Carbon Footprints

At noon today AEST Australian Prime Minister Julian Gillard announced the details of her government’s carbon pollution pricing scheme, saying “The science is in, we know that our climate is changing.” Here’s the main points.

A starting price of $23 per tonne of ‘carbon pollution’ (measured as CO2 equivalent) to be paid by the 500 [...]

The Ted Talk above by Shai Agassi is all the more remarkable given it was given in 2009 and, since then, his vision is starting to be rolled out. The Better Place network is being rolled out in Canberra, where I live, and the Renault Fluence electric car that uses Better Place’s charging system [...]

The New York Times is reporting, in a story Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize, that Dutch electronics giant Philips has announced that it has already developed an LED based light that meets all of the ‘L Prize’s conditions. The bulb is now being tested in what the US Energy Department [...]

Photo of Glenelg, Scotland, by Dave Sag and used with permission.
IEEE Spectrum is reporting, in a story “£10 Million Sea Power Challenge“, on a new initiative by the Scottish Government to boost research into technologies that generate power from the sea.
Scotland is finalizing the terms of a contest in wave and tidal energy that takes [...]

Yale University is reporting that the cost of solar power in Italy is soon to rival that of coal fired power.
Southern Italy, with it abundant sunshine and high electricity tariffs from coal-generated power plants, could by 2010 produce solar power that is economically competitive with conventional power. That’s the assessment of Winfried Hoffmann, president of [...]

Hack a Hand-crank Flashlight

I love this sort of thing. I am always charging something, my iPhone, my laptop, my Wife’s 9 year old mobile that only holds charge for a few days (but she loves and won’t upgrade until it really truly dies). So being able to charge these devices without drawing off [...]

The fossil fuel industries are the most destructive forces on the planet. Coal mining fatalities are so high that you can measure electric power in lives as well as megawatt hours. We all understand that burning of fossil fuels is one of the primary causes of global warming, but spare a thought for [...]

I just watched the most amazing TED talk from 2003, by Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab and CEO of Energy Innovations. If you watch the whole video above Bill explains the development of his Solar Sunflower and it’s brilliant. In the video he’s using genetic algorithms to optimise old-school tech like Stirling Engines [...]

“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf and burning it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.”

Nobel Prize winner, former US Vice-President and long-term climate activist Al Gore addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the strong links between the climate crisis, the economic [...]

I am very excited to announce that Carbon Planet has been approved as a provider of GreenPower™ for Australian business customers.
What is GreenPower™?
GreenPower™ is a trademark owned by the NSW Department of Water and Energy, who manage the national GreenPower™ Program on behalf of the various states and territories. Certified GreenPower™ consists of Australian Renewable [...]