(Midwest Energy News, December 5, 2012)—Cheap natural gas and flat electricity demand has left the prospects for wood-chip and wood-pellet fuels barely smoldering in recent years. But wood biomass could soon have a new role in energy production: cleaning up coal-fired power plant emissions. A year-old company called Biogenic Reagents recently completed construction of a [...]
(Midwest Energy News, November 26, 2012)—As the holiday shopping season kicks into full gear, some experts predict online businesses will rake in $2 billion in sales today, which retailers have dubbed “Cyber Monday.” That also means millions of gallons of fuel will be consumed in getting all those packages to customer’s doorsteps. The good news: there’s [...]
(Finance & Commerce, March 15, 2012)—A full slate of high-profile, ambitious plans are on the horizon for downtown Minneapolis parks and public spaces, from a Sculpture Garden expansion and Nicollet Mall renovation to the proposed Gateway and Water Works parks that would better connect the city to its riverfront. All of those projects won’t be [...]
(Finance & Commerce, November 7, 2011)—You swipe a credit card at a vending machine-sized kiosk. A clothing rack whirls around inside until your shirt or blouse appears. A robotic arm plucks it from the rack by the hanger and passes it to a glass enclosure in front of you. You pop open a door, grab [...]
(Finance & Commerce, October 24, 2011)—On their way to becoming solar-electric panels, more than half of the world’s silicon solar cells produced today reportedly pass through a furnace made by a century-old Lakeville manufacturer. What’s more, the company only started supplying the solar industry four years ago. Despatch Industries now owns more than 60 percent [...]
(Finance & Commerce, October 24, 2011)—Silicon Energy became Minnesota’s second solar-electric panel manufacturer when it started shipping rooftop units from its Iron Range factory in mid-September. It joins Bloomington-based TenKsolar, which began selling its commercial systems in 2010. The companies are getting a boost from a made-in-Minnesota solar rebate program for Xcel Energy customers. And [...]
(GOOD, October 13, 2011)—Brian Van Slyke didn’t want to be a boss‚ and he didn’t want to have one either. But as his one-man record label grew to a three-person operation, they needed some type of organizational structure. “We wanted to be our own bosses, together,” Van Slyke says. In 2006, Fall of the West [...]
Make no mistake: Best Buy likes to see customers lining up for that next new, must-have gadget. The consumer electronics retailer is in the business of helping people upgrade their technology, whether it’s a mobile phone or a big-screen television. For every new product, though, there’s often an old one made obsolete: last year’s iPhone, [...]
