Tag: solar
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Help us save the solar industry!
If you follow the UK news, it won’t have escaped your notice that the government has decided to cut the subsidy for solar power in half for all new installations in less than 6 weeks. Solar is in trouble! The new tariff of 21 pence, down from the current 43p, will take effect from 1…
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Solar-powered internet school set to benefit children in rural Africa
David Smith reports in The Guardian that electronics firm Samsung have built a solar-powered mobile classroom inside a 12-foot shipping container. It features “an array of gadgets including laptops, a video camera and a 50-inch e-board in place of a blackboard”. The idea is that…
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Barclays launches £100m renewables fund for farmers
YES. This is what we like: well-known people (like Michael Eavis) championing solar power. That gets the green thumbs up from the GPI team. Today, The Guardian reports that Barclays’ business arm is to help UK farmers finance renewable energy projects “following a massive surge in interest”. Good stuff. And for the record, our interest…
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Solar Power Helps Women Bring Light to Sierra Leone
Today, in The Guardian’s Poverty Matters Blog, we’ve found this great story about how an Indian College has trained 12 Sierra Leonean women to become solar engineers. It’s all part of a drive to bring electricity to rural communities. “A group of 12 women from villages…
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Solar Trends From Around The World
“Experts weigh in on what comes next in Europe, Asia and North America.” When it comes to the future of solar and renewable energy, our friends at 2degrees are constant source of news and knowledge. We really liked this interesting article about regional markets, which provides an insight to some of the observations gleaned from…
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Is UK newspaper coverage skewed against renewables?
Writing in Friday’s edition of The Guardian’s environment blog, Duncan Clark claims that “more than half of the coverage of renewable energy solutions in the mainstream British press is negative”, after being sent some “interesting and previously unpublished” analysis of British newspaper coverage of renewable energy. “Carried out by the Public Interest Research Centre (Pirc),…
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Suntech Power develops cheaper, high-efficiency solar panels
Chinese solar-panel manufacturer Suntech Power has developed a better way to make high-grade silicon wafers for solar cells that could cut the cost of solar power by as much as 10-20%. In fact, the idea underlying the process was patented more than 20 years ago, but it was never commercially developed by the patent owners. When the patents expired…