Bits & Peices of Clean energy & living

 'It’s Not a Thing on the Roof. It is the Roof' With Tesla's historic acquisition of SolarCity now pending, Elon Musk has announced two new solar products, including one that could disrupt the roofing industry. Tesla and SolarCity could change the roofing industry SolarCity Twitter As Electrek reported, during a conference call with investors Tuesday, Musk and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said they were working on creating a roof made entirely of solar panels—solar shingles, if you will . Instead of tacking on solar panels onto an existing roof, the whole roof itself will be integrated with photovoltaic material. "I think this is really a fundamental part of achieving differentiated product strategy, where you have a beautiful roof," Musk said. "It's not a thing on the roof. It is the roof." Rive confirmed the project. According to Electrek, "Rive added that there are 5 million new roofs installed every year in the...

China proposes $50tn global renewable energy network Published time: 1 Apr, 2016 14:34 Get short URL A worker inspects solar panels at a solar farm in Dunhuang, 950km (590 miles) northwest of Lanzhou, Gansu Province. © Carlos Barria / Reuters The company running China’s power grid is proposing a $50 trillion global electricity network to tackle pollution and climate change. If it goes ahead the network would use advanced renewable solar and wind technology and be operating by 2050.     Beijing’s network will be the world’s biggest infrastructure project, if given the green light. The State Grid has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Russian energy grid Rosseti, Korea’s Electric Power and SoftBank Group of Japan. According to State Grid’s Chairman Liu Zhenya, the planet is facing "three major challenges", which are...

Elon Musk: ‘You Can Easily Power All of China With Solar’   Tesla CEO and multi-hyphenate entrepreneur  Elon Musk spoke about the electric vehicle (EV) market and its role in a  sustainable energy future in an interview with CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout at the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong this week. Electric cars are 'important to the future' of China – @elonmusk https://t.co/G0UT7sBB2J $TSLA pic.twitter.com/ieg1t91wo7 — CNNMoney (@CNNMoney) January 25, 2016 Global demand for EVs has rapidly grown , and Musk—who famously opened up his patents for outside use—says he welcomes competitors such as GM’s Chevrolet Bolt and has even partnered with traditional automakers such as Mercedes and Toyota. Musk said the goal of Tesla has been to “accelerate the advent of sustainable transport.” Still, with no end in sight to the current glut of cheap oil , Musk admitted during his interview with Stout that “the transition to sustainable energy [will...

Renewable Energy Stumbles Toward the Future Solar panels installed by SunEdison in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Credit Fabian Andres Cambero/Reuters It was just last summer that SunEdison was a Wall Street darling, the very air around the fast-growing company seeming to shimmer with potential. SunEdison was, after all, a red-hot company in a red-hot space — renewable energy. Its market capitalization reached nearly $10 billion, putting it on a par with the likes of Wynn Resorts of Las Vegas. Among the believers betting on its stock was the hedge-fund heavyweight David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital. With plans to buy Vivint Solar for $2.2 billion, SunEdison appeared unstoppable. And then the company went supernova. Its shares fell from around $32 last summer to 34 cents this week. Mr. Einhorn furiously tried to dump his stake in recent weeks. I...

Ikea Has Bright Idea To Sell Solar Panels In UK Stores You can buy a couch, meatballs and solar panels all in the same store. 04/27/2016 06:08 pm ET       Elyse Wanshel Associate Editor, Good News, The Huffington Post Yves Herman / Reuters The store that sells every home good under the sun now also sells solar panels. The company announced on Monday that it will sell and install solar panels in the United Kingdom. Three stores, in Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, will act as a U.K. pilot for the company’s new “solar shops,” where the panels will be sold. Customers across the pond can also order  and get a cost estimate  of the panels online, and Ikea hopes to have solar shops in all of its U.K. stores by the end of the summer. The announcement coincided with research conducted by Ikea that found that 33 percent of U.K. homeowners would like to invest in home solar panels as a way to help cut their electricity...

How can Our Blue Planet Be Running Out Of Water? 1. Essential for life - increasingly scarce Presented by Professor Iain Stewart Geologist and broadcaster Nearly two million people die from a lack of safe drinking water every year. And in just 15 years time, half the world's population could be living in areas of high water stress - places where there isn't enough water to go round. Our planet does contain over a billion trillion litres of water. But very little of that is safe to drink. Over 97% of water on Earth is salt water. Of the fresh water that remains, over two thirds is locked away in ice caps and glaciers. Most of the rest is trapped in soil or underground aquifers. That leaves a tiny fraction available for us to use. And it isn't just drinking water that we need. Almost everything we do involves water in some way. 2. How much do you use? Source: AY Hoekstra and MM Mekonnen, 2012; MM Mekonnen and AY ...

Katz's An immigrant experience  NYC’s most iconic sandwiches by  Katz’s Some 80 years ago, New York City was home to three or four thousand delis. Today, there are less than 24. But can innovative approaches breathe new life into the doomed delicatessen? They’re not talking about the corner markets or bodegas that appear on nearly every New York block. They’re talking about the true New York City delicatessen: the brick and mortar expression of the American immigrant experience, the very culinary soul of the city. And unfortunately, where there used to be thousands, only a few remain. Delicatessens like Katz’s are the brick and mortar expression of the American immigrant experience (Spencer Platt/Getty) More than 100 years ago, in the second half of the 19th Century, New York’s tenements were swelling with new arrivals from Europe. Many thousands of these immigrants were Jewish, escaping persecution in Eastern Europe and Russ...