Why New York Is Trying to Create the Most Innovative Grid in the World
New York is taking a hard look at how to reform the distribution grid and encourage more distributed energy resources. But it’s not doing it through mandates. Instead, New York regulators are developi...
24 Sep 201455min
Your Building Is Dumb. Here's a Way to Make it Smarter
Large commercial buildings are the fastest growing energy consumers in the U.S. Why? Because most of them are not very energy aware. Utilities and city planners understand this problem and have target...
9 Sep 201451min
How America's Biggest Energy Consumer, the Government, Is Greening Itself
In December of last year, President Obama issued an order requiring the government to get 20 percent of electricity from renewables by 2020 – up from about 7 percent today. That’s not an easy goal to ...
4 Sep 201449min
Why Bill Gates Is Wrong About Renewable Energy
Bill Gates is a very influential guy -- not just because he founded Microsoft, but because of his powerful foundation. With $40 billion in trust assets, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one the ...
28 Aug 201446min
Amory Lovins: As Economists Argue, Renewables Keep Getting Cheaper
In the academic world, there’s lots of debate about how expensive or cheap renewables are compared to fossil fuels. But do they actually match what’s happening on the ground? In this week’s podcast, w...
21 Aug 201453min
Nest Thermostats Just Got 'Hacked.' Should You Be Worried?
Last week, hackers at the Black Hat conference showed how to jailbreak a Nest learning thermostat and override the firmware, taking it under their control. The hack itself cannot be done without physi...
14 Aug 201446min
This Data on Consumer Energy Use May Surprise You
Are your solar panels facing the wrong way? Is your utility focusing on the wrong types of energy efficiency? These are the questions that Pecan Street Inc. has attempted to answer through its data co...
7 Aug 201452min
We Argue About the True Cost of Wind and Solar: How Cheap Are They Really?
How do we calculate the true cost of intermittent renewables? The levelized cost of wind and solar are falling by the day. But how cheap are they really? A recent study from the Brookings Institution ...
31 Jul 201442min
