Technology Archives - Green Businesses

Will the Green Growth Strategy Lead to Promising Business Opportunities? Exploring the Future Five Years from Now

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about great changes in our society and business environment. To grasp the nature of the social transformation arising from this ongoing event, since May 2020 Nikkei BP has been conducting a series of surveys of Japanese businesspeople (more than 11,000 in total). The results unveil major alterations in their mindsets. Following the Japanese government's declaration on realizing "Carbon Neutrality by 2050" in October 2020, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) took the lead in formulating the "Green Growth Strategy through Achieving Carbon Neutrality in 2050," which was unveiled in December of the same year. The Ministry positions this strategy as "an industrial policy to lead the challenging goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, a vision that is upheld by the Suga administration and aims toward a positive cycle of economic growth and the environmental protection." The strategy emphasizes 14 sectors as priority fields (Fig…

Nikola Positioned to Accelerate Hydrogen Economy

Competitive electricity price paves the way for hydrogen production in Arizona Nikola Corporation (NASDAQ: NKLA) has secured an innovative electric rate schedule with Arizona Public Service Company (“APS”) that makes possible the accelerated development of hydrogen-based fueling solutions for the transportation industry. Nikola is a company dedicated to the advancement of innovative zero-emissions truck solutions and the energy infrastructure required to make this feasible. By facilitating low-cost production of hydrogen, the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (“ACC”) approval of this rate schedule paves the way for the curtailment of greenhouse gases in the transportation sector, while also providing benefits to key constituents via novel grid-balancing solutions. Today’s unanimous approval of this agreement by the ACC provides Nikola with a competitive electric rate specifically designed for the production, processing, and dispensing of hydrogen. This will support, among ot…

BitSource Web Development #ExportingCode

Last week I was fortunate enough to go to Fast Company’s Meeting of the Most Creative Minds conference in Los Angeles. The conference featured several amazingly innovative companies that I will also write about later but my favorite aspect was the other attendees. Most of these companies were based in LA but a few flew from all over the nation (and some even other parts of the world!) and there is one that I cannot get out of my head. BitSource is a company who is breathing life back into a sleepy town in eastern Kentucky. The economy there had heavily relied on the coal industry and had suffered tremendously in the loss. Two former coal miners founded BitSource with a mission to bring back jobs to Appalachia country. The company offers an array of web development services from programming languages to media and VR design to application development (and much more). The founders knew coal miners to be logic-based thinkers willing to work hard and learn. Afterall, w…

In Case You Needed Another Reason To Visit Aruba

Aruba, like many countries, is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for energy. Currently, nearly 85% of the energy is generated by heavy fuel oil but that is going to change. Aruba pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020, particularly variable wind and solar. This 19 mile long island launched it’s Green Gateway Initiative in 2011 at the UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. With the support of Carbon War Room, an international nonprofit, Aruba created its plan of action beginning with wind farm development, a waste-to-energy plant, and a Airport Solar Park. They are taking the Smart Growth Pathway that addresses many different areas of an expanding economy, such as; eco-tourism, incentives for household retrofitting and commercial energy efficiency, the sustainable agriculture practice known as controlled environment agriculture, urban planning that supports this transition, and investments in innovation. This plan focuses on three comp…

China Now Largest Investor Renewable Energies Worldwide

BEIJING, July 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A full solar power vehicle is presented during a ceremony held by Chinese renewable energy company Hanergy Holding Group in Beijing, capital of China, July 2, 2016. Hanergy launched four full solar power vehicles at the ceremony on Saturday. (Xinhua/Cai Yang) (wx)[/caption] The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday launched its first detailed report of global energy investment, with China singled out for praise. In the first detailed analysis of investment across the global energy system, the IEA reported that global energy investment fell by 8 percent in 2015, with a drop in oil and gas upstream spending outweighing continued robust investment in renewable energies, electricity networks and energy efficiency. Total investment in the energy sector reached 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015, down from 2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2014, according to the IEA's World Energy Investment 2016 report. The new annual report provides a compre…

Solar Powered Airplane Lands in New York on Historic Flight Around the World

NEW YORK What started as a sky-is-the-limit dream for two Swiss explorer/entrepreneurs is now one giant, soaring, fuel-free, #futureisclean reality. Bertrand Piccard (@bertrandpiccard) André Borschberg (@andreborschberg) and their innovative solar plane, Solar Impulse 2, reached a milestone Saturday as it completed a trip across the United States. The solar-powered airplane on a globe-circling voyage that began in the United Arab Emirates more than a year ago. The Swiss-made plane landed at John F. Kenney International Airport at 4 a.m. after a 4 hour 41 minute flight of about 165 miles from Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania. Its trip across the U.S. mainland began April 24, when Solar Impulse landed in San Francisco from Hawaii. The aviation industry told them #solarimpulse was an impossible project so they built their own team & found new solutions. Read more from their logbook here. Have you ever seen bicycles assist an airplane landing …