This archive collects stories about businesses — from startups and local enterprises to multinational corporations — taking meaningful action on social, environmental, and economic challenges. These reports highlight moments when commerce and accountability intersect in constructive ways.
Berkeley Energy Group, the coal company behind the project, billed it as the first large-scale solar farm in the Appalachian region, which has been hit hard by the decades-long decline in the U.S. coal industry.
Tesla claims that by the end of 2018, the Nevada factory will assemble more lithium-ion batteries than what were produced globally in 2013.
Solar road tiles made their public debut in 2016, when 30 hexagonal glass panels lit up a town square in Sandpoint, Idaho. Built by Solar Roadways after a viral crowdfunding campaign, the tiles powered a fountain and restrooms, glowed in patterns, and melted snow. A modest proof that sidewalks might someday double as power plants.
America’s first offshore wind farm came to life in 2015, when construction began on five turbines in the Atlantic waters off Block Island, Rhode Island. A 21-mile submarine cable eventually linked the island to the mainland grid, replacing its diesel generators. Small in scale, it proved offshore wind was buildable in U.S. waters.
The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007, when Apple opened its stores to buyers who had waited hours, sometimes days, for a $499 glass rectangle with no keyboard and no instruction manual. Steve Jobs had unveiled it months earlier as “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator,” and the audience laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t.
Offshore wind began quietly in 1991, when Danish workers planted 11 small turbines in the shallow waters off Vindeby, on the island of Lolland. Each one produced just 450 kilowatts, powering a few thousand homes and proving turbines could survive the sea. It was the first offshore wind farm ever built — a modest experiment that opened a door.
The first Macintosh arrived on January 24, 1984, when Steve Jobs pulled a beige, talking computer from a canvas bag onstage in Cupertino. Priced at $2,495, it brought the graphical interface — windows, icons, a clickable trash can — to everyday buyers. It marked the moment computing began leaving the lab for the living room.
Utility-scale solar arrived in 1982, when ARCO Solar switched on a photovoltaic field near Hesperia, California — the first solar plant anywhere to cross one megawatt of capacity. The silicon cells traced back to NASA satellite research, now wired into the everyday grid. A modest start for what became one of the fastest-falling costs in energy history.
MS-DOS arrived in August 1981, when Microsoft sold IBM the operating system that would power its new personal computer. The twist: Microsoft didn’t write it, but bought the underlying code from a Seattle programmer for $25,000 and kept the rights to license it elsewhere. That clause helped shape the PC era.
The world’s first wind farm spun to life in late 1980 on a New Hampshire hillside, where 20 small turbines fed electricity directly into the grid. Blades broke, towers stood just 60 feet tall, and the project was quietly dismantled within a couple of years. But the proof held, and a direct line runs from those struggling machines to today’s global wind industry.
