… read more

Australians who are curious about clean and renewable energy in their country now have an easy way to investigate the projects currently in place there, thanks to a new clean energy map. The Clean Energy Map, from the Australian government, covers over 1200 projects that cover renewable energy, energy efficiency and pollution-reduction across 16 different government initiatives. The interactive map categorizes the projects by type, and allows users to search the full map or use GPS (or their postcode) to find projects near them. “The Clean Energy Map features outcomes from measures such as the Renewable Energy Target, but also… read more

In learning to efficiently convert sunlight into electricity, we’ve got a lot to learn from plants. Our best efforts with solar panels are only yielding efficiencies of around 17%, but plants are the ultimate solar harvesters, capable of turning sunlight into energy at an efficiency rate of nearly 100%. Photosynthesis allows plants to produce almost an equal number of electrons to the amount of photons they receive, which is far and above the level of power conversion that our most efficient technologies can hit. But thanks to the work of some researchers at the University of Georgia, we may someday… read more

A new clean energy concept, the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE), will be built out into a bigger prototype for further testing and analysis, thanks to some Silicon Valley funding. With the receipt of a new grant from The Thiel Foundation, AVEtec will work toward building an 8 meter diameter prototype of their unique energy device at Lambton College in Ontario, which will spin a 1 meter diameter turbine. The AVE works by using low temperature waste heat to create a tornado-like vortex that acts as a virtual chimney, and the technology could be used to spin turbines for electricity. Other… read more

For residents of the United States, switching to clean energy for household energy use doesn’t have to mean putting up a solar PV array or wind turbine. Instead, users can simply choose Pear Energy to handle their energy needs, thereby supporting clean and renewable energy in the U.S.. When switching to Pear Energy, customers don’t need to get anything installed at their location, and their local utility continues to provide the electricity to the house, but Pear buys clean solar and wind power for them with their money. Pear customers get a side-by-side comparison of energy costs on each month’s… read more

The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, has announced that over the next 12 years, the giant metropolis will completely eliminate coal as an energy source on its grid. While LA has made earlier moves to source some of their energy through renewable energies, this ambitious plan takes aim at the 39% of the demand that is currently met by coal. The plan calls for a gradual transition over the next 12 years, with the city ending its contracts with coal plants and covering the resulting gap in demand with power from cleaner energy sources, such as natural gas. “Los… read more

In places in the world where electricity is scarce and precious commodity, this innovative soccer ball may provide lights and battery charging at the end of the day. The sOccket is an energy-harvesting ball that is not just portable and easy to use, but it’s fun as well. Kicking the ball around provides impact energy, which can be stored for future use. The current iteration of the sOccket uses an inductive coil mechanism to capture the energy, and with just 15 minutes of play, it can provide three hours of LED lighting (which is significant in places where lights and… read more