Stories by Melissa C. Lott

The future of transportation was a hot topic at last week’s Future of Energy Summit in London hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). In particular, discussions were built around the question of what transportation will look like as the sector tries to balance 1) meeting demand and 2) compliance with air pollution standards.

Onshore wind power is “fully competitive” with gas and coal in some markets with solar not far behind, according to a report released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Although it is difficult to link excess pollution from the VW #DieselGate to individual deaths, we can quantify other health impacts more easily--specifically, fatalities related to road crashes. According to new analysis from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, 1.3 percent of fatalities in the U.S. were due to road crashes in 2013

Air pollution regulations in California have led to a dramatic decrease in cancer risks since 1990

According to current statistics from UNESCO and the World Bank, three-quarters of Kenyans live in rural areas and more than 1 million children don’t have access to education. In their “Solar Classroom in a Box” pilot project, UK-based Aleutia takes prefabricated and tech-enabled school buildings that are “flat-packed like an IKEA dresser” and ships them to the areas where they are most needed. 

On Sunday, Paris held une journée sans voiture—a day without car—closing down approximately 25 percent of the city center to vehicle traffic and reducing speed limits to 20 kilometers per hour in the surrounding areas

At the Alamo Beer Company’s new brewery and biergarten lies a Texas-size work of solar art. The Alamo-shaped solar array is located just a five-minute drive (or 15- to 20-minute walk) from the fort itself and around the corner from San Antonio’s new Pearl neighborhood development. In turn, the array can be seen from numerous downtown buildings, including the Tower of the Americas

On September 27th, Paris will have une journée sans voiture (a day without car). For the first time, no motorized vehicles will be allowed to drive in the city, except for ambulances and other essential vehicles.

Buy, make, or eliminate—these are the three main ways that we have gone about meeting our electricity needs for the past century. But, according to a new report by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a rapidly growing fourth option is appearing across the country

Researchers have developed a material that could allow you to block the heat while still enjoying the bright sunshine. These “smart windows” can also block light, while still allowing heat to flow in colder environments. In turn, they could potentially reduce home energy use by taking full advantage of both the heat and the visible light provided by the sun each day.

Texas is undeniably a principal in the oil and gas industry. The Lone Star State is also surging ahead in green electricity, boasting one-fifth of the ~68 GW of wind power currently installed in the United States.  But, perhaps less known is that Texas is the nation’s sixth largest producer of coal; is the nation’s leading producer of lignite coal; produces this lignite coal exclusively in strip mines.

When Felipe Gomez was in high school, he became interested in how you could improve the safety and efficiency of jet engines. Today, Gomez is the sole inventor behind two patents for plasma-assisted fuel injectors

Moving to clean energy technologies could benefit public health today and save us billions of dollars, according to a report from The Lancet medical journal. 

Expanding Heathrow is the best answer to the airport capacity problem in the United Kingdom, according to the United Kingdom’s Airports Commission, published Wednesday. This conclusion was “clear and unanimous” amongst commission members. But, not all are convinced.

California, Arizona and Hawaii can now say that solar provides more than 5 percent of their total annual electricity demand

This month, Professor Mildred Dresselhaus became the first woman to receive the IEEE Medal of Honor for her leadership and contributions across many fields of science and engineering. 

Yesterday, Hyliion took home the grand prize at the Department of Energy’s National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition in Washington, DC.

Five student teams will compete in Washington, D.C., next week in the fourth annual national competition in the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition (NCEBPC) series. Each of these teams has previously won a regional business plan competition in order to advance to the June 24 finals

Today’s release of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s report on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) concludes that this process for extracting oil and gas has “not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.” However, the EPA notes that there exist “potential vulnerabilities in the water lifecycle that could impact drinking water” and that contamination has occurred in a relatively small number of cases

Germans easily pay twice as much as Americans for a kilowatt-hour of electricity. But, German households actually pay less per month on their power bills according to analysis published this week by Craig Morris at the German Energy Transition (Energiewende).

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded prizes to five companies focusing on the soft-costs of solar power through the SunShot Initiative’s Catalyst Prize

Air pollution from U.K. airports leads to about 100 early deaths in the United Kingdom each year. Expanding Heathrow could help or hurt these numbers, depending on the strategy undertaken.

Reductions in national carbon emissions could prevent more than 3,000 premature deaths per year by cleaning up the air across the nation, finds a new study published yesterday in Nature Climate Change.