Kindle Books Outselling All Print Books on Amazon

Amazon announced today that for its Kindle ebooks are now officially outselling all print books, including paperbacks and hardcover editions.  For every 100 print books sold, Amazon sells 105 Kindle books, a trend that the company expects to keep increasing. The new figures do not inlcude the free ebooks, which would push the ratio of ebooks to print ones even further in the ebooks favor.  The numbers do include, however, print books that are not available in a Kindle edition. Kindle ebooks surpassed hardcover sales in July 2010, then paperback sales in December 2010 and now they outsell both combined.  Amazon said it has already sold three times as many ebooks so far in 2011 than it did in the same time period of 2010

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Kindle Books Outselling All Print Books on Amazon

Clean Technology Investments Up 28% in 2010

Beyond mass-market, all-electric cars finally hitting the roads and new innovations cropping up everyday, the clean technology sector also had a great year from a financial perspective.

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Clean Technology Investments Up 28% in 2010

Tweaking Flight Paths and Landings Can Cut Airline Fuel Use by 15 Percent

Southwest Airlines has rolled out a new set of guidelines for flight paths and landings for its aircraft at 11 airports that has resulted in fuel savings of five to 15 percent per flight.  The new guidelines called Required Navigation Performance (RNP) could be introduced to all airports and airlines in the coming years. The RNP procedures change flight patterns in two major ways:  they allow aircraft to track much tighter flight paths than current traffic control systems require and they also call for a continuous glide down to landing opposed to the punctuated, step-down approach mainly used.  These seemingly small tweaks have added up to major fuel savings — already saving Southwest $11 million in fuel costs a year just at the initial 11 airports and could save up to $60 million a year when extended to all of its airports. In an industry that accounts for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, those fuel savings will also amount to a nice reduction in emissions.

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Tweaking Flight Paths and Landings Can Cut Airline Fuel Use by 15 Percent

Green Cars at NAIAS 2011

Green cars are still present at this year’s North American International Auto Show, but green isn’t the theme to the same extent that it was last year , when everyone seemed enthusiastic to have an electric car of some stripe or other. However, that emphasis has carried over in this year’s top car picks , including the Chevy Volt and the Nissan LEAF . This year there aren’t the big announcements about manufacturers making major capital investments like there were last year, when both Ford and GM made splashes with their plans for new factories.

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Green Cars at NAIAS 2011

The Kindle and the Environment

Here at EcoGeek we’ve been long-time supporters of e-book readers.

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The Kindle and the Environment

Concrete Bases Improve Wind Turbine Tower Efficiency

Concrete is not often the greenest material choice, particularly since concrete production is one of the largest single sources of carbon emissions globally. But, for wind turbine towers, the use of concrete bases can provide a number of significant benefits, including reducing the amount of concrete needed for the footings for a tower by more than two-thirds. Concrete bases can also be more economical to install and can provide faster construction times for wind towers and also can raise tower height to increase power production

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Concrete Bases Improve Wind Turbine Tower Efficiency

First New US Solar Thermal Power Plant in 20 Years Approved

The State of California has granted approval for a new solar thermal power plant. The 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project is the first solar thermal power plant to be licensed in the United States in nearly 20 years.

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First New US Solar Thermal Power Plant in 20 Years Approved

Why a Strong COP15 Agreement Doesn’t Matter… For Cleantech Investment

photo: David Blaikie via flickr. With all the disappointing news about the UN climate negotiation talk shifting for reaching a legally binding deal in December to one which is merely politically binding, I thought I’d share this rather encouraging piece on analysis from Cleantech Group , which says the outcome of COP15 really doesn’t matter much for cleantech investment:…

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Why a Strong COP15 Agreement Doesn’t Matter… For Cleantech Investment

Paul Sr. Tells Conan O’Brien About American Chopper’s Electric Motorcycle

Image credit: Siemens/DCI To those following the cutting edge of green transportation, an all-electric motorcycle is not a novel idea.

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Paul Sr. Tells Conan O’Brien About American Chopper’s Electric Motorcycle