Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

01 / SolarCity > > For being the nation's leading installer of rooftop solar panels. In sum, SolarCity has placed more than 10,000 solar rooftops--10% of the total in the U.S.

Ethonomic Indicator of the Day: 45% -- The amount of fracked natural gas the U.S.

We had a feeling that BrightSource Energy was destined for big things when Google first announced it was investing $10 million in the solar thermal startup in 2008. After all, Google only invests in impressive ( TechnoServe , eSolar ) and profoundly weird ( wind power from kites , anyone?) companies.

In general, manufacturers have little reason to, say, swap out incandescent lightbulbs for CFLs in their factories unless there is some sort of financial incentive. There is no bigger incentive than having one of your main customers--in this case, the world's largest consumer product manufacturer Procter & Gamble--ask you to shape up or get out

Photograph by Benjamin Lowy Opportunity: After fleeing marriage to a Taliban husband, Samiya Amiri found work--and the beginning of a new life--as a renewable-power engineer.

Can clean solar energy offset dirty production methods?

Three weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant workers have made some headway in cooling the facility's overheated fuel rods. But overall, the situation remains "very serious," according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) . Despite the ongoing work to stabilize the plant and fears that radioactive materials had contaminated tap water as far away as Tokyo, 240 kilometers to the south, most of the recommended restrictions on drinking water have been lifted.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, may not be panicking quite yet about its ever-declining oil supply--but the country is certainly concerned. Consider: in February, a Wikileaks document revealed that Saudi Arabia might be overstating its oil reserves by 300 billion barrels, and the country recently asked for a slice of the UN's $100 billion climate change fund to help diversify to other energy sources (a galling request from such a wealthy country so dependent on other people not diversifying to other energy sources). And now the kingdom has announced that it plans to spend $100 billion on solar, nuclear, and other renewable energy sources.

Programmable thermostats, which now make up about half the U.S. sales of all thermostats, could be more trouble for some than they're worth

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a new report, scientists from the University of Rochester, Cornell University, and the Brookhaven and Argonne national laboratories carrying out research at national laboratories including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne describe phase retrieval methods to measure wavefront aberrations produced by imperfect hard x-ray optics.

Want to know what's behind your energy bill? According to new numbers from the U.S.

01 / Azul > > For converting bus riders into frequent fliers. Brazilian-born David Neeleman, founder of Jet Blue, brought the low-cost airline model to his home country and tweaked it to fit its nuances

The New York Times often covers Shell Oil's misdeeds and questionable choices, which in past years have included drilling in the arctic and denying human rights abuses in Nigeria . The oil industry is undeniably contentious and filled with scandals and coverups--all the more reason for the Times to write about it. But how can the Times remain objective when it is partnering with Shell Oil on an energy conference

It's highly unlikely that you're going to see any new nuclear power plants built any time in the future, given the now worsening situation at Fukushima. But knee-jerk reactions to the accident are not what's really to blame for the inevitable decline in nuclear production

On December 1, 1969, Jersey Central Power & Light initiated fission in the fuel rods of the nation's first boiling-water nuclear reactor--one of 31 ultimately built in the U.S. The first "turnkey" plant, Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey was sold for less than $100 million in 1964--a price well below what it would ultimately cost to build the reactor. The point was to prove that a nuclear power facility could be built as cheaply as a coal-fired power plant, and the key to that was a smaller safety system