Articles by Christopher Mims

Here’s a win-win: Geothermal power can make lithium for electric vehicles

Existing geothermal power plants are powered by a hot brine from deep within the earth's crust, which is just lousy with dissolved minerals -- literally "half the periodic table," reports Scientific American. One of those elements is lithium, which can be extracted from the geothermal fluid that existing power plants in California's Salton Sea are already pulling out of the ground.

This is remarkable on many levels at once.

How Central Park cools the entire planet

Like all urban parks, Central Park cools New York City through evaporation. That is, its plant life and ponds give off moisture, which takes heat energy with it. It's as if the park sweats.

Until recently, though, we didn’t know whether green spaces cool the planet as a whole.

China may emit more carbon per person than U.S. by 2017

China is now the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, but its per-capita emissions are still less than those of the average U.S. citizen. In six years, that […]

Global investment in clean energy blowin' the hell up

Global total new investment in clean energy 2004-10 ($BN)