The famed cherry blossoms on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The University of Washington on Thursday announced that it will divest its multi-billion dollar endowment from fossil fuel companies by 2027. The university pledged that its overall investment portfolio would reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The…
Tag Archives: Climate change
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Lucas Joppa, center, at the Cascadia Vision 2050 conference in Blaine, Wash. The panel included Steve Shestag, Boeing’s director of environment, left, and moderator Yemi Adefulu, deputy executive director of the B.C. Center for Innovation and Clean Energy. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Lucas Joppa was Microsoft’s first chief environmental officer when he took the…
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The Our Future Duwamish VR experience created by The Seattle Public Library and the University of Washington explains how gases like carbon dioxide traps solar radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere, and connects that with melting glaciers that are causing sea level rise. (UW/SPL Image) The Seattle Public Library and the University of Washington have created…
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A DroneSeed employee oversees the deployment of two drones above a burn site. (DroneSeed Photo) A swarm of giant drones navigates a scorched moonscape, tracing the rugged topography. The scene has a desolate, sci-fi vibe — but its reality is rooted in the terra firma. The devices belong to DroneSeed, a Seattle startup deploying technology…
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An Amazon Prime truck heads north on Interstate 5 in Washington. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Amazon today announced a deal with low-carbon fuel manufacturer Infinium to purchase some of its “electrofuel” to power delivery trucks beginning next year. The partnership is another step in the tech giant’s path to curbing its rising carbon emissions….
We visited the world’s biggest carbon capture plant, which just signed a 10-year deal with Microsoft
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Climeworks, a leader in direct air capture of carbon dioxide, has facilities alongside a large geothermal power plant outside of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik. The Orca facility is on the far right, and the new Mammoth facility will be to the left, across the road. The pipes are carrying geothermal hot water. Climeworks relies on clean,…
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Some of the FlexCharging team convened for a meeting in Las Vegas in June. Employees, from left to right: Tyler Phillipi, Harold Shin, David Klein, CEO and founder Brian Grunkemeyer, Ken Nichols and Charles Martey. (FlexCharging Photo) In 2014, Brian Grunkemeyer was a Microsoft principal software engineer with a passion for fighting climate change. That…
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Hannah Baldwin, an electrical engineer for the high-power stationary group at Plug Power, inspects a fuel cell in the generator built in New York in partnership with Microsoft. (Microsoft Photo / John Brecher) Data centers packed with millions of servers provide the backbone of the internet, dishing up everything from cat videos to financial transactions…
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A smokey September sunset from Seattle’s unusually dry summer and fall. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Seattle’s identity has been synonymous with drizzle, moss and the angsty grunge music and compulsive coffee drinking that’s fueled by its notoriously damp, gray weather. But this year’s summer and start of fall are threatening to wring those traits…
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U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a former Seattle tech executive first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, at the GeekWire Summit on Oct. 7, 2022. (GeekWire Photo / Dan DeLong) If there’s one thing U.S. senators can likely agree on, it’s that there’s little that they agree about. So how did Washington’s Sen. Maria Cantwell…