Mashable: Dyson Leaps Into Lighting With LED Lights Engineered to Last 37 Years

Dyson is widely known for its futuristic vacuums, Airblade hand dryers, and bladeless fans and heaters. Now, it hopes to be known for something else: efficient LED lights.

The company announced on Friday that it is entering the lighting market with the CSYS task light and the Ariel ceiling light. Dyson's new lights use a technology that reportedly resolves the overheating problems that many existing LED lights suffer from.

Washington Post: The Gamble on Tesla’s Giga Factory in the Nevada Desert

The Tesla deal is one of the nation’s top economic development prizes in a decade. In Nevada, one lawmaker told Reuters, it’s the “biggest thing” going “since at least the Hoover Dam.” Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and state lawmakers project that over 20 years it will create 20,000 jobs and generate $100 billion for the state, which suffered in the recession.

But the agreement also comes at a time when economists and academics are questioning the wisdom of making big-ticket bets on single companies.

NREL: Assuring Solar Modules Will Last for Decades

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is co-leading an international push to assure the reliability of solar panels -- an assurance demanded by customers, manufacturers, lenders and utilities.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems affected by defective or underperforming panels is very low -- just 0.1% per year according to new data on 50,000 systems analyzed by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. But in the face of pressure to keep lowering prices, it is essential that quality be maintained and assured, said Sarah Kurtz, a Research Fellow at NREL who manages the lab's PV Module Reliability Test and Evaluation Group.

PRI: Fracking Is About to Change, and Almost No One Is Happy About It

The Obama administration recently announced new rules to regulate fracking. But no one, it seems, is entirely happy with them.

The new, controversial regulations -- some members of Congress, especially those from areas where fracking is more common, are opposing the rules --  will take effect in June. In the meantime, ProPublica's environmental reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, tells us what we need to know about the changes.

ClimateWire: Hillary Clinton May Take Strong Stance on Global Warming

Clinton, who officially launched her second presidential campaign in a video released this week, never developed a reputation for holding climate change dear to her heart as did Secretary of State John Kerry, who has championed the issue since the early 1990s. Yet supporters of a 2016 Clinton presidency point out that she campaigned on major energy goals, including dramatically reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury.

Over the past year, she has toughened her rhetoric against climate-science-denying Republicans and recently brought on former White House adviser John Podesta, architect of Obama's climate strategy, to run her campaign.