clean energy

The SFPUC’s New Headquarters: The Greenest Building in the US?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to tour the new headquarters for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC); a building which they say is one of, if not the, greenest building in the nation.  We will know for sure after they go through the US Green Building Council’s LEED certification, after which they plan to receive a LEED Platinum rating, the highest rating available. First, let me say that the building is beautiful inside and out, but that’s not reallycontinue reading

Why Hydroelectricity from Large Dams is Not Clean

It’s common, if not the rule, for hydroelectricity from dams to be listed as clean energy.  With approximately 845,000 dams worldwide (~80,000 in the US) it seems like people have for a long time believed this to be true, and you can’t really blame them.  Dam building is often a very political issue and politicians often lead people to believe this myth.  Besides that, without knowing all of the facts it would seem like they are clean; you have acontinue reading

Growing Vegetables from the Sea

Agriculture uses 70% of the world’s available freshwater every year.  With 20% of the world’s population living without access to adequate water giving 70% to agriculture is not very sustainable.  Good thing there are really smart people out there, and some of them came up with a system of using the ocean’s abundant source of water to irrigate crops, an idea that transformed into seawater greenhouses. The idea of seawater greenhouses was brought to the world in 1991 by acontinue reading

Clean Energy: BioPower Systems’ bioWave

Today people are continually looking for ways to get energy through cleaner means than traditional methods such as coal or nuclear.  However, technologies that have been used for decades under the realm of clean energy, such as dams, are now being questioned because of the negative impacts they have on the environment and people around where the dam is built.  A couple of weeks ago I wrote about water turbines and their huge potential for generating electricity from the flowcontinue reading

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