News Archives - Page 23 of 31

Top 9: These Green Start-Ups May Disrupt Your Dinner

This article originally appeared in Inc Magazine. Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital put it best when he told The Wall Street Journal: "Agriculture and water are probably the two biggest markets in the world. Everybody's got to eat." Sure enough, the World Bank reports that more than 30 percent of the global workforce relies on agriculture for income. The market is far from saturated, but has slowly attracted more interest from venture capital funds. Here are nine start-ups we're watching:

Green Rankings 2012: Global Companies

by Newsweek Newsweek's fourth annual environmental ranking of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the world. Here’s a look at our environmental ranking of the biggest companies in developed and emerging world markets. Because a global ranking includes U.S. companies, some appear on both the U.S. list and the global list. The Newsweek Green Rankings cut through the green chatter and compare the actual environmental footprints, management (policies, programs, initiatives, controversies), and reporting practices of big companies. We teamed up with two leading research organizations to create the most comprehensive rankings available. View our full methodology here. See more on the top 15 Global companies See Newsweek's U.S. 500 Rankings For more about each industry, click here. Rank Company Country Industry Sector Industry Rank Impact Management Disclosure Green Score …

Surprise! Open office workspaces are distracting

Melissa Hincha-Ownby for MotherNewsNetwork. Open office workspaces are popular and from a design perspective, aesthetically pleasing and attractive. But, they are also distracting. That’s not really surprising, though. Putting dozens of workers in a big room and asking them to stay focused and be productive is challenging, even on the best days. Hayden Place: A dreamy green workplace If I had to work in an office, Cuningham Group Architecture's Hayden Place would be my dream green workplace. [ Photos: Cuningham Group Architecture ] I haven’t worked in an office building in more than a decade, but if I had to return to an office I could only hope that it would be as dreamy as Cuningham Group Architecture’s new Hayden Place office in Culver City, California. This eco-friendly workplace, which is on track for LEED Gold certification, is the epitome of what I’d consider a dream green workplace. A small waiting area sits next to an indoor garden that helps…

Texas Center Eyes Building A Better Wind Farm

Pete Danko for EarthTechling Image: The new SWiFT research facility (image via Texas Tech University) On the wind-swept plain of the Texas panhandle, government, academic and industry researchers are now taking on the challenge of making wind power better, with a particular focus on the hugely important question of how turbines arrayed in a group affect each other. “Some estimates show that 10 to 40 percent of wind energy production and revenue is lost due to complex wind plant interaction,” said Jon White, Sandia National Laboratory’s technical lead for the just-commissioned research center at Texas TechUniversity, dubbed SWiFT, for Scaled Wind Farm Technology. Wake energy loss and wake-induced loads are the kinds of thing that can be simulated and studied with sophisticated computer programs. But at SWiFT, reseachers have actually turbines installed in the field, three to start with more possibly to come, to work with. There are also two 60-meter weather tower…

New Ford Focus EV Discounted $4,000

by James R. Healey, USA TODAY Story Highlights -Ford says it must keep Focus electric price-competitive -Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt have sliced prices recently due to slow sales -Ford says it didn't eliminate standard features to achieve lower price Ford Motor is slicing $4,000 from the base price of its Focus electric car, beginning with 2014 models that arrive at dealers within a few weeks. That cuts the Focus EV's base price to $35,995 including shipping. Some buyers qualify for a $7,500 credit on federal income taxes, and states often have their own incentives for buying battery cars. Ford says it hasn't taken away any features as part of the cut. The automaker describes the lower-price 2014 Focus electric as "fully contented," and says the cut was important to keep the car competitive. Main electrified rivals have cut prices, and it's apparently not a sign that healthy competition is doing what it's supposed to -- making things cheaper fo…

Top 12: Every Energy Efficiency Expert Should Subscribe to These Blogs

by Vincent BRYANT at smartenergyefficiency.eu. Reasons why people spend their free time frenetically writing posts on Energy Efficiency are numerous: passion, willingness to share, desire to raise others’ awareness, just the pleasure to show off, expectation to become an expert, monetisation… Whatever their reasons, I feel very happy to have met these blogs on my road. They are all insightful and show a high level of expertise. Hope this post will help widen our community. So these are my 12 favorites. uk-energy-saving.blogspot.fr: UK Energy Saving is a consumer resource on energy saving and related topics including renewable energy, alternative fuels, recycling and water saving as well as sections on fair trade and organic products. www.elrst.com: The underlying mission of this blog is to answer the following questions : What are the environmental issues we are facing? What are the solutions? Are these solutions applied with the necessary scale and scope? smartener…