ENERGY NEWS

ENERGY!

'08.

A quarter of earth's population --1.6 billion people-- have no electricity.

The Kill A Watt meter ($59.95 from Energy Alternatives) is a small electronic meter that measures the amount of power your appliances use, so you know exactly where your electro dollars are going.

New fridges (models released in 2001 or later) are so energy-efficient that they run on about a third to one half of the power the old fridges use.
. . Upright freezers are 25% less efficient than chest freezers.
. . Side-by-side refrigerator/freezers are the least efficient design available. Refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom use about 16% less energy than side-by-side models. Units with the freezer on top use about 13% less energy than side-by-side fridges.
. . A manual defrost fridge or freezer actually uses about half the energy of an automatic defrosting model, but the catch is that it must be defrosted by hand regularly.

One watt --on all the time-- costs you about a dollar a year.

A "hydrogen economy" --or corn-ethanol-- provides little more than official cover for near-term political inaction.

Today, a Californian has an electric bill no larger than the average American's but generates just one-third the CO2.

San Francisco peak power usage: 950 megawatts.

A megawatt is enough to power about 300 homes.

Electrolysis methods in use take about 4 to 4.5 kWh of energy for each cubic meter of H2 gas.

ENERGY NEWS

Dec 30, 08: Motorcycles may deliver 70 mpg or more, but they can be 10 times more polluting per mile than passenger cars. That has the US and European Union pushing motorcycles to run cleaner and greener.
. . Italian scooter-maker Piaggio has unveiled a gas-electric hybrid scooter that gets 141 mpg and could be on the road next year, and Honda says it is working on a hybrid motorcycle. Honda says the technology could be offered in displacements ranging from 50 to 1,000 cc and offer a 50% improvement in fuel efficiency.
. . A diesel-burning version of the Kawasaki KLR that the Marines have been using for years, and companies like Gray Eagles, are working on diesel cruisers capable of 80 mpg and 100 mph.

Mitsubishi tapped laser tech to give you a vivid picture in a rear-projection set. The lasers in the 3-D ready TV use 33% less energy than a similar size LCD.

Dec 22, 08: Idaho, with 550,000 cows, is now America’s No. 3 milk producer, trailing California and Wisconsin. Other states are also trying to whet potential manure investors’ appetites.
. . Kjellander: "You've got to have somebody locally who is ready to take the risk and move this forward. But the state can provide the right type of incentives."Minnesota recently gave a farmer more than $200,000 to finance a project that sends unused electricity to its power grid. Washington offers sales tax exemptions for dairies that install so-called digesters, which converts methane from cow manure into electricity.
. . In Oregon, a utility and a environmental group are taking advantage of state energy tax credits to build a $1 million methane digester at the state’s largest dairy. NW Natural and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation are building the facility at Threemile Canyon Farms in Boardman.

Dec 18, 08: The Ethiopian government is handing out free energy-saving light bulbs to householders to prevent power cuts.

Dec 18, 08: A tidal turbine near the mouth of Strangford Lough in England has begun producing electricity at full capacity for the first time. The SeaGen system now generates 1.2MW, the highest level of power produced by a tidal stream system anywhere in the world.
. . The system works like an "underwater windmill" but with rotors driven by tidal currents rather than the wind. "It demonstrates, for the first time, the commercial potential of tidal energy as a viable alternative source of renewable energy."

Dec 18, 08: The electric grid may be able to handle more wind and solar power —-way more-— than previously thought, according to a new preliminary study.
. . The commonly accepted wisdom in the energy industry is that the grid could only draw something like 20% of its power from wind and solar resources before encountering major reliability problems. But the new power flow simulation (.pdf), presented for the first time this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting, shows that, at least in California, the power grid might be able to handle three times that much renewable energy without encountering major trouble pushing electrons around the state.
. . "This work has shown that at least 70% of the total projected California generation on a summer day in 2016 could be provided by renewable sources ... with relatively minimal upgrades to the transmission infrastructure", wrote Elaine Hart, a Stanford doctoral student, in her presentation.

Dec 18, 08: A new calculation of the world's coal reserves is much lower than previous estimates. If validated, the new info could have a massive impact on the fate of the planet's climate.
. . That's because coal is responsible for most of the CO2 emissions that drive climate change. If there were actually less coal available for burning, climate modelers would have to rethink their estimates of the level of emissions that humans will produce.
. . The new model, created by Dave Rutledge, chair of Caltech's engineering and applied sciences division, suggests that humans will only pull up a total —-including all past mining-— of 662 billion tons of coal out of the Earth. The best previous estimate, from the World Energy Council, says that the world has almost 850 billion tons of coal still left to be mined.
. . Rutledge argues that governments are terrible at estimating their own fossil fuel reserves. He developed his new model by looking back at historical examples of fossil fuel exhaustion. For example, British coal production fell precipitously form its 1913 peak. American oil production famously peaked in 1970, as controversially predicted by King Hubbert. Both countries had heartily overestimated their reserves.
. . More specifically, Rutledge says that big surveys of natural resources underestimate the difficulty and expense of getting to the coal reserves of the world. China, for example, has only submitted two estimates of its coal reserves to the World Energy Council —-and they were wildly different.
. . And don't look to technology to bail out coal miners. Mechanization has actually decreased the world's recoverable reserves, because huge mining machines aren't quite as good at digging out coal as human beings are.
. . With Rutledge's new numbers, the world could burn all the coal (and other fossil fuels) it can get to, and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would only end up around 460 parts per million, which is predicted to cause a 2-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures.
. . For many scientists, that's too much warming. A growing coalition is calling for limiting the CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, down from the 380 ppm of today, but it's a far cry from some of the more devastating scenarios devised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
. . "Coal emissions really need to be phased out proactively —-we can't just wait for them to run out-— by the year 2030", said Pushker Kharecha, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "There is more than enough coal to keep CO2 well above 350 ppm well beyond this century."
. . Even if coal were to run out and the most dangerous climate change averted, the imperative to develop non–fossil-fuel energy sources would remain.

Dec 17, 08: Grays Harbor Ocean Energy has applied for federal preliminary permits for the development of seven sites offshore of six US states, each about 100 square miles and capable of generating up to 1000 MW each. The sites are in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey. The permit applications are for wave power only; the wave power will be generated from platforms that can also support wind turbines.”
. . This is a truly ambitious proposal with an estimated prcie tag of $28 billion, making it the largest planned renewable energy project in the U.S.

Dec 10, 08: According to a Stanford U researcher, ‘wind, water and sun beat biofuels, nuclear and coal for clean energy.’ The scientist ‘has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability.’ Wow! The researcher found that some sources of energy were 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options.
. . “Jacobson received no funding from any interest group, company or government agency. Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels.’ He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.”
. . So what are his recommendations? “The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with CO2 capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.”
. . “Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99% reduction in CO2 and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the US; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted
. . “In summary, the use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, solar, wave, and hydroelectric to provide electricity for BEVs [battery-electric vehicles] and HFCVs [hydrogen fuel cell vehicles] result in the most benefit and least impact among the options considered. Coal-CCS and nuclear provide less benefit with greater negative impacts. The biofuel options provide no certain benefit and result in significant negative impacts. Because sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, gravitational energy) exists to power all energy for the world, the results here suggest that the diversion of attention to the less efficient or non-efficient options represents an opportunity cost that delays solutions to climate and air pollution health problems.”

Dec 8, 08: An EU report recommends banning incandescent light bulbs by 2012 to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Several nations including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Philippines have already announced they will phase out or restrict sales of traditional bulbs. The report says the EU could save up to $12bn (Ł8bn) a year in energy bills. The EU says the measure will save households up to 50 euros ($64, Ł43) a year and pump up to 10bn euros ($13bn) into the economy.
. . The report also says the switch will reduce CO2 emissions by 12 million metric tons (13.2 million tons) a year, and save energy equivalent to the consumption of 11 million European households.
. . The report needs the backing of the European parliament and all 27 member states to become law.

Dec 8, 08: From the Stockport Mill Inn on southeastern Ohio's Muskingum River to the hydropower-rich Pacific Northwest to the old mill towns of New England, small hydroelectric projects are popping up in a bid for energy independence. Yet hopes of turning waterways like Mill Brook into power sources are being dammed up by state and federal regulations meant to regulate huge hydroelectric projects.
. . They're working with the 58-unit Armory Square apartment building across the brook to refurbish the old dam and produce hydroelectric power.
. . Small hydro advocates say their projects don't promise the economic payoff to justify environmental studies that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
. . Armory Square developers also plan to use boilers that will burn biomass pellets and solar hot water panels on the roof, Broderick said, but hopes for bringing the dam back to life are at a standstill.
. . At the Stockport Mill Inn in Ohio, innkeeper Dottie Singer said the regulatory process took years but the result has been worth it. Water flowing over the old mill dam adjacent to the inn is run through twin turbines that more than offset the hotel and restaurant's annual electrical usage. Excess power is sold to a regional utility.
. . The dam has generated business as well. "We're in a remote area", Singer said. "But people like to see our dam. It's green energy. It's where we should be going, because it helps to protect our fragile, damaged environment."
. . Catherine Gjessing, director of policy research and planning at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, said the agency is working with the state Natural Resources Board to see whether a more streamlined regulatory process can be developed.
. . Several towns have installed turbines in municipal water systems, capturing energy as water flows from an uphill reservoir downhill to a population center.
. . A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory found 130,000 stretches of stream around the country suitable for small hydro projects, defining small as those between 10 kilowatts and 30 megawatts. Theoretically, if they were all developed, they could provide about 100,000 megawatts of power —-three times that used by the six New England states put together. When environmental concerns and other limitations are taken into account, the potential likely is reduced to about 30,000 megawatts.

Dec 5, 08: Intel said it is researching technology to harvest free energy from the environment, which could lead to devices such as mobile phones running for indefinite periods without recharging.
. . The company is working on tiny sensors that can capture energy from sources such as sunlight and body heat. In the future, such energy could be used to power personal electronic devices such as cell phones. There are already watches available that are powered by body heat, as well as prototype smartphones with display screens that double as solar cells.
. . It may take a while before the energy-harvesting technology can power larger items.

Dec 5, 08: New York's new lamppost's 4-to 6-foot head boasts up to 100 LEDs with multiple lenses that can be configured to dial in specific lighting "footprints" of uniform brightness. For New York, the coverage patterns will be tailored for three distinct situations--park, street corner, and mid-block.
. . LEDs last twice as long as the current high—pressure sodium bulbs. Oh, and they burn 30% less energy. Plus, the fixture's modular design makes it easy to swap out chips as LED technology improves. OVI is putting the finishing touches on its prototypes, and if tests go well next year, the lamps will soon start lighting up the city.

The Black and Decker air-leak detector takes a high tech approach by seeking out temp changes as small as a single degree. When a trouble area is spotted, a blue spotlight points you towards the problem. Not bad for $40 -it should pay for itself in no time.

Dec 4, 08: President-elect Barack Obama and leaders in Congress are fashioning a plan to pour billions of dollars into a jobs program to jolt the economy and lay the groundwork for a more energy-efficient one.
. . A senior Obama aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a work in progress, said it would probably include the weatherizing of hundreds of thousands of homes, the installation of “smart meters” to monitor and reduce home energy use, and billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments for mass transit and infrastructure projects. The green component of the much larger stimulus plan would cost at least $15 billion a year.

Dec 4, 08: Ethanol and other non-oil-based fuels have not proved their commercial value, in some cases yielding less energy than was needed to produce them, or, in ethanol’s case, diverting land to corn and driving up food prices.

Dec 4, 08: The millions of lights on theater marquees and billboard ads that illuminate The Great White Way are being replaced by energy-saving lites under the new Broadway Goes Green initiative.
. . The roof of a distribution warehouse in Fontana is now covered with 33,700 advanced thin-film solar panels, making it the largest single rooftop solar photovoltaic array in California and the nation's largest solar installation program by a utility.
. . Moving water around uses a lot of energy in the US and many other agricultural nations. A Petaluma, California, firm is selling digital control systems that can save both water and the energy needed to move it about.
. . The system that calculates eighteen variables for any irrigation or outdoor water use system. Things like weather, soil type, grade or slope, amount of shade, crop or plant varieties. Using real-time weather data from the many thousands of U.S. weather stations plus data on the specific local conditions of the customer’s landscape can yield a set of projections on how much water is needed. Less water running down the gutter, or into the ditch. No shallow lakes at the back of the parking lot.
. . 58% of the urban water use goes onto landscape, and that waste can range from 30% to 300%. Every gallon of water NOT pumped means a concomitant savings on energy costs as well.

Dec 4, 08: A hardy but pedestrian plant is doing triple duty in California's agricultural heartland. Farmers, water managers and agriculture researchers are closely watching an experiment using canola plants to absorb the salt from soil and water. The seeds are then crushed to extract oil for blending into environmentally friendly biodiesel.
. . The selenium-rich canola byproduct has an even higher calling: cattle feed naturally infused with an essential micro-nutrient. The canola meal —-grown on once-fallow land-— was fed to dairy cows on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, where selenium does not occur naturally and has to be added to food rations. The cows did well, and produced a milk with trace amounts of selenium, a potential cancer-fighter that humans need in small amounts for good health.
. . There is urgency to the effort because the ongoing drought and court-ordered water rationing to protect threatened fish species means farmers who have relied for decades on state and federal water deliveries via canals are being forced to turn to groundwater pumping.
. . The canola crop even yielded the oil that's blended with regular diesel to power tractors.

Dec 3, 08: One of the largest offshore wind farms in the world has been approved to be built off the coast of north Wales. The 250 turbines will be built 12k off the coast.
. . Combined with three other nearby wind farms, it will provide enough green electricity to power the equivalent of 680,000 homes. "It brings the total offshore projects with planning approval to 4.5 GW, solidifying UK's position as leader in offshore wind energy. "It will also set us well on our way towards reaching our 2020 renewable energy targets."

Dec 4, 08: The amount of U.S. greenhouse gases flowing into the atmosphere, mainly CO2 from burning fossil fuels, increased last year by 1.4% after a decline in 2006, the Energy Department reported.

Dec 3, 08: Hawaii joined California y'day as the second state in the nation to link to the Better Place network of plug-in electric vehicles.

Dec 2, 08: A report prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council five years ago estimated that running a laptop from AC power is about 20% more energy-efficient than doing it off a battery.

Dec 2, 08: Polymer solar cells have been around for several years, but have been highly inefficient at converting sun to electricity. This new polymer reached 5.1% efficiency in the published study but has in a few months improved to 5.6 %. We’d like to push the performance of the solar cell to higher than 10%.

Nov 30, 08: The push to get electricity from moving water is only picking up steam. There is mounting political pressure to get more energy from alternative sources and developers are pushing ambitious projects to exploit America's biggest rivers for power. A fall of less than 30 feet, the height of most Ohio River dams, is sufficient.
. . "Some of these applications have been around for decades, but there's renewed interest now", said Jeff Hawk, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Pittsburgh district.
. . A new generation of low-impact hydroelectric plants is expected to light up the Ohio River Valley. Along the Mississippi River, a city and a small startup firm have separate hopes of harnessing that artery's energy potential either through a few big turbines or thousands of tiny, submerged ones.
. . Where the Ford plant once stood, the city bought the hydro power plant in 1963, acquired a second one on the Ohio River a few years later and may soon build another just upriver from Cincinnati. Hydro gives the 30,000 customers of the city-owned utility the lowest electricity rate in Ohio, and officials think that Hamilton can become virtually all-hydro. The price tag: $450 million over 40 years.
. . Harnessing the Mississippi River's flow for electrical generation isn't new: A 134-megawatt hydroelectric plant by St. Louis-based AmerenUE, for instance, has been running since 1913 at Keokuk, Iowa.
. . Massachusetts-based Free Flow Power Corp. is studying the prospects of planting thousands of small electric turbines in the river bed at 55 sites from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, figuring together they could generate enough power to supply 1.5 million homes. The private startup says the cumulative output of 1,600 megawatts would be the equivalent of three small coal-fired power plants or one or two nuclear ones.
. . The plan, with a possible $3 billion price tag, uses hydrokinetics —-electrical generation from river currents or ocean waves. The river's flow would spin submerged turbines about two feet in diameter and perhaps made of carbon fiber or some other lightweight source durable enough to withstand being hit by debris swept downriver while not interfering with barge traffic.

Nov 27, 08: A new study suggests that massive wind farms could steer storms and alter the weather if extensive fields of turbines were built, according to a news report. It is not the first study to come to this conclusion.
. . The new research is an interesting "what if", but the installation of large wind turbines would have to be taken to the extreme to have the global effects portrayed. They calculated "what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, were covered in one massive wind farm."
. . The result of such an unlikely installation: a real serious Butterfly Effect. Such massive wind farming would slow wind speeds by 5 or 6 mph as the turbines literally stole wind from the air. A ripple effect would occur in the form of waves radiating across the Northern Hemisphere that could, days later, run into storms and alter their courses by hundreds of miles.
. . The researchers "acknowledged the hypothetical wind farm was far larger than anything humans are likely to build", according to the Web site, but if Department of Energy projections for wind farming are met by 2030 (for the country to get 20% of its electricity from wind), "it could probably have an effect."
. . One group found the opposite effect. Somnath Baidya Roy of Princeton U and colleagues simulated the effect of extensive wind farms on local weather. They found a drying and warming effect in the morning that would warm the air across moist and cool overnight soil, causing the local wind speed to increase slightly.
. . Also in 2004, David Keith of the U of Calgary and his colleagues estimated the drag from wind farms if they covered 10% of the Earth's land surface. They concluded that global cooling would occur in polar regions and global warming would result in temperate regions such as North America at about 30 degrees North latitude.
. . When that study was released, Keith had an interesting take on the possibility: "The message here is climate change, but that doesn't equal global warming", Keith said. "It's possible this would have benefits", by working against the atmospheric effects of fossil fuel consumption on global climate, he said.

Nov 21, 08: In keeping with its progressive reputation, San Francisco is looking to pave the way for widespread electric vehicle adoption in the US. A Palo-Alto start-up called "Better Place" has received the green light from all three of the Bay Area's big city mayors to begin carrying out an ambitious plan to build a network of 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-exchange stations and a control center that keeps the system running smoothly. And if that wasn't enough, they hope to have the entire thing up and running by 2012.
. . Naturally, a project this vast isn't going to be cheap—$1 billion is a lot of money to burden the taxpayers with. Fortunately, that won't be a problem because the project will be funded with an incentive plan directed at companies who install the chargers. Building permits will also be expedited to help move things along. Better Place will also be working with Renault-Nissan to distribute electric vehicles in "much the way telecoms distribute cellphones. Customers will subscribe to drive a certain number of miles and get an electric vehicle at a discounted price. Better Place will own the battery."
. . As San Francisco mayor-extraordinaire Gavin Newsom put it, the goal is to “make the Bay Area—and eventually California—the electric vehicle capital of the US”.

Nov 20, 08: EER’s report finds China will be #1 in generating electricity from wind by 2011. China will lead the global wind market in annual installations by 2011 with an estimated 10 GW/year. China now must import both coal and petroleum.

Nov 19, 08: The world's top five cellphone makers launched a common energy rating system for chargers, making it easier for consumers to compare and choose the ones consuming the least energy --five stars for the most efficient chargers, down to zero stars for the ones consuming the most energy.
. . If left plugged into the socket, chargers continue to use electricity even if the phone is disconnected. Nokia said around two-thirds of the electricity used by mobile phones is wasted this way. "If the more than three billion people owning mobile devices today switched to a four- or five-star charger, this could save the same amount of energy ... as produced by two medium sized power plants", Nokia said.

Nov 17, 08: Forty miles east of San Francisco, scientists are constructing a miniature Sun within a stadium-sized building at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Called the National Ignition Facility, it will use 192 of the world's most powerful lasers to ignite a hydrogen fuel pellet, fusing its atoms, and producing enormous amounts of energy from that fusion.
. . It is now 99% completed. It is scheduled to begin operations in March 2009. The lab's first ignition attempt is set for 2010, with a goal of reaching nuclear fusion in 2011.
. . Schwarzenegger said he expects that within 10 to 12 years a fusion energy demonstration project will be up and running.

Nov 17, 08: A new report from the Department of Energy details that 225 gigawatts of wind power are in the planning phases, thirteen times more than currently installed and far more than the natural gas and coal plants on the drawing board.
. . A separate DOE report released last month declared that wind could power 20% of the US grid by 2030.

Nov 17, 08: Building an alt-energy power plant is risky and expensive, but thanks to a new ruling by an Environmental Protection Agency panel, building a coal plant may become riskier and more expensive. The Environmental Appeals Board blocked the EPA from issuing a permit to a proposed coal plant addition near Vernal, Utah, about 150 miles east of Salt Lake City.
. . Perhaps more importantly, the quasi-independent board, composed of four highly regarded, experienced judges, ruled that the EPA needs to develop a single nationwide standard for dealing with CO2. This places over 100 coal plants into regulatory limbo. The rulemaking process will likely yield greater CO2 emissions regulation and will take more than a year.
. . That puts prospective coal power-plant builders in a tough spot, especially with financing already in short supply thanks to the credit crunch. The ruling introduces more risk into the coal industry, which could drive away investors and their limited cash.
. . And that, said the Sierra Club's chief climate counsel, David Bookbinder, is good news for new clean tech companies. "Where do you think that money is going to go? It's going to go to wind. It's going to go to solar. It's going to go to something that's going to get built", Bookbinder said. "This is incredibly good for green energy."
. . Following a landmark 2007 decision by the Supreme Court that CO2 could be regulated as a pollutant under the 1970s-era Clean Air Act, environmental groups have been pushing the EPA to stop issuing permits to coal plants, which produce massive amounts of CO2. But under the Bush administration, the EPA had resisted taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources.
. . The controversial attempt to build a coal plant that captures and stores its greenhouse gas emissions took another step backward yesterday. The Department of Energy pulled its financial support from a project known as FutureGen, which would have been a first-of-its-kind cleanish plant. The DOE cited the rising costs of the project.
. . The move was seen as slowing the development of so-called CO2 capture and sequestration technologies.
. . Rhetorically, it sure looks bad for the Bush administration to bang the clean coal technology drum during the State of the Union and then cut its most visible support for the technology the next day.

Nov 17, 08: 17 million gallons of gasoline are spilled annually in North America. Many of the chemicals like benzene that go to form gasoline are not only atmosphere killers, they're cancer-causing killers as well.
. . Propane burns much cleaner than gasoline. 97% less particulates than gasoline emissions. Propane is a component of natural gas. We wouldn’t be bringing shiploads of liquid propane in from the Mideast or Venezuela.

Nov 17, 08: Some cities like Berkeley and Boulder are offering residents no cost solar panel financing with the home or business owner paying back the cost over twenty years as part of a real estate tax bill, making the entire cost tax deductible.

Nov 17, 08: Leaders of EU nations voted on measures to phase out the use of traditional incandescent light bulbs. But lobbying by the lighting industry could result in the 27-nation bloc dimming its ambitions on energy efficiency.
. . 30 countries have announced plans to phase out the use of these old fashioned appliances; China has announced plans to phase out the production of most of the world's incandescent light bulbs, and the major light bulb manufacturers have accepted that change is inevitable.
. . The lighting industry has said that it wants to be allowed to sell improved incandescent light bulbs, which use 25% less electricity than their traditional equivalents. Allowing the use of improved incandescent light bulbs being promoted by the manufacturers would result in the Europe's CO2 emissions being up to 53 million tons higher each year. Based on the recent price for CO2 emissions, this outcome would impose an unnecessary annual emissions cost of one billion euros (Ł800m) on the continent's electricity bills.
. . Using wasteful light bulbs also requires countries to pay for large coal imports and to have extra power stations available to provide electricity during periods of peak electricity demand. By comparison, burning the extra coal needed to keep an incandescent light bulb working releases roughly three times more mercury directly into the atmosphere and poses a genuine risk wherever it ends up.

Nov 17, 08: Marine power developers have been invited to submit outline proposals for projects to be run in the Pentland Firth and surrounding waters. The area off the north Scottish mainland contains six of the top 10 sites in the UK for tidal energy.
. . The Crown hopes 700 megawatts (MW) will be generated from the firth by 2020. Scottish Renewables, the green energy trade body, has previously said tidal, wave and offshore wind farms had the potential to generate 1,000 MW of electricity by the same date.

Nov 15, 08: Advanced drilling techniques that blast millions of gallons of water into 400-million-year-old shale formations 1.5km underground are opening up "unconventional" gas fields touted as a key to the nation's energy future.
. . These deposits, where natural gas is so tightly locked in deep rocks that it's costly and complicated to extract, include the Barnett shale in Texas, the Fayetteville of Arkansas, and the Haynesville of Louisiana. But the mother lode is the Marcellus shale underlying the Appalachians. Geologists call the Marcellus a "super giant" gas field. Penn State geoscientist Terry Engelder believes it could supply the natural gas needs of the US for 14 years.
. . But as word spread over the past year that a 54,000-square-mile shale field from southern New York to West Virginia promised to yield a trillion dollars worth of gas, making millionaires of local landowners, environmental alarms were sounded.
. . Would gas wells damage water wells? Would chemicals poison groundwater? Would fabled trout streams be sucked dry? Would the pristine upstate reservoirs that supply drinking water to New York City be befouled?
. . "This gas well drilling could transform the heavily forested upper Delaware watershed from a wild and scenic natural habitat into an ugly industrial landscape that is forever changed", said Tracy Carluccio of Delaware Riverkeeper. She'd like a moratorium on drilling to allow an inventory of natural areas to be done first.
. . So loud were the protests in New York that Gov. David Paterson directed the Department of Environmental Conservation to update its oil and gas drilling regulations to reflect the advanced drilling technology, which uses millions of gallons of water and poses waste-disposal challenges.

Nov 14, 08: Looks like Toyota is bringing the 56-mpg iQ microcar to America after all, but it's slapping a Scion badge on it first. It's a safe bet it won't be the 55.9-mpg 1.0-liter three-cylinder gas or the 1.4-liter turbodiesel engines available in Europe. More likely is the 1.5-liter gasoline four-banger found in the Yaris.

Nov 14, 08: To fall into the Kei class, a car can be no more than 11.1-feet long, 4.6-feet wide, and 6.5-feet high, with a 660 cc engine.
. . Japanese automakers produce more than 50 models of Kei car, and they range from the strictly utilitarian Daihatsu Hijet van to the sporty Mazda Autozam that gets 50 mpg. Gasoline costs $5.79 a gallon in Japan, the lowest price in six months. While new car sales in Japan were down by more than 13%, Kei cars sales jumped 6.2%.

Nov 13, 08: The European Commission has unveiled plans to diversify the EU's energy imports and reduce dependence on Russia, the main gas supplier. The EU will remain dependent on imported fossil fuels for many years to come, the Strategic Energy Review says.
. . It also wants the EU to build a North Sea offshore grid, to link up national electricity grids in north-western Europe and plug in the numerous planned offshore wind farms. "It should become, together with the Mediterranean Ring and the Baltic Interconnection project, one of the building blocks of a future European supergrid", the strategy paper says. A Mediterranean energy ring --interconnecting electricity and gas networks-- "is essential to develop the region's vast solar and wind energy potential."
. . "We must break the vicious energy cycle of increased energy consumption and increased imports", he said. One way to do that is to stick to the EU's green energy goals, contained in the climate change package, he said. Meeting the targets on renewables and energy efficiency would cut EU energy imports by 26%, he predicted.

Nov 12, 08: Energy experts warn the UK could face an unacceptable risk of major blackouts in less than 10 years unless policy is improved. They said the government has dithered for too long over policies vital to energy security and climate security.
. . The possible energy gap is being created because of the impending closure before 2015 of nine of our major coal and oil-powered plants. And many warn that government renewables targets are unlikely to be hit thanks to a combination of a lack of political will and engineering challenges for offshore wind. The experts demanded much more urgent action on carbon capture and storage from coal, on which the government is due to make a decision soon.

Nov 12, 08: When it is refined, a barrel of crude yields several different "cuts" that range from light products, such as butane, to heavy products, such as asphalt. Even the best-quality barrel of crude (42 gallons) yields only about 20 gallons of gasoline. Furthermore, certain types of crude oil (such as light sweet) are better suited to gasoline or diesel production than others. The overall point is that even the most technologically advanced oil refineries cannot produce just one product from a barrel of crude -—they must produce several, and the market value of those various cuts is constantly changing.
. . The problem for the ethanol advocates is that there's very little growth in gasoline demand, while the demand for other cuts of the barrel is booming. In short, the corn ethanol producers are making the wrong type of fuel at the wrong time. They are producing fuel that displaces gasoline at a time when gasoline demand -—both in the United States and globally—- is essentially flat. Meanwhile, demand for the segment of the crude barrel known as middle distillates -—primarily diesel fuel and jet fuel—- is growing rapidly. And corn ethanol cannot replace diesel or jet fuel, the liquids that propel the vast majority of our commercial transportation machinery. The surge in diesel demand is due in large part to the ongoing "dieselization" of the European automobile market
. . "Ethanol is making diesel more expensive relative to gasoline because it's expanding the pool of gasoline. But to make diesel, we have to process more crude, which in turn is raising the price of crude." He went on, saying that for some refiners, "gasoline is being thrown into the market as a diesel byproduct."
. . In other words, ethanol is doing absolutely nothing to reduce overall U.S. oil consumption or imports because refiners have to buy the same amount of crude (or more) in order to meet the demand for products other than gasoline -—that is, jet fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil, asphalt, etc.
. . Corn ethanol boosters claim that their fuel will reduce America's need for foreign oil. But the latest numbers from the Energy Information Administration show no decrease in imports. In fact, it's just the opposite. In July 2000, the United States was importing about 11.6 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products per day. By July 2008, total imports had increased to about 13 million barrels per day. The same trend holds true when looking only at crude oil imports. In July 2000, crude oil imports were about 9.4 million barrels per day. By July 2008, they had increased to 10.1 million barrels per day.
. . The punch line here is obvious: The corn ethanol scam cannot, has not, and will not significantly reduce overall oil use or significantly cut oil imports because it only replaces one segment of the crude-oil barrel. Furthermore, all the talk about "cellulosic ethanol," a substance that, in theory, can be profitably produced in commercial quantities from grass, wood chips, or other biomass, is largely misplaced because, like corn ethanol, it will only supplant gasoline.

Nov 12, 08: Agucadoura, Portugal. Just 5km offshore there, these big metallic sea snakes are bobbing in the ever-restless waves of the North Atlantic. And they’re generating electricity for over a thousand homes on shore. It now is the world’s most ambitious, working wave farm for generating electricity.
. . It's part of Portugal’s national effort to become energy self-sufficient as Denmark has done since the 1970s oil crisis. Portugal is not a wealthy nation and has no coal or petroleum. So wind and water and sunshine are their favored sources of energy. Portugal is also one nation encouraging local cities to become zero emission communities.
. . Pelamis has projects approved for the Orkenys, Scotland, and another off southwestern England.

Nov 10, 08: The fact that Ford Motor Company just introduced their new F-150 truck line for 2009 – a three-ton, 16-miles-per-gallon monster – doesn't reassure many that the auto industry is serious about using these massive loans to produce more efficient vehicles. The New York Times notes that Ford spent $150m to retool its Dearborn, Michigan plant to make that new truck.

Nov 7, 08: Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection has some environmental advice for the incoming Obama administration: focus on energy efficiency and renewable resources, and create a unified U.S. power grid.
. . The group Gore founded rolled out a new media campaign to push for immediate investments in three energy areas it maintains would help meet Gore's previously announced challenge to produce 100% clean electricity in the US in a decade.
. . The plan advocates immediate investment in energy efficiency, renewable power generation --including public investment in wind, solar and geothermal technology-- and the creation of a unified national smart grid. "Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation."

Nov 6, 08: U.S. food prices will rise by at least 7% in 2009 because of higher feed costs for chickens, hogs and cattle, said a group of food-industry economists.

Nov 3, 08: A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth. "When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted", said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State U.
. . What's exciting about the Gliocladium roseum fungus, however, is that it can both break down cellulose and synthesize the liquid fuel. "A step in the production process could be skipped." The paper's authors admit that the technique is far from any sort of industrial production.

Oct 31, 08: A federal judge blocked the city from requiring all new taxicabs to be fuel-efficient hybrids, hampering Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious goal to make all yellow cabs green by 2012. The preliminary ruling, released a day before a Saturday deadline, decided the regulations were pre-empted by federal law.
. . Bloomberg said he was "very disappointed" and blasted the ruling for relying on "archaic Washington regulations". The new rules would have gone into effect Nov. 1 and required any new cab coming into service to achieve a fuel efficiency standard of 25 miles per gallon. The following year, that would have increased to 30 miles per gallon.
. . The standard yellow cab, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets about 14 miles per gallon while some hybrid models, which run on a combination of gasoline and electricity, achieve as much as 36. There are more than 13,000 taxicabs in New York City, and nearly 1,500 are hybrids.

Oct 31, 08: As recently as this summer, the cost of power from new wind farm was 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour, cheaper than power from a new gas-fired power plant (9 cents) or a new nuclear plant (9.8 cents). Only coal, at about 6 cents for kilowatt hour, was cheaper. [if you don't count the cost of the damage it does.]
. . But prospects for banner growth in 2009 have ebbed. Falling prices for natural gas, transmission bottlenecks, and other costs have undermined wind power. Rising steel costs alone have pushed up the price of building one megawatt of wind power about 30%.

Oct 31, 08: As around-the-clock operations, prisons are voracious resource hogs, and administrators are under increasing pressure to reduce waste and conserve energy and water. In 2007, states spent more than $49 billion to feed, house, clothe, treat and supervise 2.3 million offenders, the Pew Center on the States reported this year.

Oct 30, 08: Sharp may not do much in terms of ePaper, but they know their way around an LCD. And they've just shown off a new type of eight-color LCD that can hold a static image even when the power is cut.

Oct 28, 08: By tapping the natural motion of slow-moving water, a new hydrokinetic generator could open vast new swaths of the ocean for energy production. When ocean currents flow over any kind of cylinder, like the long cables that hold drilling platforms in place, small vortices are created. They eventually spin away, or shed, causing vibrations that over time can destroy an oil rig's moorings.
. . A U of Michigan engineer who long worked on suppressing this phenomenon, has developed a prototype energy-harvester that can capture the mechanical energy it creates.
. . One major problem is that most underwater turbines require the water to be moving very fast. One study suggested that hydrokinetic projects only made economic sense in currents moving at over six knots, which are highly rare. "That's where my device comes in, to extract energy at speeds down to 1 knot."

Oct 27, 08: More than 190 million acres of federal land in 12 western states will be opened for development of geothermal energy resources, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced today. "Geothermal energy will play a key role in powering America's energy future", Kempthorne said, "and 90% of our nation's geothermal resources are found on federal lands."
. . There are 29 geothermal power plants currently operating on Bureau of Land Management lands in California, Nevada and Utah, with a total generating capacity of 1,250 megawatts
. . Currently, geothermal power supplies less than 1% of the world's energy. Under the plan announced today, known as the Final Geothermal Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, 5,540 megawatts of new electric generation capacity from geothermal resources could be in place by 2015. In addition, the plan estimates an additional 6,600 megawatts by 2025 for a total of 12,100 megawatts.
. . Wells over a mile deep can be drilled into underground reservoirs to tap steam and very hot water. Dry steam and flash steam power plants emit low levels of CO2, nitric oxide, and sulphur, although at roughly 5% of the levels emitted by fossil fuel power plants.
. . To resolve these concerns, geothermal plants can be built with systems that can inject these substances back into the Earth, reducing CO2 emissions to less than 0.1% of those from fossil fuel power plants.
. . To protect special resource values, the plan announced today identifies a comprehensive list of stipulations, conditions of approval and best management practices required for approval of future geothermal leases.
. . Lands within a unit of the National Park System, such as Yellowstone National Park, for instance,will continue to be unavailable for leasing. The plan also excludes wilderness areas and wilderness study areas.

Oct 25, 08: "Urgent and drastic" policy and system changes are needed if the UK is to meet EU targets on renewable energy, a House of Lords committee has said. Producing 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 is "an enormous challenge", the EU committee stressed.
. . It said planning law must be reformed to allow ministers to overrule local opposition to projects like wind farms. It also called for more consideration of other technologies, including hydro-electric power. And it called for more emphasis on energy efficiency at individual and national level.

- There are grades of LED lights. Look for fflicker-free. If you’re looking for clarity, look for a product that is full wave or rectified. They are typically brighter than those designated as half-wave.
- Remember to look for weather-resistant bulbs, otherwise the strands may rust before they have a chance to outlast your old incandescent ones.
- Ask for a warranty. Heck, LEDs are supposed to last longer, so make sure they do. Figure out how you can get a replacement set. - HolidayLEDs.com

Oct 20, 08: More than 15 million rural Chinese homes have been provided with "biogas": a large, oxygenless digester into which they empty their toilet pans. The organic matter ferments there and belches out a gas that can then be converted into electricity; the gas also makes stoves go. It may make us retch, but it saves Chinese women from the backbreaking labor of cutting down firewood, and they love it. Is this our future? Alas, its potential spread is limited: If you don't add ample animal feces, too, the machines don't run for long.

Oct 20, 08: A sewage plant uses up to 11.5 watts of energy per head, requiring an entire coal-fired power station to run just four sewage treatment facilities.
. . Urine actually contaminates sewer water much more severely than feces do. If it ran into a separate system, we would slash water use by an extraordinary 80%.

Oct 17, 08: Hundreds of jobs and heat for Prince Charles' organic business have been identified as spin offs from a proposed green energy project. Tidal power developer Atlantis Resources Corporation confirmed it was considering a site near Castle of Mey for a computer data center. The plan --still in the early stages-- would see the center powered by a tidal scheme in the Pentland Firth. US financial giant Morgan Stanley is a major shareholder in Atlantis.
. . "These skilled jobs would come at a crucial time, with employment set to steadily decline at the nearby Dounreay nuclear facility. We are also keen to use the excess heat from the data center to warm greenhouses."

Oct 16, 08: Version 5.0 of the Energy Star specification, due out in July of 2009, will address the power consumption of Wiis, Xboxes, and PlayStations for the first time ever.

Oct 8, 08: U.S. researchers have developed ultrathin films that when sandwiched together, form a superconductor, an advance that could lead to a new class of fast, power-saving electronics. The films can be used at relatively high temperatures for superconductors, making them easier to handle and produce.
. . "What we have done is we have put together two materials, neither of which is a superconductor, and we found their interface --where they touch-- is superconducting. This superconducting layer is extremely thin. It is thinner than 1 nanometer."
. . The superconducting film developed by scientists at Brookhaven work at temperatures of 50 Kelvin, or minus 223.15 degrees C. MRI machine, for example, must be cooled with liquid helium to keep them at 4 on the Kelvin scale, or near absolute zero: minus 269.15 degrees Celsius. At 50 Kelvin, the superconducting film is close to the point where it could be cooled inexpensively by liquid nitrogen, which cools to 77 Kelvin.

Oct 8, 08: Companies that give their workers the option of telecommuting are seeing greater productivity, lower costs, improved employee health and greater employee retention.

Oct 8, 08: Plans have been unveiled to power 45,000 homes with wind and hydro-electric turbines along Britain's historic canals and rivers. British Waterways want to house 50 wind turbines and additional small-scale hydro schemes over the next five years, on land it owns. They say the scheme will raise more than Ł1m a year, which will be used for waterway upkeep.

Oct 7, 08: The Army says it wants to build what could be the world's most powerful solar power plant, as part of a far-reaching effort to cut back on the service's dependence on fossil fuels.

Oct 2, 08: Officials want to see more green roofs on building tops in Cincinnati. The City Council became the first in Ohio with a plan to channel grants and loans to residents and businesses to replace tar and shingles with vegetation.
. . Supporters of the idea want to see Cincinnati become a leader in green roofs, a European-born movement that has spread to only a few U.S. cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Seattle. They say the greenery not only is pleasing aesthetically but reduces stormwater runoff, filters pollutants and cuts heating and cooling costs.

Oct 2, 08: Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a clean-tech arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, have developed a photovoltaic cell that converts 40.8 percent of solar radiation -- the highest confirmed conversion efficiency to date.
. . Measured under concentrated light of 326 suns, the inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell "uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell's three junctions for higher potential efficiencies".

Oct 1, 08: With the economic downturn, many job markets seem in peril. However, investment in energy efficiency and renewable-energy strategies could create 2 million jobs in two years, economists claim.
. . In a recent report, researchers from the Political Economy Research Institute at the U of Massachusetts propose a $100 billion stimulus package that they say would create four times more jobs than would a similar investment in the oil industry. "Our proposal is a Green Recovery program", said lead author Robert Pollin. "It is designed to precisely counteract the forces pushing the economy into a recession."

Sept 26, 08: Hydropower generation has tripled since 1949, when it produced a third of the country's electricity -—yet today it meets just 7% of demand. In the rush to keep up with ravenous consumption, legions of small, distributed resources have been overlooked. A Department of Energy study found 130,000 sites that could provide small-scale hydropower, some in every state. Many have the potential to produce 1 megawatt of electricity or less. That's couch-cushion change in a world of behemoth energy projects, but it adds up—- to an average of 30,000 megawatts. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that 2700 megawatts could be developed by 2025. That equals the power produced by three nuclear power plants or six coal-fired ones.
. . Most of the 2500 existing hydroelectric dams in the US are also small-scale—85% have a rated capacity of less than 30 megawatts. Another 76,500 dams don't currently produce power. Installing or upgrading turbines in these could supply another 7300 megawatts by 2025, according to EPRI. Even the biggest sites have room for improvement: Ten turbines at the Wanapum Dam on Washington's Columbia River are now being replaced with turbines that are 2% more efficient and also less injurious to fish.
. . Outfitted with 1 square mile of solar collectors, Ausra's planned plant in Southern California will produce enough emissions-free energy to power 120,000 homes. Ausra plans to open a 177-megawatt plant in San Luis Obispo in 2010.

Sept 25, 08: The U.S. Senate has passed the extension of $17 billion in tax credits for renewable energy and technology development ahead of the final say-so by the House and President Bush. Due to expire at the end of this year, the bill was approved overwhelmingly (93-2), unlike the previously failed attempts to extend the measure.
. . 1. Extends tax credits by eight years for residential and commercial solar systems, one year for wind energy, and two years for other renewable energy sources, such as wave and ocean tide.
. . 2. Gives a 30-percent tax credit to homeowners who install solar systems and businesses that install solar, wind, geothermal and ocean energy systems.
. . 3. Gives a 10-percent tax credit to homeowners for energy-efficiency improvements, such as insulation, replacement windows, water heaters and heating and cooling equipment.
. . 4. Offers a tax credit of $2,500 to $7,500 for plug-in electric cars, depending on the battery capacity of the vehicle.

Sept 25, 08: Only coal-fired power stations that can capture and store CO2 should be built, says the Environment Agency in England and Wales.

Sept 25, 08: Dell said the LED displays consume less energy (43% less for 15-inch screens) than ones lit with CCFL — cold cathode fluorescent lamps — the technology that is standard in Dell's existing notebook computers. the less-expensive fluorescent displays.
. . Apple uses LEDs in its MacBook Air, its 15-inch MacBook and one configuration of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, plus all iPods and iPhones.
. . Recyclers have balked at processing the small amount of mercury found in the CCFL backlights behind standard LCD displays.
. . LED displays also extend battery life: the reduction in power LED backlighting brings can help push a notebook's battery life from an average of 3 to 3.5 hours to something closer to 6 hours, Murphy said. Choosing HP's Illumi-Lite LED display when configuring its new EliteBook 6930p notebook has also helped push its rated battery life up to about 24 hours. allows for thinner panels, making the notebook lighter
. . Lenovo have recently announced the ThinkVision L2440x Wide monitor, a 24-inch low-halogen, mercury and arsenic-free display which uses efficient white LED backlighting and consumes only 29 watts, making it Energy Star 4.1 qualified.

Sept 23, 08: We don't know how much it cost her, but word is that the Queen of England has put down some mega-bucks to buy the world's largest wind turbine. The 10-megawatt monster machine built by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California will have a wingspan larger than two soccer fields and will stand 574 feet tall when completed. The windmill is expected to displace two million barrels of oil as well as 724,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime. It will also serve as the flagship for Clipper's Britannia Project, an effort to produce massive new turbines on deep-sea floating platforms. If all goes as planned, the Queen's windmill will light up thousands of British homes starting in 2012.

Sept 21, 08: Maybe you've heard the plans for "clean coal" (aka CO2 capture and storage), a technology that collects CO2 exhaust from formerly high-polluting power plants, condensing and freezing it for storage in depleted natural-gas fields --the first in the world. This month, energy provider Vattenfall fired up the CO2 collection process at a plant in Spremberg Germany. The plant's transition is making green-energy history. The system can theoretically gather up to 98% of the CO2.

The Hyde County, SD wind farm operates at 42% efficiency —-meaning it has enough wind for maximum generation 42% of the time.

Sept 15, 08: Vast improvements are needed to extend the life and lower the cost of lithium batteries before they can efficiently power vehicles, a U.S. government official who tracks high-power battery development.

Sept 12, 08: Taiwan is pushing LED adoption: The government hopes to replace all of the island’s incandescent traffic lights with LED lamps during the next three years.

Sept 10, 08: San Antonio unveiled a deal that will make it the first U.S. city to harvest methane gas from human waste on a commercial scale and turn it into clean-burning fuel.

Sept 8, 08: Welland, Ontario, is the latest municipal government to commit to the LED City initiative, under which cities from around the globe are converting lighting to light-emitting diodes.
. . A retrofit of all streetlights is under way —-50 have gone up so far and 50 more are in the works. Welland, a city of about 50,000 people located near the Niagara area of Ontario, will also work on converting its traffic signals and is adopting language to ensure that LED lighting is the standard for future installations. The project will probably save about $253,980 per year in reduced energy and maintenance costs.

Sept 4, 08: for every 100 megawatts of installed wind capacity, here are 10 to 20 permanent local jobs created as well as 40 to 140 temporary jobs (in the construction and survey phase).

Sept 3, 08: Japan's largest shipping line is spending $1.4 million developing a solar-diesel hybrid cargo ship that will carry new Toyotas to the US.

Aug 28, 08: Czech power firm CEZ is to build what it says will be Europe's largest onshore wind farm, in a Ł1.1bn-euro (Ł598m) project. The wind farm is set to have a generation capacity of 600 megawatts and will be located in Romania.

Aug 25, 08: On the list of ways to go, having your lungs explode is definitely on the gnarlier side. Too bad for bats in treehugging locales, though, because that's what's happening to them, due to a pretty serious error with their awesome echo-location systems crossing with the seemingly benign forces of Bernoulli's principle put into motion by the turbines' huge spinning blades.
. . What happens is the bats' internal echolocation, which tracks movement, attracts them to the blades of wind turbines, which presents another fairly obvious problem. But a U of Calgary researcher, puzzled by bats dying off in large numbers around wind farms in southern Alberta has found that those that don't get cut down by the blades (surprisingly only 50%) are actually dying from exploded lungs, or barotrauma; the low pressure areas around the spinning rotors, as explained by our friend Bernoulli, cause the bats' tiny air sacs to burst. Even those that do get knocked out of the sky by the blades have their lungs popped beforehand—of the 188 dead bats in the study, 90% had barotrauma as the cause of death.
. . I think this is going to have to remain one of those problems without an immediate solution.

Aug 10, 08: Research into thermoelectrics —-the science of using temperature differences to create electricity-— couldn't come at a better time, as high gas prices accelerate efforts to make vehicles as efficient as possible. Thermoelectric devices can work in two ways —-using electricity to provide heating or cooling, or using temperature differences to create electricity.
. . GM researcher Jihui Yang said a metal-plated device that surrounds an exhaust pipe could increase fuel economy in a Chevrolet Suburban by about 5%, a 1-mile-per-gallon improvement that would be even greater in a smaller vehicle.
. . The DOE, which is partially funding the auto industry research, helped develop a thermoelectric generator for a heavy duty diesel truck and tested it for the equivalent of 550,000 miles about 12 years ago.
. . Thermoelectric generators should be on the verge of production in about three years. The technology is similar to what NASA uses to power deep space probes, a perk being it doesn't seem to be susceptible to wear. Probes have used a thermoelectric setup for about 30 years.
. . In an internal combustion engine, only about a quarter of the total energy from gasoline is used to actually turn the wheels, while 40% is lost in exhaust heat and 30% is lost through cooling the engine. That means about 70% of the available energy is wasted. A thermoelectric device could improve a car's fuel efficiency by 10%.
. . Snyder said it might be possible to develop the systems for $10 a unit or less. Currently, the most efficient material used commercially in thermoelectric power generators is an alloy called sodium-doped lead telluride, which has a rating of 0.71. By adding a bit of thallium to the lead telluride, the researchers doubled the efficiency rating to 1.5.

Aug 10, 08: Who knew a single large kite could be used to generate enough energy to power ten homes? According to Delft U of Technology in Netherlands, the potential wind energy to be harnessed at 10 km in the air is twenty times of what could be harnessed at sea level. To test if wind energy at that altitude could be harnessed, the researchers flew a 10 square meter kite which could generate 10kW.
. . The next experiments would be on a larger scale, eventually upping the energy produced to 50kW. Ultimately, the goal is to generate 100 megawatts of power through the use of not one, but a system of kites called Laddermill.

Aug 8, 08: Honda hopes to take down Toyota with an entry-level hybrid that gets 60 mpg and costs about $19,000. The Prius averages about $26,000 -- when you can find one. Honda's car is significantly lighter than the Civic Hybrid, and it's said to be good for 60 mpg. It will be in showrooms on April 22 -- Earth Day.

It's one of four gas-electric vehicles the company is rolling out between now and 2012.
. . The new hybrid gets a smaller version of the 1.3-liter Integrated Motor Assist system in the Civic Hybrid, a continuously variable transmission and several chassis components lifted from the Fit. A nickel-metal hydride battery is tucked under the rear floor.
. . While the next-gen Prius will be bigger and wider than ever, Honda's keeping its new hybrid small with a price to match. It's a bit bigger than the Fit and several thousand dollars cheaper than the Prius.

Aug 2, 08: electron-stimulated luminescence: this new type of bulb works by using accelerated electrons to light up a phosphor coating on the inside of a glass bulb. ESLs can turn on instantly, can work with dimmers, and creates a light quality that's similar to incandescents and halogens.
. . Vu1, the company behind the technology, says ESL bulbs don't contain the trace amounts of mercury in CFLs and don't require the manufacturing energy behind LEDs, making it better than both. The first screw in models, which produce 40 lumens per watt with a 6,000 hour lifetime, are expected to be available by September 2008. At $12 a bulb, they cost about the same as dimmable CFLs already on the market.

Aug 1, 08: China's rapid investment in low CO2 technologies has catapulted the nation up the global renewable energy rankings, a report shows. The Climate Group study said China invested $12bn in renewables during 2007, second only to Germany. However, it was expected to top the table by the end of 2009, it added.
. . 20 of the planet's 30 most polluted cities are in China. In order to meet its target of increasing the percentage of energy from low CO2 technologies from 8% in 2006 to 15% by 2020, China is expected to invest an average of $33bn annually for the next 12 years.
. . China has the world's fifth largest fleet of wind turbines. Figures within the report showed that China was already the leading producer in terms of installed renewable generation capacity. It has the world's largest hydroelectricity capacity since the controversial Three Gorges project began producing electricity, and the fifth largest fleet of wind turbines on the planet. Although its installed capacity of photovoltaic (PV) panels is still relatively low, it is already a leading manufacturer of solar panels.

July 30, 08: A new catalyst makes it feasible to split water with solar power. MIT chemists say the catalyst, used in conjunction with cheap photovoltaic solar panels, could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight. In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.
. . The catalyst enables the electrolysis system to function efficiently at room temperature and at ordinary pressure. Like a reverse fuel cell, it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. By recombining the molecules with a standard fuel cell, the O2 and H2 could then be used to generate energy on demand.
. . The key advancement is the development of an oxygen-producing catalyst made of cobalt and phosphate. Expensive machines have long been able to do the same thing, but only by using iridium alloys or exotic nanoparticles.

July 28, 08: They found just 23% of visitors used the revolving doors. According to their calculations, the swinging door allowed as much as eight times more air to pass through the building than the revolving door. Applying average Boston weather to their equations, the MIT team found that if everyone used the revolving doors, it would save more than 75,000 kilowatt-hours of energy—about 74% of the total required to heat and cool the building—and prevent 14.6 tons of CO2 from being emitted.

July 25, 08: On a national basis, the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that electric bills will rise 5.2% this year. But next year, they're expected to rise 9.8%.
. . The fuel cost that has risen the most so far is natural gas, up about 40% in the past year. Last year at this time, the spot price of natural gas was $6 per million BTUs. This week, the price was $9.85 per million BTUs. In early July, it reached as high as $13.31. In the past 18 months, the spot price of coal has doubled. "Power poles are up 39% since 2003, copper wire has more than doubled since then."

July 22, 08: According to research (PDF) by Cornell U scientist David Pimentel, it takes about 14 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce one calorie of milk protein on a conventional farm. Organically produced milk might require a little less than 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy, under the most optimistic assumptions, and better farming techniques could cut down greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 25%.
. . By comparison, Pimentel's data suggest that it takes about 0.26 calories of fossil fuel to make a calorie of organic soybeans -—which are used by most soy milk manufacturers. Soy protein accounts for about 35% of those calories, so let's say you'll need to put 0.75 calories of energy into farming soy to produce a calorie of protein. That makes soy protein approximately 13 times more energy-efficient than even organic dairy protein under a best-case scenario. (Producing a kg of soybeans also yields significantly less greenhouse-gas emission than producing a kg of milk.)
. . In addition to the wind-power initiative, Silk's product line is almost entirely organic. its market is about one-twentieth the size of regular milk's -—is probably going to have to travel farther to the average consumer simply because fewer people produce it. With more centralized production, that means the soy travels farther to the plant, too.

July 28, 08: A joint research project by the U of Michigan and Princeton U has devised a new OLED technology which would induce the release of 60% more light.

Osram (the light bulb people) have news that they've pushed white LEDs to world-record brightness. By optimizing the diode, light converter and the package, their lab test squeezed 500 lumens out of a single LED at 1.4A. That's bright enough for projector tech, and certainly makes the single unit good for car lighting and even interior lights. At a lower, more optimal current, the 1mm-square white LED had an efficiency of 136 lumens/W which makes it about twice as efficient as standard fluorescent lamps and 10 times a normal bulb.

July 21, 08: Clean deadline call on coal power: The government should set a deadline for coal power stations to "clean up" or close, a UK parliamentary committee says.

July 21, 08: Plans to build Europe's largest onshore wind farm in South Lanarkshire have been approved by Scottish ministers. "The Scottish Government has an ambitious target to generate 31% of Scotland's electricity demand from renewable sources by 2011 and 50% by 2020."
. . Construction is due to begin within the next year, with final completion in 2011. It is close to major centres of population, who will use the power it generates, and away from Scotland's most valuable landscapes."
. . The 152 turbines will generatre 548 megawatts. The under-construction wind farm on Eaglesham Moor will have a total capacity of 322MW. Currently the biggest operational wind farm in Europe is the Maranchon wind farm in Guadalajara, Spain, which has a generating capacity of 208MW.

July 21, 08: LEDs are expensive, mostly because their innards are created on a substrate of sapphire. That means only a few gadgets and luxury cars headlights have benefited from the tech so far. Purdue researchers solved the conundrum with a technique that creates the LEDs on low-cost, metal-coated silicon wafers. This is great news for energy conservation, because while LEDs are much more efficient than their incandescent brethren, they are also 20 times more expensive to produce.
. . The LED lights now on the market cost about $100 while LED lights based on their new technology could be commercially available within a couple of years for a cost of about $5.

July 21, 08: Construction work has started at the site of what has been dubbed the "Weetabix school". Architects behind the Ł5.8m primary say it will be so well insulated that the pupils' bodies will provide the heat. It would be the most sustainable school in Scotland, but conceded it would not be cheap to build.

July 17, 08: Former Vice President Al Gore called for a "man on the moon" effort to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other CO2-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.
. . "The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels", Gore told a packed auditorium in Washington's historic Constitution Hall. "When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices."
. . The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group Gore leads, put the 30-year cost of his plan —-both government and private-— at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion. To speed up the transition to new energy sources, Gore said the single most important policy change would be to "tax what we burn, not what we earn", advocating a tax on CO2 pollution.
. . Gore's proposal would represent a significant shift in where the U.S. gets its power. In 2005, coal supplied slightly more than half the nation's 3.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Nuclear power accounted for 21%, natural gas 15% and renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6%.
. . The Edison Electric Institute, the private utility industry's trade association, said it shares Gore's support for more renewable generation, a "smarter" power grid and plug-in hybrid motor vehicles.
. . "The country is not going to be able to go cold turkey", Diamond said. "We have hundreds of years of infrastructure with trillions of dollars of investment that is not simply going to be made obsolete."
. . Gore said the changing economics of energy, in which high gasoline and oil prices are driving investments in renewable energy, would overcome the political and technological obstacles. "It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now", Gore said.

July 16, 08: U.S. cities are racing to cope with ever-increasing demand on public transportation as gas prices remain at record levels. Even regions that have traditionally resisted giving up cars and have limited access to mass transit are reporting a surge in public transportation use. From trains and trolleys to subways and buses, the growth encompasses all modes of travel.
. . The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which is currently operating at capacity during peak periods, ordered more subway cars, buses and coaches for its commuter rail. In North Carolina, the Charlotte Area Transit System has increased the frequency of light rail service on the weekends, ordered new buses and is taking a look at low-performing routes to cut down on costs. And the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which serves Philadelphia and has seen about 20,000 new daily customers since last July, has ordered 400 new hybrid buses and 120 new rail cars.

July 16, 08: Plans for an alternative tidal energy project to a Ł15bn Severn barrage (dam) have been put forward by opponents. Those behind the idea say it will allow shipping to move freely and keep ports at Cardiff and Bristol open and provide a balance with wildlife concerns.
. . Backers of the barrage (dam) --which is facing a government feasibility study --say it will provide a huge amount of renewable energy at a stroke, providing 5% of the UK's needs.
. . Key to the fence strategy is that a tidal "fence" would leave open major ports which it claims might otherwise be forced to close if a barrage is built across the Severn. The fence, which it is estimated would cost around Ł3.5bn, is a continuous line of underwater tidal current turbines, which would force water flow through them. It would be around 9km long, in three 3km sections, passing near to the Bristol channel's two islands.
. . Although the fence would produce less energy, STF Group claims this approach would be a compromise between conservation, commercial interests and renewable targets. Marc Paish from the STF Group said the fence would have a capacity of 1.3GW --slightly more than Sizewell B nuclear power station-- and provide around 1% of the country's electricity supply. "The fence also allows the migration of salmon, and it would only slightly reduce the areas of mudflats which are an important habitat for migrating birds.
. . In addition to the tidal fence, the group is suggesting a small barrage or tidal lagoons to ensure continuous output --and which could bring the total capacity to 2% of UK supply. The fence would produce most power at the middle of the tidal cycle, whereas the barrage or lagoon would produce most power at high and low tide. STF estimate the project could create between 8,000 and 13,000 direct and indirect jobs.

July 12, 08: According to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, 25 wind energy companies have expressed an interest in developing about 1,000 megawatts of wind power in the state during the next few years. South Dakota already has eight wind farms, generating a total of 188 megawatts of electricity. One megawatt is enough to power 300 homes.

July 12, 08: Pickens is putting his money behind his idea, funneling big bucks to a TV ad campaign and building a $10 billion wind farm, near Pampa, Texas.
. . His plan, available at www.pickensplan.com, is a relatively simple but big step. In the coming decade, he wants to build enough turbines in the nation's "wind belt" from Texas to North Dakota to provide more than 20% of the nation's electricity needs. Pickens says that would free up enough natural gas to reduce foreign oil imports by 38%, ostensibly accelerating the trend to cars powered by something other than oil.
. . Such a plan would cost $1.2 trillion, he estimates, but it would allow the US to keep at least a third of the $700 billion it annually sends abroad for oil.
. . About 50,000 Americans are now employed in the wind generation industry, but Pickens' plan could boost that figure to 500,000, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Reaching 20% of the nation's electrical needs through wind also would reduce CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 25% by 2030, something that could put power behind the 50% greenhouse gas reductions agreement at the just-concluded G-8 meetings in Japan.

July 10, 08: MIT researchers think they may have found a way to double the performance of solar arrays with cheap dyed glass and some tricks borrowed from fiber optics.
. . Their so-called solar concentrator could be placed on top of existing solar arrays. It could capture some wavelengths of visible light and guide them to solar cells on the edges of the array, while still allowing the infrared light that largely powers current solar systems to pass through. A coating on the glass channels photons of light to a solar collector around the edge of the window. The materials are not expensive and can be added to existing solar panels. "If you stick one of these on top of existing solar panels, we think we could nearly double the performance of these systems with minimal added cost."
. . The new MIT technology marries the science behind two of the most promising ways of harnessing solar energy: light concentrators and thin-film solar cells.
. . Because the technology is simple and inexpensive, Baldo thinks it will be easy to manufacture and could be deployed in the field within three years. Towards that end, colleagues of his at MIT have spun out a new company, Covalent Solar.

July 10, 08: Toyota can't sell trucks or build Prius hybrids fast enough, so it's scaling back production of the Tundra and Highlander and will start building the Prius in Mississippi.

July 6, 08: Toyota Motor Corp plans to install solar panels on some Prius hybrids in its next remodeling, responding to growing demand for "green" cars amid record-high oil prices. The panels, supplied by Kyocera Corp would be able to power part of the air-conditioning on high-end versions of the gasoline-electric Prius.

An electric bicycle? Panasonic's Vivi RX 10-S, which is due in Japan on August 20, works the same way many hybrid vehicle systems do: taking the energy from braking and harness it into recharging the battery. The total assisted travel range combining pedal power, electric power and electric regeneration is around 55 to 77 miles, which should be enough to get you to and from work without having to go super sweaty style. If you switch on its automatic mode, you'll be able ride upwards of 113 miles on a single full charge. No word on US release yet.
. . The iZip is a hybrid electric bicycle from Currie Technologies with a small electric motor that amplifies your pedaling efforts. This means that speeds of up to 25 mph are easily attainable without you having to break into a sweat. The motor is powered by a lithium-ion battery, which is rechargeable. On high-power turbo mode, one charge will keep you freewheeling for up to 31 miles. There are two modes: standard and economy, which gives you up to 56 miles of aided biking before you're on your own again. The iZip has also got a 27-speed Shimano drive-train and RockShox forks but, as yet, no price tag.

July 5, 08: The Danish isle of Samsř, which over the past 10 years, has gone from exclusively using fossil fuel energy sources, to living exclusively off renewable energy. Using a combination of onshore and offshore turbines, private mini-turbines, solar panels, straw-burning furnaces and biofuels, the 4,300-resident island has become a sort of a sandbox for green experimentation.
. . The island now has 11 onshore turbines, a biomass plant, and a straw burning plant, which are invested in by the residents of Samsř, as well as outside, private investors. All the while, this green movement has brought in a constant flow of researchers, scientists and sociologists trying to figure out Samsř's mojo.

July 5, 08: As part of Sharp's recent efforts to shove itself to the forefront of solar innovation, the company is showcasing a prototype of a 26-inch LCD Aquos TV that can be powered entirely by the sun.
. . It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp's triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television's screen. Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers.

July 5, 08: The situation on the oil market is likely to ease in 2009/2010 as more production comes on-stream, then tighten again through 2013 as output falls and demand rises, the head of the International Energy Agency said.

July 3, 08: With gas prices going through the roof and regulators requiring cars to be ever more miserly, Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term "fuel efficiency" with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets a stunning 282 mpg. VW unveiled the slick two-seater concept six years ago at a stockholder's meeting in Hamburg. To prove it was a real car, Chairman Ferdinand Piech personally drove it from Wolfsburg to Hamburg.
. . Volkswagen's had its super-thrifty One-Liter Car concept vehicle --so named because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 km-- stashed away for six years. The body's made of carbon fiber to minimize weight (the entire car weighs just 660 pounds) and company execs didn't expect the material to become cheap enough to produce the car until 2012.
. . VW has approved a plan to build a limited number of One-Liters in 2010. They'll probably be built in the company's prototype shop, which has the capacity to build as many as 1,000 per year.
. . It's 11.4 feet long, 4.1 feet wide and 3.3 feet tall. The front suspension assembly weighs just 18 pounds. The six-speed transmission features a magnesium case, titanium bolts and hollow gears; it weighs a tad more than 50 pounds. The 16-inch wheels are carbon fiber. The magnesium steering wheel weighs a little more than a pound.
. . It features an aircraft-like canopy, flat wheel covers and a belly pan to smooth the airflow under the car. The engine cooling vents open only when needed, and video cameras take the place of mirrors. The passenger sits behind the driver to keep the car narrow. The car has a coefficient of drag of 0.16; the average car comes in around 0.30 and the Honda Insight had a Cd of 0.25.
. . The concept had a one-cylinder diesel engine producing 8.5 horsepower. The production model will use a two-cylinder turbodiesel. VW may install a diesel-hybrid drivetrain. $31,750 to $47,622

June 30th, 2008: The rule of thumb is to keep the windows down while on city streets, then resort to air conditioning when you hit the highway. Every car has a speed at which rolled-down windows cause so much drag as to decrease fuel economy more than a switched-on AC. As you might expect, however, that milestone speed varies widely from car to car—and in some cases, it may be well north of posted speed limits.
. . An active AC can cut fuel economy by anywhere from 3% to 10% in standard summertime temperatures. During a brutal heat wave, though, the power drain can be near 20%. Automotive air conditioners no longer use ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons; now they use much safer tetrafluoroethane.

Jun 26, 08: Volkswagen's been toying with hybrids for awhile and got electric-vehicle advocates in a lather over the diesel-electric Golf it unveiled a few months ago. Now the company's promising a plug-in hybrid by 2010 and the German government's written a big check to make it happen.
. . Twin Drive. It will debut in a Golf fitted with a 122-horsepower diesel engine and an 82-horsepower electric motor. "While the e-motor on a typical hybrid model just supplements the combustion engine, the exact opposite is true on Twin Drive", Winterkorn said during the car's unveiling in Berlin. "Here the diesel or gasoline engine supplements the e-motor."
. . Start-stop technology will save power and regenerative braking will help generate it. VW says the car will use lithium-ion batteries and have an all-electric range of 31 miles.

Jun 26, 08: Thousands of new wind turbines could be built across the UK over the coming decade as part of a Ł100bn plan to boost renewable energy. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the UK should be a leader in renewable energy. He called for a national debate on achieving the UK's target of 15% renewable energy by 2020.
. . "The North Sea has now passed its peak of oil and gas supply --but it will now embark on a new transformation into the global centre of the offshore wind industry. "And yes, there will have to be more windfarms onshore too." Under the government's plans an extra 4,000 onshore and 3,000 offshore turbines will be needed. He promised up to 160,000 new jobs through promoting more renewable energy, including making components for wind turbines and electric cabling.
. . But he said a low CO2 economy --which met EU reduction targets-- "will not emerge from 'business as usual'."
. . The Liberal Democrats poured scorn on Mr Brown's talk of a "green revolution". "He would rather urge oil producers to extract more oil than invest in technologies that will actually save CO2 emissions now.
. . For the Conservatives, shadow business secretary Alan Duncan said: "After a series of painful and reluctant u-turns, it seems like the government is at last coming round to our vision of a greener Britain. "Yet it's astonishing that what is billed as a 'strategy' is just another consultation --more delays after a decade of dithering. "Gordon Brown must now translate these words into action. If we don't grasp this opportunity now, we'll still be playing catch-up in 20 years."

Jun 25, 08: Pratt & Whitney has spent the better part of two decades developing the geared turbofan engine that burns 12 to 15% less fuel than other jet engines and cuts CO2 emissions by 1,500 tons per plane per year. It's being called one of the most exciting developments commercial aviation has seen in years
. . Fans work best at low speed, while turbines work best at high speed. The fan is larger and it spins at one-third the speed of the turbine, creating a quieter, more powerful engine the company says requires less fuel, emits less C02 and costs 30% less to maintain. The industry seems to agree and is lining up behind the engine, which Pratt & Whitney expects to have in regular service by 2013.
. . Boeing says composite materials make up nearly 50% of the 787 Dreamliner, which can carry as many as 330 people, making it far lighter than other planes its size. It is 20% more fuel-efficient.
. . Further gains could come from improving the nation's outdated air traffic control system, something nearly everyone at the conference said must happen. The current system is based on radar technology that dates to World War II, and plans to replace it with a satellite system known as NextGen are at a standstill while FAA reauthorization is stalled in Congress. But the industry has several other ideas, from allowing flights through military airspace to widespread adoption of a quieter, more efficient landing technique called continuous descent approach.

At $4-a-gallon, over 10,000 miles, an improvement from 12 mpg to 13 mpg would save $256. For the owner of a 33 mpg car to save that much, mileage would have to go up to 40 mpg.

Jun 24, 08: Sharp plans to partially power a new solar panel factory with energy generated from a solar installation on the plant's roof.

Jun 21, 08: Critics fear the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will adopt a rule in the waning days of the Bush administration that will make it easier to build coal-fired power plants near national parks.

Jun 20, 08: Many airports are, essentially, small cities. Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, one of the nation's largest, is a good example. It has five terminals, six parking garages, a physical plant and a rental car complex that covers 30,000 square feet and serves 60 million people a year. The airport has enormous fleets of gas-powered tugs to move planes, tractors to move luggage and shuttles to move people. All of that internal combustion creates a lot of C02 and a lot of ground-level ozone. Run-off from the myriad chemicals that keep everything running smoothly sometimes find their way into groundwater supplies.
. . Nineteen of the airports sampled are buying renewable energy and another nine are generating it on their own. Fifty-one have implemented solid waste management programs and 33 have the infrastructure to support clean vehicles.
. . There are some standouts: the new Terminal A at Boston Logan, with heat-reflecting roof and windows, low-flow faucets, waterless urinals, self-dimming lights and storm water filtration, is the nation's first terminal to be a certified green building.
. . Continental, for example, is working with George Bush Interncontinental Airport in Houston to adopt electric ground equipment like airplane tugs. The airline says it will cut emissions by such equipment as much as 75%. Other solutions are surprisingly low-tech. By consolidating rental car operations in a single facility, DFW was able to cut the size of its shuttle fleet in half. LED signs in the parking garages direct people to open spots, reducing the time they spend circling the lot.

Jun 20, 08: The "$1 per Watt" barrier may not sound as impressive as the sound barrier, but this next-gen wind turbine is the first, and has an unusual design. The AeroCam's horizontal-axis, flat-blade shape has blades that're dynamically angled to maximize wind-catching. It's also compact, so can fit into urban environments, and captures wind from any direction. Plus, AeroCam turbines make less noise and vibration than conventional ones, wear out less quickly and cost less to build. They may even be cheaper than solar panels, so it seems like a win-win-win. Since a 250kW unit will cost $250,000, it'll be your energy suppliers, not you, that ends up owning one.

Jun 18, 08: Far West Rice, Inc. of Cypress, California, is going to harvest, mill, store, move and bag rice using solar-generated electricity. Today they unvielled the world’s largest solar generating plant to be used for rice production.
. . Here’s how the company sees the economics of its solar investment: “The cost of the $6.5 million installation was partially offset with $1.8 million in solar rebates from PG&E [California utility company] and is expected to generate 1 Megawatt, meeting approximately 70-80% of the total energy costs of the rice plant.”
. . And an American researcher says he’s found a way to make rice fields more productive. The revolutionary rice approach: plant early, then give young plants plenty of room. Don’t ever flood fields.

Jun 17, 08: The Sony Bravia KDL-32JE1 is an energy-efficient TV from Bravia which consumes just 89W of power, compared to 160W on an equivalent Bravia. It also uses plastic parts recycled from other Sony departments, such as the plastic waste.

Jun 16, 08: The worst flooding in the Midwest for 15 years sent fresh shocks to global markets and consumers as corn prices hit record highs on fears of crop losses in the heart of the world's top grain exporter.

Jun 16, 08: Bosch and Samsung have signed a contract to form a hybrid electric vehicle battery joint venture to boost their presence in the next-generation energy business, Samsung said
. . IBM has joined forces with semiconductor process company Tokyo Ohka Kogyo to develop more efficient solar power technologies to cut the cost of the clean energy source, the companies said.

Jun 13, 08: A former waste oil and chemical refinery has been transformed over the past year into a zero emissions biodiesel production plant in Houston. When GreenHunter Energy opened the $70 million biodiesel refinery and glycerin distillery.

Jun 12, 08: U.S. cities that have long promoted bicycle use by commuters are now seeing a steady rise in the popularity of pedal power as gasoline prices soar. Less than 1% of personal trips were by bike compared with up to 30% in some parts of Europe. Campaigns originally designed to cut down on traffic and pollution are now paying off for people looking for an option to driving with national gas prices averaging a record $4 per gallon.
. . People in cities such as Chicago, Washington and Portland, Oregon, can take advantage of bicycle lanes, bike-friendly transit systems and bike-parking locations built in recent years. "Twelve years ago, I would bike down to City Hall and often it was a lonely ride", said Ben Gomberg, Chicago's bicycle program coordinator. "Today, there are often 17 or 18 riders stopped at the intersections."
. . In Portland, widely regarded as America's most bike-friendly city, 5.4% of people said in a 2006 survey that the bicycle was their primary means of getting to work. Portland's network includes 114 miles of "bicycle boulevards" --quiet streets where bikes have priority over cars and where traffic speed is restricted.

Jun 12, 08: Deaths down. Fewer miles driven means safer roads. One study predicts nearly 2,000 fewer people will die because of the recent price hikes.
. . Less gas consumption (fewer SUVs, less driving, etc.). One economist estimates that each $1 rise in gas leads to 14% less fuel consumption over the long haul. Of course, as consumption falls, some analysts say prices at the pump could dip, stimulating demand.
. . Less pollution. If we use less gas, logic dictates that smog will decrease (you’ll breath cleaner air) and we’ll pump lower amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Little if any research has quantified this potential outcome, but the traffic-death study also predicts 600 fewer pollution-related deaths.
. . Lifestyle changes. An online CNN poll, though not scientific, has 46% saying they plan to get used to “staycations” and 26% figuring to cut back on summer travel. Separately, a Florida State U management professor surveyed 800 employees in the southeast who each commuted at least 15 miles a day.

Jun 12, 08: Aerovironment’s website states: “Architectural Wind is designed to install easily onto the building parapet, operating in plain sight as an attractive complement to the building’s architecture. Additionally, based on its proprietary system design, Architectural Wind turbines rotate at low wind speeds, resulting in a form of ‘kinetic architecture’ that communicates clearly the generation of clean energy. Working alone or in tandem with other renewable energy technologies, Architectural Wind is designed to offer an attractive ROI and cost per kW of installed capacity.”
. . Installations have little or no structural impact upon existing buildings and are easily scalable starting at 6KW. Each module weighs approximately 200 pounds, measures 4 feet tall by 4 feet wide, and features a bird screen. Modular assembly makes installation a snap.
. . http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/10/architectural-wind-modular-wind-turbines/

Jun 12, 08: The power generated by the proposed Severn Barrage could be produced more cheaply using other green technologies, a report says. The Ł15bn dam across the Severn estuary from Cardiff to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset could supply 5% of the UK's electricity within 14 years.
. . An independent report commissioned by 10 environmental groups said it was not a good use of taxpayers' money. Campaigners have also spelt out the damage to wildlife it could cause.

Jun 11, 08: Tractor trailers lose valuable miles per gallon to the drag that air exerts, but air may also help tame the fuel guzzling forces. Scientists at Georgia Tech's Research Institute are creating a "circulation control system" that blows a steady current of air around the back of the truck to help boost fuel efficiency.
. . Trailers are an aerodynamic nightmare, essentially boxes on wheels that can't be rounded off because that would cost valuable cargo space. As they plow down the road, getting 7 mpg when they're lucky, wind funneling over the box creates a suction effect that drags down the vehicle. Robert Englar, a Georgia Tech researcher, called the vortex an "aerodynamic anchor."
. . He connects curved bumpers at a truck's back end to a blower that pushes a steady stream of air through them and out the sides. That air flow reduces drag by replacing it with a positive pressure that helps propel the vehicle.
. . On a test track, Englar's system reduced drag by 32% and increased fuel efficiency by 12%. That means a truck that once would get 5 mpg gets 5.6 mpg. That marginal increase could save thousands of dollars a year in fuel for a single truck.
. . He hopes to bring the gadget's cost below $1,000 over the next few years and some day to include safety features, such as sensors to trigger the air flow to reverse when a driver starts to brake or push against threatening wind gusts.

Jun 11, 08: Hybrids may be the great green hope, but new research shows that improvements to normal cars could reduce the nation's fuel consumption sooner and cheaper. "We can absolutely reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years", said Anup Bandivadekar of the International Council on Clean Transportation. "But in order to do that, we must halt increases in vehicle size and horsepower."
. . Bandivadekar and his former colleagues at MIT recently did a study on how to double the gas mileage (miles per gallon) of the average new car by 2035. They found that advanced technologies such as hybrids could help, but not by themselves and not anytime soon. Current "mainstream" technology has the potential to significantly reduce fuel consumption in a traditional car at a cost that is about $2000 less than buying a hybrid.
. . Bandivadekar and colleagues did look at emerging technologies and found the best case was for hybrids, which currently make up 3% of new vehicle purchases. If hybrids could increase their market share to 55% by 2035, fuel use could be slashed by as much as 40%.
. . But the greatest cuts are going to require both advanced vehicle designs and a willingness to sacrifice increases in performance. "It's not either/or", Bandivadekar said, "You need to do both." DeCicco thinks, "Horsepower will go the way of the horse."

Jun 10, 08: Electricity produced from the next generation of clean coal power stations could be twice as expensive as other coal-fired stations. The UK government's hopes for early success in defeating global warming by cleaning up coal fired power stations have been challenged by a leading power generator.
. . An executive at RWE Npower, expected to be a major player in "carbon capture" technology, has spoken of fears about both the cost and the timescale. The company hopes to build a big new coal-fired power station fitted with carbon capture and storage at Tilbury on the Thames Estuary. "If we want to burn coal and want to remove C02, we have no choice", he added.
. . Mr Elston said CCS had "huge economic downsides" and these would have to be reflected in electricity bills.

. . New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark is urging them to "kick the carbon habit" and reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions to zero. "If the world does not tackle this problem comprehensively, we're not going to be bequeathing much of a planet to future generations", she explained.
. . The government's targets include:
. . * 90% of energy must come from renewable sources by 2025
. . * Cut transport emissions by 50% by 2040
. . * Curb emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from agriculture

By tapping into underground volcanic heat, geothermal plants can generate almost limitless clean power. Rivers, rapids and waterfalls are another natural feature of the nation's natural landscape that can be tapped as a source for hydro-electricity plants. Currently, about 70% of the country's electricity is generated from these renewable sources. The government plans to use wind power to make up the remaining 20% in order to meet the target of 90% by 2025.

Jun 6, 08: The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to a new energy study.
. . The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.
. . "Meeting this target of 50% cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.
. . Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50% target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.
. . The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with CO2 capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050. In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually.

"America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy." George Will

Jun 6, 08: Robert Bryce says Brazil's energy success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol production and much to do with its increased oil production, the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil's shore.

Jun 6, 08: Drilling is underway 80 km off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.
. . ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware), and drilling along its coastal plain would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport. Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill. There has not been a significant spill from an offshore U.S. well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore in the past 25 years, 0.001% --that is one-thousandth of 1%-- has been spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore --and a thriving commercial fishing industry.

May 20, 2008: While windpower is taking off and could soon produce as much as 20% of America's power, harnessing energy from the ocean is still in it's infancy. But recently, Marine Current Turbines successfully completed the installation of the world's first megawatt-scale tidal turbine. And now we've got the first images of the turbine installed to prove it.
. . The 1,000-ton SeaGen tidal turbine was secured to the seabed and linked with Northern Ireland's electric grid. MCT will now spend about 12 weeks testing the capabilities of the turbine before regularly feeding power into the grid.
. . Tidal power has several advantages over wind. The power generation is more predictable (since you always know when the tide will turn), and it is believed that these turbines will have fewer ecological impacts because roads do not need to be built to them. There hasn't been enough data yet to determine what affects they will have on marine life.

May 30, 2008: The UK Queen will be investing in the largest wind turbine in the world through her property company, the Crown Estate. It's this company that owns the seabed off the British shore and has already been leasing space for wind farm projects. This is the first time, however, that the crown will be directly investing in infrastructure.
. . At 7.5 megawatts, the turbine, to be built by Clipper Windpower, will be the world's largest and will be positioned somewhere off the northeast coast of England up to 200 nautical miles out. The power will all be sold back into the British power grid. The turbine is expected to be online by 2010.
. . Meanwhile, over in Norway, plans are afoot to construct the world's first floating wind turbine. Norway's state-controlled StatoilHydro ASA is undertaking an $80 million pilot project to test a 2.3-megawatt wind turbine with 260-foot blades 10k off the western coast. By using the same technology it's developed for floating oil rigs, StaoilHydro hopes to develop a more inexpensive and flexible way to deploy wind generation technology in the future.

Jun 3, 08: Compared to basically every other appliance you have plugged in at home, the Playstation 3 sucks up more juice. When a PS3 is running, it sucks up five times more energy than a refrigerator. If you leave it on all the time for something like Folding@Home, you're looking at an energy cost of nearly $250 a year.
. . The Xbox 360 isn't all that much better, using 23.57kWh per week when idling compared to the PS3's 31.74kWh. The Wii, on the other hand, is downright dainty in comparison, using only 2.97kWh per week when idling, less than 10% of the energy used by the PS3.

The low-power Atom is relatively cheap to produce and exceptionally small, with 2,500 of the chips — each containing 47 million transistors — fitting on one 12-inch wafer. That's the equivalent of squeezing 11 of the devices onto a penny.

Jun 3, 08: Speedier family baths could help Japanese cut their burgeoning energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a government report said. Japanese households consume less energy than their U.S. and European counterparts, but consumption has been sharply increasing --jumping 44% between 1990 and 2005 -- a big reason the environment white paper zeroed in on ways for people to save energy.
. . Japanese usually wash outside the tub and then soak in hot water, which is then reused by the next family member. That means the water must be reheated each time if the next person in line dawdles.
. . Hot water use in bathrooms and kitchens accounted for 39% of energy consumed in Japanese homes, a stark contrast to European households, where energy is mainly used for air-conditioning and heating.

Jun 2, 08: Audi's incredible R10 diesel will attempt to win its third 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race burning fuel derived from wood waste and other biomass.

Jun 1, 08: A new machine operates by using heat given off by other processes (such as manufacturing) to boil liquids, which then turn into steam, which then turns an electricity-generating turbine.
. . ElectraTherm's Waste Heat Generators recover heat from various sources without any specialized electronics or hard-to-maintain components. By boiling water up to 200°F, the generator can produce from 25kW to 1MW of fuel-free, emission-free electricity.
. . About 50% of all fuel burned by industrial sources becomes "waste heat." Though businesses can try to use fuel as efficiently as possible, nearly seven quadrillion Btu of waste heat still escapes to do nothing but warm the atmosphere. But ElectraTherm says that its products, if used widely, could recover the equivalent electric output of 92 500MW gas-fired power plants.
. . The company says that the university will recoup its purchase cost in three to four years, with electricity costing about three to four cents per kwH during that time. After the payback period, the cost per kWH will drop to less than a penny.

Jun 2, 08: Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.
. . It starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.
. . Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball. "Illusions occur when our brains attempt to perceive the future, and those perceptions don't match reality."

May 31, 08: There are more than 4 million miles of paved road in the US, and 93% of them are covered in asphalt. Unless you're backpacking in the wilds of Alaska or wandering the bayous of Louisiana, you are never more than 22 miles from a stretch of blacktop.
. . That's a lot of asphalt, and a lot of energy needed to produce it --which is why Hussain Bahia wants to find a greener way to make the stuff. He's a civil engineering professor at the U of Wisconsin-Madison, and he says anything that increases asphalt's recycled material content or cuts the energy needed to lay it down will have a big impact on the environment - and our pocketbooks. One of his first goals is to develop "cold-mix" asphalts that require significantly less energy than conventional asphalt to apply.
. . Asphalt is about 5% oil and 95% sand and rock; it's made from a black, sticky byproduct of oil refining. It's too thick to be applied without being heated to 300 degrees F. That requires a lot of energy, which is why other countries have been using cold-mix asphalts --also called emulsions-- for years. One method involves shearing asphalt into fine particles, then mixing them with water and soap-like chemicals called surfactants that hold the asphalt in solution until its laid. Bahia says studies have shown cold mixes require seven times less energy.
. . Asphalt sold for $35 a ton a few years ago, but it's up to $80 and could hit $100. That has some states are scaling back repaving projects and looking for alternatives. Asphalt already is one of the most frequently widely recycled products in the country, but switching to cold-mix would allow the use of even more recycled products --which already include rubber, glass and concrete - when producing blacktop.

May 29, 08: U.S. food prices will rise a stiff 9% a year through 2012, the largest increase since 1979 and the result of record-high crop prices, the head of an economic consulting company said.

May 29, 08: Town board members who had drawn the line at hanging clothes to dry outside are cutting residents some slack: It's OK for them to use clotheslines now. Town Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst said being able to hang her children's clothes on a line outside instead of drying them in a machine will keep her electricity use down.

May 29, 08: When Ohio's Kent State U offered custodial staff the option of working four days a week instead of five to cut commuting costs, most jumped at the chance, part of a U.S. trend aimed at combating soaring gasoline prices.

May 28, 08: A landmark law was signed today that makes Massachusetts the nation's first state to create a single management plan for its vast offshore resources, ranging from wind farms and whale watching to cruise ships.

May 28, 08: Burning a gallon of gas creates 19.564 pounds of CO2. If every one of the nation's 196 million licensed drivers reduced their idling by 10 minutes per day, we'd cut our annual CO2 output by 15.48 million metric tons. That would represent about 0.2% of the CO2 that was emitted in the US in 2006.
. . There are automated systems, such as in the vaunted Toyota Prius, that can rapidly turn engines off and on. Widespread adoption of such technology could reduce our national fuel consumption by as much 10%.

May 28, 08: Despite the fact that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only save Americans a few pennies per gallon at the pump in 2030, President Bush and Republicans in Congress continue to call for drilling in the coastal plain of the Refuge as a solution to today’s high gas prices at the pump.
. . Mid-May, Republicans forced votes in both the House and Senate that would have allowed this 19th century solution to a 21st century problem to move forward. Please call Representative Herseth Sandlin and Senator Johnson and thank them for voting to protect the biological heart of one of our nation’s last unspoiled National Wildlife Refuges. You can call the Capitol switchboard- (202) 224-3121 and ask for their offices by name.

May 26, 08: WWF urges Brazil biofuel projects. Protected areas are needed to prevent damage from the expansion of Brazilian sugar cane, the WWF says.

May 25, 08: There are about 30 new American nuclear plants currently on the drawing board. So, does nuclear live up to the claims of its supporters? Well, for one, it might not be as cheap as we've been told. Two reactors planned for Levy County, Florida may clock in at more than twice their original estimate at $10 billion. You can install a lot of distributed solar capacity for that kind of money.
. . A report makes the case that greenhouse gas emissions from uranium mining are rising. As the easy to reach, high-quality reserves are tapped out, extracting the ore will become more expensive and CO2 intense as mining operations are forced to dig deeper and move more material as the deposits worked become lower quality. This lower grade ore will also require more refining which will produce, you guessed it, more greenhouse gases.

May 23, 08: Italy says it is to restart its nuclear energy program, more than 20 years after it was scrapped by referendum in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. Since then, Italy has become the world's biggest net importer of electricity. Construction was scheduled to begin by 2013. Italy depends on oil and gas imports to meet more than 80% of its energy needs and its power prices are among the highest in Europe.
. . However, there is thought still to be strong public opposition to nuclear energy, and it is not clear how the government will override the 1987 referendum, following which Italy's four nuclear reactors were decommissioned.

May 22, 08: Congress adopted a nationwide 55 mph speed limit law during the oil embargo of the 1970s and threatened to withhold highway funding for any state that didn't comply. It repealed the law 13 years ago, when oil was cheap and gas plentiful. But with prices going through the roof and everyone worried about global warming, there are increasing calls for Congress to bring back the double-nickel speed limit.
. . The U.S. Department of Energy says gas mileage plummets above 60 mph and says every 5 mph above that speed is akin to paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas. But the American Heritage Foundation claims 12 years of 55 mph speed limits cut fuel consumption by just 1%. After Congress repealed the National Maximum Speed Law and 33 states raised their speed limits, the Cato Institute said traffic deaths dropped to a record low.
. . More than fuel economy and traffic deaths are at stake now. "Emissions increase pretty appreciably above 55", McNaull says. drive55.org claims Washington state would cut CO2 emissions by 10% if it cut its 70 mph speed limit by 15 mph.
. . drive55.org also says the average speed people travel on the highway has been rising for 20 years. McNaull notes that advances in vehicle deign, such as better windows and sound proofing have changed peoples' sense of how fast they're going, which is one reason people regularly exceed the posted speed limit. "Doing 60 mph in a 2008 vehicle feels a lot different than in the vehicles our grandparents drove."

May 21, 08: High gas prices have driven a farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields.

Hybrids get great gas mileage, but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius. Because there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a CO2 debt -- one you won't pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so.

May 19, 08: Bush's Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said ethanol is not having a "major" impact on food prices, and downplayed calls by lawmakers and industry groups to make changes to programs that promote increased use of biofuels.

May 19, 08: The world's most powerful laser has heated matter to 10 million Celsius, hotter than the surface of the Sun. The Vulcan laser concentrated energy equivalent to 100 times the world's electricity production into a spot just a few millionths of a meter across --for fractions of a second. The experiments demonstrated concepts which could be key to building a future nuclear fusion reactor. At the much lower pressures on Earth, temperatures to produce fusion would need to be much higher - above 100 million Celsius.
. . The fuel for the process is deuterium and tritium, two heavier forms of hydrogen that are commonly found in seawater. When these isotopes are combined at high temperatures, a small amount of mass is lost and a colossal amount of energy is released. By-products are no more radioactive than hospital waste.
. . The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is expected to demonstrate energy production from laser driven fusion between 2010 and 2012. If proven, the technology could rival the current favoured technique for initiating fusion which uses superconducting magnets to contain and fuse the hydrogen nuclei.
. . The pulse lasted for one picosecond (one trillionth of a second), heating the target to 10 million Celsius, one tenth of that required for nuclear fusion.

May 16, 08: Timing traffic lights would save billions in fuel, emissions and wasted time. It would also save countless lives. So says a new study from the National Transportation Operatons Council.
. . The impact isn't trivial. Even changing the delay of lights by a few seconds could reduce road congestion by as much as 10%. It would reduce air pollution from vehicles by as much as one-fifth, cut accidents at intersections and save about five tanks of gasoline per household each year.
. . Even cities that time their lights to reduce congestion typically do so only through major arteries. And traffic patterns constantly shift. To keep traffic flowing, the timing on lights must periodically change to meet new conditions. It should also change throughout the day. Many small and mid-sized cities simply don't have the money to conduct traffic studies that would ease congestion.

May 15, 08: When measured on an inflation-adjusted basis, the current price of gasoline is only slightly higher than it was in 1922. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 1922, gasoline cost the current-day equivalent of $3.11. Today, according to the EIA, gasoline is selling for about $3.77 per gallon, only about 20% more than 86 years ago.
. . British motorists are currently paying about $8.38 per gallon for gasoline. In Norway, a major oil exporter, drivers are paying $8.73. In 2007, out of the 32 industrialized countries surveyed by the International Energy Agency, only one (Mexico) had cheaper gasoline than the US. Last year, drivers in Turkey were paying three times as much for their gasoline as Americans were.

May 16, 08: Toyota will unveil the next-generation model at the Detroit auto show in January. It will be four inches longer, get a more powerful 1.8 liter gas engine that when combined with electrics will do a total 160 horsepower (compared with 110hp in the current 1.5 liter setup). The kicker is that it'll be more fuel efficient, too. Using Japan's metrics for fuel economy, the current setup gets 84kpg, but the next gen has been reported to run 94 ki under the same conditions.

May 14, 08: Wind power could deliver electricity for 6 to 8.5 cents per kilowatt/hour, which is just a notch above dirty coal, and a notch below the estimated 15 cents per kwh for new nuclear plants. (nuclear's expected renaissance has been dampened somewhat by skyrocketing construction costs.)
. . Long story short: If the US ever put a moderate price on CO2 -—or even just passed a national renewable portfolio standard—- it really does seem like wind power could take off in a hurry.

May 14, 08: How to keep the lights on when all is still and the local windmill won't budge? A small Norwegian island testing a way to store wind-generated energy for calm days may have found the answer.
. . The tiny, windswept island of Utsira, situated off Norway's southwestern coast, is home to what is said to be the world's first full-scale system for cleanly transforming surplus wind power into hydrogen. Surplus wind-generated energy is passed through water and, using electrolysis.
. . The hydrogen is then compressed and stored in a container that can hold enough hydrogen gas to cover the energy needs of the 10 households for two windless days. Initial concerns about noise levels and birds getting caught in the turbines had been laid to rest. "We haven't found a single dead bird", he says.
. . Combining renewable energy and hydrogen, he says, makes most sense in secluded areas like the numerous islands lining the European coast or in remote Australian communities, which until now have been heavily dependent on CO2-spewing diesel fuel provided by a constant flow of truck convoys --themselves burning fuel.

May 14, 08: The hardy sweet sorghum plant could be the miracle crop that provides cheap animal feed and fuel without straining the world's food supply or harming the environment, said scientists working on a pilot farming project in India. "We consider sweet sorghum an ideal 'smart crop' because it produces food as well as fuel."
. . Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is the world's fifth largest grain crop after rice, corn, wheat and barley. It grows in dry conditions, tolerates heat, salt and waterlogging, making it an ideal crop for semi-arid areas where many of the world's poor live. The plant grows to a height of 2.6-4.0 meters (8-12 feet) and looks like corn.
. . It has high positive energy balance, producing about eight units of energy for every unit of energy invested in its cultivation and production, roughly equivalent to sugarcane and about four times greater than the energy produced by corn. Sweet sorghum requires little or no irrigation, limiting the use of fuel-burning water pumps that emit CO2.

May 12, 08: Scottish architecture firm ZM Architecture has come up with a way to deliver more renewable energy to Glasgow: solar panel lily pads. Yep, they want to populate the River Clyde with a series of gigantic solar islands that'll soak up the rays all day long, sending electricity to the grid while also acting as an aesthetically-pleasing attraction. Initially an entry in the International Design Awards "Land and Sea" competition where it took first prize, the Glasgow city council is now considering testing out a small run of the solar lily pads in the river.

May 12, 08: Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth. The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20% of the nation's electricity by 2030. Wind energy today accounts for only about 1% of the nation's electricity, although the industry has been on a growth binge with a 45% jump in production last year.
. . Such growth would pose a number of major challenges, but is achievable without the need of major new technological breakthroughs, said the report. To reach the 20% production level, wind turbines would have to produce 300,000 megawatts of power, compared to about 16,000 megawatts generated today. Such growth would envision more than 75,000 new wind turbines, many of them larger than those operating today. About 54,000 megawatts would be produced by turbines in offshore waters. And it would require a major expansion of the electricity grid system.
. . If wind energy's share of power production grows to 20%, natural gas consumption is expected to decline by 11% and coal consumption by 18% in 2030, said the report. As a result CO2 emissions linked to global warming would be reduced by 825 million metric tons a year. "This is the equivalent of taking 140 million cars off the road."

May 11, 08: Britain is the third worst performer in EU for producing energy from renewable sources --2% of the UK's energy is produced in this way-- and it has been told to raise its share to 15% by 2020. Germany has 200 times as many homes fitted with solar photovoltaic power.
. . Critics say the low CO2 buildings scheme has been confusing and stingy, and has provided little incentive for people to go green. The low CO2 buildings program cut the maximum grant on offer from Ł7,500 to Ł2,500.

May 8, 08: A recently disclosed report finds that airlines are spewing 20% more CO2 into the environment than previously estimated and the amount could hit 1.5 billion tons a year by 2025. That's far more than even the worst-case predictions laid out by the International Panel on Climate Change.
. . If you're looking to put that number in perspective, the European Union currently emits 3.1 billion tons of CO2 annually. Yup, that's the entire 27-nation, 457 million person EU. "Growth of CO2 emissions on this scale will comfortably outstrip any gains made by improved technology and ensure aviation is an even larger contributor to global warming by 2025 than previously thought."
. . The report was written for an aviation conference in Barcelona last year, but was turned down by organizers. It remained out of sight until the Aviation Environment Federation unearthed it and announced somewhat dramatically that the report had been "suppressed."
. . The response of the airline industry, which is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gases, isn't surprising. The International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing 240 airlines, says it is working as hard as possible to produce binding emission-reduction targets and argues skyrocketing fuel prices are pushing airlines to find alternatives to fossil fuels.
. . "With fuel costs doubling in the last year, airlines already have an incentive to work towards greater efficiency", a spokesman said. "There has been a 70% improvement in fuel efficiency in the last four decades. Aviation is a benchmark of environmental responsibility for others to follow."

May 5, 08: For all the engineering genius behind the electric grid, that vast network ferrying energy from power plants through transmission lines isn't particularly smart when it meets our homes. We flip a switch or plug something in and generally get as much power as we're willing to pay for.
. . But these days, the environmental consequences and unfriendly economics of energy appear unsustainable. As a result, power providers and technology companies are making the electric grid smarter. It will stop being merely a passive supplier of juice. Instead, power companies will be able to cue us to make choices about when and how we consume power. And most likely, we'll have our computers and appliances carry out those decisions for us. Done right, the smarter grid should save consumers money in the long run by reducing the need for new power plants, which we pay off in our monthly electric bills. However, if people fail to react properly to conservation signals, their bills could spike.
. . And certainly a smart grid that can encourage us to conserve will feel different. Envision your kitchen appliances in silent communication with their power source: The fridge bumps its temperature up a degree on one day, and the dishwasher kicks on a bit later on another.
. . There's little doubt it's coming. The utility Xcel Energy Inc. plans to soon begin a $100 million smart grid project reaching 100,000 homes in Boulder, Colo. Tsapoitis uses his computer to visit an online control panel that configures his home's energy consumption. He chooses its temperature and which lights should be on or off at certain times of the day. He can set rules for different kinds of days, so the house might be warmer and darker on summer weekdays when his family is out.
. . The family can override those changes manually, whether it's by turning on the porch light or raising the thermostat to ward off a Canadian chill. But the system guards against waste. If midnight comes and no one has remembered to lower the thermostat and turn off the porch light, those steps just happen. These little tweaks add up nicely for another person testing the Milton system, Marian Rakusan. He's saved at least $300 on utility bills since the program began
. . In this test, Direct Energy also will enforce conservation remotely. It can raise the set temperature in a participant's home by 2 degrees Celsius in the summer, reducing its air conditioning load. The company also has permission to shut off the testers' hot-water heaters and electric pool pumps for four hours at time during these power emergencies. It's better than rolling blackouts.
. . An advanced notion of this will be tested this summer in 1,100 homes served by Baltimore Gas & Electric. Pricing plans will vary, but generally the households will pay the cheapest, "off-peak" rates most of the time. Some testers will pay higher rates every weekday afternoon. And all of them will be subject to "critical peak" periods of even higher charges, declared on as many as 12 weekday afternoons with stress on the grid.
. . Most of the homes will get 3-inch-high orbs that will glow different colors to indicate the price of electricity: red instead of their usual green, for example, during critical peak periods. At one end, people could choose something like "maximize my ease and comfort." At the other, "save me the maximum amount of money." The highest-conservation settings might lead dishwashers to start only when electricity prices are at their lowest, or when wind power has kicked on.
. . Electricity use per home rose 23% from 1981 to 2001, according to the Department of Energy. 46% of single-family homes completed in the U.S. in 1975 had air conditioning. In 2006 that was 89%.
. . A mere 5% improvement in U.S. electric efficiency would prevent 90 large coal-fired power plants from having to be built over the next 20 years.
. . The equipment in Milton's tests costs more than $1,000 per house. That will come down with larger-scale efforts, and utilities will save money as networked meters free them from sending out human meter readers each month.

May 1, 08: Ducks in Alberta died a crude death. Most of the ducks who died in the tar sands "tailings pond" sank beneath the surface. "Tailings pond" is oil industry terminology for a large body of water polluted with crude oil. These ponds are just one of the many, necessary environmental costs of removing crude oil from Canada's tar sands.
. . Just this week, Alberta officials were in Washington D.C. trying to stop any U.S. law that might prevent Canada from exporting its oil sand products to this country. Canada is now the #1 oil importer to the U.S.
. . The extraction of crude oil from Canada’s tar sands is a classic case of market forces vs. environmental concerns. Sometimes both sides can be compromised and “progress” and profit can roll ahead. This does not seem to be true in this situation. Here’s the environmental cost of tar sand extraction according to one Canadian website: “It also destroys the land. Huge areas of the boreal forest ecosystem have been felled and the underlying peat bogs cleared away to expose the sands. At the end of the processing there is nothing but a ‘toxic moonscape’ of earthworks, ponds, and 80 foot high piles of pure sulphur. 5,000 hectares have been destroyed already, and David Schindler of the U of Alberta estimates that in ten years time they will have cleared an area the size of Florida.”
. . Think of this as strip mining for oil. With lots of big, polluted ponds and sulphurous hillocks left behind after the oil companies have collected their profits
. . How costly to mine the crude oil in Canada? Estimates are as high as $25 per barrel extraction costs, compared to about $1 in traditional oil fields like Texas or Saudi. With crude now around $120 per barrel, depending on the global market forces, $25 becomes a steep but potentially economically-wise investment. Even if the U.S. banned crude or products from Canada’s oil sands, the stuff would be shipped to China at some minimal loss of profit.

May 1, 08: Rumors that BMW is bringing back the Isetta appear to be true, and the latest word out of Munich is the modern take on the old classic will be an electric vehicle that's coming to America.
. . BMW brass are reportedly poised to sign off on the project in order to meet California's zero emissions vehicle mandate, which requires automakers to build 7,500 emissions-free cars by 2014. Company CEO Norbert Reithofer tells Britain's Autocar that BMW "would be obliged to sell a zero emissions vehicle under the U.S. regulations" and a electric vehicle was "the most likely answer."

May 1, 08: It's the little things that count. Start-stop technology, in which your car's engine shuts down when you're stopped at a red light or sitting in gridlock but automatically restarts when you lift your foot from the brake pedal, will likely be standard equipment in 20% of all cars by 2015. It has proven to be reliable, cheap to manufacture, and it could save millions of barrels of oil a year and hundreds of tons of greenhouse emissions.

May 1, 08: International Business Machines Corp launched tools to reduce computer energy consumption as IBM hopes to boost its business of selling power-saving technologies.

May 1, 08: Fujitsu Siemens has developed a new monitor that claims to use zero power in standby mode. This money-saving monitor miracle is made possible thanks to a built-in switch that shuts down the monitor completely when a signal from the computer is absent—and then abruptly brings it back to life when the signal reappears. This sort of technology will prove especially useful for businesses, which is why Fujitsu is aiming squarely at this market when the monitor is released this summer. Fortunately for the rest of us, this new model will sell for the same price as conventional monitors.

"If every vehicle in the U.S. got 45 miles per gallon, we would not import any oil", he said.

Apr 30, 08: The chances of famine in North Korea have increased in line with the soaring price of rice on global markets, a Washington-based institute --the Peterson Institute for International Economics-- said.
. . A jump in prices for foodstuffs has hit many poor nations this year and sparked riots in parts of Africa and Asia. Export restrictions by leading suppliers have fuelled insecurity and market speculation has also pushed prices higher.
. . The head of a new United Nations task force set up to ensure a coordinated international response to the food crisis said malnutrition was more likely than outright famine in most countries, at least in the near future.
. . Japan, the world's third biggest food importer, was joined by Switzerland in proposing limits to restrictions on food exports after moves by several countries to ban or tax exports.
. . Even in a time of good harvests, North Korea finds itself about 20% short of what it needs for foodstuffs. The secretive nation has grown more dependent on rice imported from neighboring China since a famine in the late 1990s that experts estimate killed at least 1 million people.
. . China has its own problems keeping runaway grain prices under control, which means it cannot afford to be as generous this year, analysts say.
. . Thailand said it would gradually release 2.1 million tons of stockpiled rice to the domestic market to ease the plight of Thai consumers, and maintain its 2008 export target of at least 9 million tons.
. . India unveiled measures to safeguard domestic food supplies by imposing export taxes on basmati rice. India had already banned non-basmati rice exports.
. . Food price rises are hitting home even in countries such as Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation which is the world's fifth largest wheat exporter.

Apr 30, 08: A fourth circuit element called memristor (the first three being resistors, capacitors and inductors) has been proposed since 1971, but HP labs has finally made a working physical model of the thing. What's so special about this type of circuit? It remembers how much charge previously flowed through it, leading to applications like modeling and simulating brain behavior in hardware instead of software. For the rest of us, it can totally revolutionize PCs by remembering the state of RAM when you shut off your machine, instantly booting back up where you left off when you come back.

Apr 30, 08: West African leaders are meeting to discuss an $8bn, 20-year plan to stop the River Niger drying up. Water experts warn that the river is threatened by drought, silting up industrial waste and population growth. The 4,200km-long Niger is Africa's third longest river, after the Nile and the Congo, while some 110 million people live in the river's basin.
. . West Africa's leaders are expected to back the plan, which includes building dams, hydro-electric plants, transport and fishing. Just 19% of the required money has been raised so far.

Apr 30, 08: The case for nuclear power as a low CO2 energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics. It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium are on the rise.
. . Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract. A significant proportion of greenhouse emissions from nuclear power stem from the fuel supply stage, which includes uranium mining, milling, enrichment and fuel manufacturing. Others sources of CO2 include construction of the plant --including the manufacturing of steel and concrete materials-- and decomissioning.
. . New uranium deposits are likely to be deeper underground and therefore more difficult to extract. The average grade of uranium ore --a measure of its uranium oxide content and a key economic factor in mining-- is likely to fall. Getting uranium from lower-quality deposits involves digging up and refining more ore. Transporting a greater amount of ore will in turn require more diesel-powered vehicles --a principal source of greenhouse emissions in uranium mining.
. . The nuclear industry is carrying out research into recovering uranium from rocks used in the industrial production of phosphates. Various technologies based on solvent extraction can be used to get the element from phosphate rocks. And in the longer term, some predict that so-called fast breeder reactor technology would increase by up to 50-fold the amount of energy extracted from uranium.

Apr 30, 08: Both Qatar's oil minister and the head of OPEC can see oil hitting $200 a barrel before the end of the year and one analyst says gas could reach $7 a gallon within four years. That could mean cataclysm for the global economy.
. . The world got a little relief today when BP reopened its North Sea pipeline. But the price of gas is averaging $3.60 a gallon and the price of oil is flirting with $120 a barrel with no relief in sight. Market forces don't seem to be functioning in their normal order. OPEC controls only about half of the world's oil supply. Ordinarily, when prices spike skyward, the world's non-cartel spigots open wide. Why isn't this happening? ...
. . Big Oil is rolling in profits. The Bush Administration's tax subsidies to oil companies, which were intended to prod exploration, should infuriate commuters. And yet the profit margins of oil giants are only slightly higher than the average for the S&P 500. And much of the wealth from these companies is pumped back into the economy in dividends, employment, capital spending and the like.
. . China and India. It seems to be a global fact that an automobile signals your arrival into the middle class. Without question, demand for oil in these countries is putting an inexorable upward push on gas prices. This isn't going to change in your lifetime, and it should sound the alarm for North Americans and Europeans that their middle-class lives will be threatened unless they develop alternative forms of energy -- fast. But the increasing demand for oil in China and India is a long-term, slow slope trajectory. It doesn't explain recent spikes. And in the short term, it's self correcting. As oil prices spike, economies slow and the demand for oil eases. So does its price.
. . Ben Bernanke. Oil is currently priced in U.S. dollars. The Federal Reserve has feverishly tried to calm credit markets in recent months with lower interest rates, which are a kind of Valium for bankers. As interest rates drop, so does the value of the dollar. So it takes more dollars to buy a barrel of oil.
. . Speculators. It's never a good omen when fear swallows reason on the trading floor. But this seems to explain part of what's happening with the price of oil. Or maybe it's just greed. Whatever. The good news is that these speculative frenzies tend to end quickly.
. . Suppliers. Here's the mysterious missing piece in high gas prices: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and other OPEC members try to keep supplies tight and prices high. But England, Norway, Russia and other non-OPEC countries open the spigots to take advantage of high prices. This usually brings prices down. But supply disruptions have become rife -- even with OPEC countries, such as Nigeria, thanks to an insurgency that keeps shutting down its pipeline. Norway's production has dropped by 25% since its peak in 2001. Britain's has dropped by 43%. Alaska's Prudhoe Bay has dropped by 65% from its peak. Russia's is down and so is Mexico's. It's enough to make you think speculators are on to something.
. . When does fear resemble reason?
. . By Marty Jerome

Apr 29, 08: Some top international food scientists recommended halting the use of food-based biofuels, such as ethanol, saying it would cut corn prices by 20% during a world food crisis.
. . But even as the scientists were calling for a moratorium, President Bush urged the opposite!!! . He declared the US should increase ethanol use because of national energy security and high gas prices.
. . The group, CGIAR, is a global network that uses science to fight hunger. It is funded by dozens of countries and private foundations.
. . Scientists said work should be stepped up on the use of non-grain crops, such as switchgrass, for biofuel. Another scientist, not associated with the group, agreed with their call for a halt on the use of grain for fuel. "We need to feed the stomach before we need to feed our cars", said Rattan Lal, an Ohio State U soil sciences professor.
. . Scientists say the diversion of corn and soybeans for fuel helps force prices higher, and removes farm land from food production. Legislators in Missouri are considering lifting a requirement that fuel in that state contain 10% ethanol. A soon to be released International Food Policy Research Institute analysis blames 30% of the overall food price rise from 2000-2007 on biofuels.

Apr 29, 08: The Environmental Protection Agency claims that producing recycled paper requires 40% less energy than making paper from virgin wood, or about 10.6 fewer gigajoules per ton of finished product. That may sound dramatic, but it's peanuts compared with the energy savings associated with recycling other common materials. Manufacturing a ton of recycled aluminum cans, for example, requires 218 fewer gigajoules per ton than using virgin ores, while the figure for polyethylene bottles is 55.9 gigajoules.
. . Making virgin paper also involves a host of dodgy chemicals, particularly the bleach used to whiten the end product.

Apr 28, 08: It's going to take nearly a decade and a half, but cellulosic ethanol will overtake corn ethanol, according to an enzyme maker. Cellulosic ethanol, in volume, will surpass corn ethanol production in 2022.

Apr 27, 08: Back and forth, back and forth. That's the idea behind WaveRoller. The company, based in Espoo, Finland, says it has devised a way to generate electricity from waves without buoys or other floating devices, the mainstay of other wave power companies. The company wants to plant oscillating fiberglass/steel plates on the sea bed. Waves rolling in push over the plates, which rebound after the wave passes to only be knocked down by another wave. The back-and-forth motion of the plates drives a piston and creates hydraulic pressure. The pressure ultimately gets fed to a turbine to generate electricity.
. . By being completely submerged, WaveRoller's device could help quell some of the NIMBY-ism that comes with building in coastal areas. It also makes the device less prone to being an obstacle for boats. Ideally, the 4-meter-high plates will be anchored in water 10 meters to 12 meters deep.
. . WaveRoller installed a second prototype off the coast of Peniche, Portugal, earlier this year and this summer will begin to collect data on how well the plates perform. If all goes well, the company hopes to start producing systems commercially and helping power providers build multi-megawatt power plants in five to seven years or so. (Other wave companies are similarly aiming at producing power with commercial-size devices in the 2010 to 2015 time frame.)
. . The plate in the latest prototype measures 4x4 meters and can generate 10 kilowatts to 13 kilowatts of power. Commercial units will likely consist of three vertical plates lined up near each other and produce around 45 kilowatts, he said. Thus, you'd need about 22 three-plate devices for a megawatt. A single WaveBob can produce more than a megawatt of power.
. . Water is 800 times denser than air; thus, a few devices planted in a relatively small area can generate as much power as a large wind farm. Ireland, Scotland, Hawaii, Oregon, and some South Pacific nations are already, or are preparing, wave energy tests.

Apr 27, 08: The Army Corps of Engineers, noting the likelihood of a ninth successive year of below-average flows through the dams along the upper Missouri River, predicts power generated by those dams to produce 5.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2008.
. . That's up from barely 5 billion kilowatt hours but still 40% off the average annual production of 10 billion kilowatt hours. Two decades ago, East River got as much as 50% of its electricity from hydropower, Nelson said. Today, it's 25% to 30% of the mix.

Apr 25, 08: Imported oil is some 60% of the oil we use. See the entire article:
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/05/the-seven-myths-of-energy-independence.html
. . While Americans have a proud history of inventing ourselves out of trouble, today's energy challenge is fundamentally different. Nearly every major energy innovation of the last century—from our cars to transmission lines—was itself built with cheap energy. By contrast, the next energy system will have to contend with larger populations and be constructed using far fewer resources and more expensive energy.
. . Here's the rub: We don't have a choice. Energy security is nonnegotiable, a precondition for all security, like water or food or defense. Without it, we have no economy, no progress, no future. And to get it, we'll not only have to abandon the chimera of independence once and for all, but become the very thing that many of us have been taught to dread—unrepentant energy globalists.
. . Let's start with the sheer physical enormity of replacing imports. On average, an oil company burns the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of oil to produce 20 gallons of oil.
. . Hydrogen, once considered a natural successor to oil, is so tricky to refine and handle that, by one study, a gallon of hydrogen contains nearly 25% less energy than was consumed producing it. As for ethanol's energy return, scientists are debating whether it's slightly positive or altogether negative. To make more of an alternative (ethanol, say) is to have less of something else (food, sustainably arable land).
. . Cellulosic ethanol, for example, is made from wood chips, crop detritus, and other organic waste. And in Brazil they make ethanol from sugarcane—a process a third as energy intensive as corn ethanol's. But cellulosic ethanol, though quite promising, is not yet commercial. Corn is also the most chemically intensive commercial grain crop; runoff attributable to the ethanol boom is causing oceanic dead zones and pesticide-laden groundwater.
. . Although the US could fuel its entire car fleet with a synthetic gasoline made from abundant coal, syngas is even more ecologically challenged than oil. Industry likes to trumpet potential technologies to capture and sequester coal's CO2, but the federal government has cut research funding.
. . The saner objective -—energy security—- won't be met through some frantic search for a fuel to replace oil, but by finding ways to do without liquid fuel, most probably through massive increases in energy efficiency.
. . If the US aggressively adopted more efficient cars, factories, homes, and other infrastructure, our CO2 emissions could be 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. And saving energy is almost always cheaper than making it.
. . Transportation is the biggest user of oil -—accounting for 7 of every 10 barrels we burn—- any significant reduction in the sector's appetite has massive ramifications. If we persuaded carmakers to switch to plug-in hybrids, we could cut our oil demand by a staggering 9 million barrels a day, about 70% of our current imports.
. . Charged up at night, when power demand (and thus prices) are low, plug-in hybrids exploit the grid's large volume of unused (and, until now, unusable) capacity. Such "load balancing" would let power companies run their plants around the clock (vastly more cost-effective than idling plants at night and revving them up at dawn); as important, it would substantially boost the grid's overall output. According to the Department of Energy, with such load balancing, America's existing power system could meet current power demands and generate enough additional electricity to run almost three-quarters of its car and light-truck fleet. That alone would be enough to drop oil consumption by 6.5 million barrels a day, or nearly a third of America's current demand.
. . An electric or plug-in hybrid fleet is still probably the most environmentally plausible path away from oil. Why? Because kilowatt for kilowatt, turning fossil fuels into electricity in massive centralized power plants and then putting that juice into car batteries is more efficient than burning fossil fuels directly in internal combustion engines, and thus generates fewer CO2 emissions per mile traveled. (Our existing fleet generates a third of America's CO2 emissions.) The DOE found that replacing three-quarters of the U.S. fleet with plug-in hybrids would cut vehicle CO2 emissions by 27% nationwide -—40% or more if the country's power system were upgraded to match California's low-CO2 grid. And once the new fleet is in place, there is nothing stopping us from upgrading our power sources to truly renewable systems.
. . The power sector emits 40% of all U.S. CO2 emissions. Just 8.4% comes from renewable sources.
. . Demand is being driven largely by booming Asia, which is only too happy to burn any barrel we manage to conserve or replace.
. . The U.S. car fleet, for example, turns over at a rate of just 8% a year, which means that—even in a fantasy scenario where the cars were already designed, the factories retooled, and the workers retrained—it would still take 12 years to deploy a greener fleet.
. . The only way to achieve real energy security is to reengineer not just our energy economy but that of the entire world. Oil prices won't fall, evil regimes won't be bankrupt, and sustainability won't be possible—until global oil demand is slowed. And outside of an economic meltdown, the only way it can be is if the tools we deploy to improve our own security can be somehow exported to other countries, and especially developing countries.
. . In the near term, however, the most practical energy export will be efficiency. China is so woefully inefficient that its economy uses 4.5 times as much energy as the US for every dollar of output. This disparity explains why China is the world's second-biggest energy guzzler, but also why selling China more efficient technologies—cars, to be sure, but also better designs for houses, buildings, and industrial processes—could have a huge impact on global energy use and emissions. As a bonus, such exports would likely be highly profitable.
. . Given America's tectonic pace toward energy security, the time has come for tough love. Most credible proposals call for some kind of energy or CO2 tax. Such a tax would have two critical effects. It would keep the cost of oil high and thus discourage demand, as it has in Europe, and it would generate substantial revenues that could be used to fund research into alternatives, for example, or tax credits and other incentives to invest in the new energy technologies.

Apr 24, 08: There's probably a place for desalted seawater in meeting the nation's future water needs, but research is needed to reduce the costs and impact on the environment, the National Research Council says. The NRC said that improving technology is making it more realistic to consider desalination of water. [BUT the energy it takes to do it, causes vast amounts of CO2, causing a viscious circle! ...unless done with solar heat, eg.]

Apr 24, 08: Brussels Airlines says it is cutting the speed of its planes to cut fuel costs --and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Apr 22, 08: General Electric said that it has tested a hybrid version of a haul truck, the kind of giant dump truck that's used at a mine or to haul away mountains of dirt. The system works just like a Toyota Prius, more or less. The engine feeds electricity to a battery that runs the drivetrain. During braking, the spinning wheels act as a generator for the battery. The batteries in the hybrid off-highway truck is the same sodium-based battery used in GE's locomotives, according to the GE Research blog.
. . The hybrid haul truck wasn't just announced in honor of Earth Day. Rising fuel prices are pushing truck manufacturers to adopt more efficient and clean technologies. Volvo is developing a range of Mack trucks with the goal of making them CO2 neutral. A hybrid Mack dump truck can save between 25% and 30% on fuel costs.

Apr 23, 08: U.S. company Amyris Biotechnologies and Brazilian sugar and ethanol group Crystalsev have formed a joint venture to produce and sell the first commercial diesel made from sugar cane instead of oilseeds like soy and canola.

Apr 21, 08: The EU is already the global leader in renewable technologies –-it has, for example, 60% of the world market share in wind energy. In fact, these technologies account for an annual turnover of €20 billion and employ 300 000 people in Europe. NONE of the world’s major oil companies is German-owned so Big Oil has very little clout in German politics.

Apr 21, 08: In New Jersey, and along its shore, the governor is pushing for offshore turbine farms. And similar political battles may be fought in Wisconsin, where both land and lake locations for turbines get some negative attention. On the other shore of Lake Michigan, utility companies are eyeballing both the lake and its shoreline for wind farms in Michagan.

Apr 21, 08: Plans to construct one of Europe's largest onshore wind farms has been refused by the Scottish Government. It said Lewis Wind Power's 181-turbines for Lewis on the Western Isles did not comply with European law protecting sensitive environments. The scheme had the backing of the local authority and business.

Apr 20, 08: Sungevity, Kennedy's company, has come up with a Web-based system for evaluating the solar potential for a given home through satellite data. Customers log onto Sungevity's site and provide an address and some information about their monthly electrical bill. Within 24 hours, the company sends customers a quote for installing a solar system, an estimate of how much the system will save them over 25 years
. . I did an estimate on my grandmother's home. The system would provide 25% of the home's power and cost $7,511 after rebates. It would save $27,360 in electrical cost over time, according to the quote. The quote came back two hours after I handed over the address.
. . Reducing a complex sale into a quick online exchange --the same trick that propelled Dell to the front of the PC world-- helps reduce one of the nagging costs of the solar world: the install expenses. Installation costs come to around roughly half of the cost of a solar system.
. . Sungevity's software essentially eliminates the money and time it takes for an installer to drive out to someone's house, climb on top of it, and take a bunch of measurements to prepare an estimate. Only 10% of those visits lead to a sale. Sungevity offers five different systems, ranging in size from 1.4 kilowatts to 5.6 kilowatts. Prices range from $7,500 to $38,500 for everything after rebates are subtracted. While operating only in California right now, the company will try to expand to other states.

Apr 21, 08: Fenske, who closely monitors hybrid discussions groups on Web sites like Edmunds.com, hopes more people will do the research and the math he did and buy a hybrid car. He figures he's saving $3,000 per year in maintenance compared to his old vehicle, plus $2,000 to $3,000 per year in fuel costs for his 20-minute commute. He says he gets around 48 miles per gallon. "Last night, I drove back from a union meeting in the middle of a blizzard and I had no traction problems at all", he said. "I was passing SUVs in the ditch left and right."

Apr 21, 08: Developed nations should stop paying agricultural subsidies to encourage biofuel production because the payments are making staple foods more expensive, the Asian Development Bank said.
. . "We feel that the developed countries should seriously rethink the whole issue of biofuel, particularly the biofuel subsidies", Nag said. "Giving subsidies for biofuels ... basically acts as an implicit tax on staple foods." He said rising food prices will be top on the agenda of the ADB's annual board of governors meeting in Madrid next week.
. . Surging food prices, stoked by rising fuel costs that have increased production and transport costs, have triggered protests around the world in recent weeks. Riots have erupted over food shortages in the Caribbean and Africa and hunger is approaching crisis stage in parts of Asia.

Apr 11, 08: California will create a $600 million think tank to fight global warming, funded by a 25- or 30-cent surcharge on customers' electrical and gas bills, the state Public Utilities Commission has decided.
. . Commission President Michael Peevey pushed the plan to create the California Institute for Climate Solutions. It is envisioned to bring together academic and private laboratories to quickly find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
. . Electric and gas utilities regulated by the state commission are to fund the program by collecting $60 million a year for 10 years. Peevey said the surcharge would add 25 to 30 cents per month to bills of the customers of private utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric.

Apr 16, 08: "Each year, livestock operations produce 1.8 billion tons of cattle manure. Treating manure (with microorganisms) gets rid of the environmental threats and produces bioenergy at the same time. That has been our vision."
. . The research was funded by a $2.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy given in 2001. Al-Dahhan said the new findings are just a small step toward making a reliable "digester" that farmers could use to turn manure into methane.
. . A Pennsylvania company said it plans to build a plant in eastern North Carolina to produce electricity from poultry waste.

Apr 15, 08: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called upon the Group of Eight, G8, to press international institutions such as the World Bank to take action on a growing crisis in global food prices, which have increased by an estimated 55% since June.

Apr 15, 08: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom toured a zero-CO2 home. Only several residences in the city feature wind turbines, but he hopes to help to change that. "This will be the baseline", Newsom said of the dwelling's renewable-energy features.
. . Talking with a handful of "green" bloggers, the mayor announced that the city will set up a "strike force" of business and government leaders to discuss how to encourage more homeowners to install wind turbines.

Apr 8, 08: Toyota is considering extending the Prius line-up --effectively making it a brand on its own. Honda is planning a more economical hybrid for 2009 that takes aim at the Prius. Honda's Civic hybrid, at $22,600 and with the same fuel consumption as the Prius, is the No. 2 hybrid but was outsold by the Toyota vehicle by more a more than 5-to-1 margin in 2007.
. . Hybrids made up just 3% of U.S. sales in 2007. But growth was 40% from the previous year. Gas-thirsty SUVs, by contrast, account for more than 14% of vehicles on the road. About 6% of the U.S. population buys a new car each year.
. . A study by J.D. Power released in March found hybrid buyers tend to have higher education levels and much higher income than the average new car buyer. They are also about four years older on average.

Apr 8, 08: At this time last year, former Vice President Al Gore testified in Congress about why we need to stop building any new coal-fired power plant until we have the capability to safely capture and store the CO2. More recently, the director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, James Hansen, told congress that such a moratorium is "the most critical action for saving the planet at this time."
. . But even with these recommendations by such high figures, there are still over 110 coal-fired generating plants being built or planned in the US. But there IS an alternative. Experts say that about 69% of U.S. electricity needs could be met by solar power by 2050, and that solar power could be the nation's sole electricity source by 2100.

Apr 7, 08: Britain has given planning permission for a prototype tidal power project in the northeast England, industry minister John Hutton said. Pulse Tidal Ltd's test project could generate up to 0.15 megawatts of electricity from underwater currents in the Humber Estuary. If successful, the technology could be used to develop 1-MW units strung together in tidal power farms generating up to 100MW.

Apr 5, 08: In an effort to clean up Africa's dirty and diesel-reliant mobile network, Swedish start up Flexenclosure has designed a green version of a cellular base station. Called the E-site, it runs primarily on wind and solar power and utilizes an intelligent operating system that adapts to local conditions.
. . A purely diesel-run base station consumes roughly 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) of diesel per year --an increasingly costly expense.
. . The E-Site draws its power from a wind turbine in the network tower and solar panels on the roof. Clean energy sources charge a battery that then powers the base station at night. The E-site also has a small diesel generator, just in case the batteries run out.
. . What's even more amazing is the E-site's operating system, which can learn to adapt its power-generating techniques to different situations. For instance, if the batteries are running low at night, but the system knows the sun will rise soon, it can decide to wait it out until morning rather than head straight towards the diesel.

Apr 4, 08: A must read! A scathing Time magazine piece titled "The Clean Energy Scam" -- that ethanol does more environmental harm than good.

Apr 3, 08: Minnesota has overtaken Iowa as the nation’s third-largest producer of wind energy, behind Texas and California. The American Wind Energy Association says Minnesota added 405 megawatts of wind power production last year and had 1,299 megawatts of wind energy at the end of 2007. That edged Iowa’s 1,271 megawatts. The organization says U.S. wind power capacity is now about 16,800 megawatts –-enough to serve 4.5 million households with electricity.
. . Under legislation passed last year, Minnesota set a target of generating 25% of its energy from renewable sources such as wind by 2025.

Apr 3, 08: The 15 locations shortlisted for the first new towns in England in 40 years have been revealed by the government. The 10 sites for the "eco-towns" will be finalized in the next six months. Ministers wants five of them built by 2016, with the other half completed by 2020.
. . The new environmentally-friendly towns --low-energy, CO2-neutral developments built from recycled materials-- will be the first new towns since the 1960s. The largest will provide between 15,000 and 20,000 new homes, with officials saying the towns should be "zero-CO2" developments and should be exemplary in one area of sustainability, such as energy production or waste disposal. They also want 30% to 40% of each eco-town to be allocated as affordable housing.
. . Mr Shapps said I'm afraid there are several on this list which will cause immediate concern to local people because they're being built on green fields", he added. "Of the housing we'll be living in, halfway through this century, three-quarters of it is already built. "Unless you do something about the existing stock, putting up a few eco-towns amounts to a tiny fraction of the total housing we will require." He also stressed the need to ensure inhabitants of new eco-towns did not have to commute in order to work. If this happened, the sites would be "not that environmentally-friendly at all."

Apr 14, 08: A company called Solaria may have a solution: solar cells that require only half as much silicon as traditional panels while producing 90% of the power. The company expects its solar cells to cost 15 to 30% less than conventional panels.

Apr 14, 08: Bangladesh has introduced an improved cooking stove that will consume 50% less of the biomass used for cooking in rural areas, a senior official said.

Apr 12, 08: The Senate overwhelmingly agreed to extend a tax break for companies that generate electricity from wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy.
. . But the one-year extension likely will die in the House unless Senate Republicans change course and agree with a demand by House Democrats that the extension be paid for, and not added to the national debt, and that it be paid for by ending some tax breaks that now go to the country’s five largest oil companies, said Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D. “But if, at the end of the day, we can’t get it done, I’m confident that with a new (president), who’s more committed to fiscal discipline ... that we will ultimately get this done”, Herseth Sandlin said.
. . Next year would be too late, said Gregory Wetstone, the American Wind Energy Association’s senior director of government and public affairs. Although the tax break doesn’t expire until the end of this year, wind energy developers and investors need to know much earlier than that whether it will be extended, Wetstone said.

Apr 11, 08: while $10,000 of traditional solar panels will produce a a kilowatt of energy over 25 square meters, the solar balloon power equivalent costs just $4,000. The engineers' biggest concerns seem to be wind resistance, as they're still finalizing the optimal design. On the downside, the balloons will require moderate yearly maintenance.
. . Constructed of photovoltaic fabric, the soft tank is filled with helium and tethered by power wire above a home, saving space on the ground while optimizing sun exposure. But it's not just the physical footprint that makes the technology so appealing. It's the price per watt. They estimate that one or two balloons would fulfill the electrical needs for one home.
. . http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/04/10/sunhope-solar-balloons/

Apr 9, 08: The European Union has pledged to reach 20% by 2020. But Iceland is already at about 80%. All electricity on the island is generated through geothermal or hydroelectric sources. Most homes are heated by water pumped from geothermal hot spots.
. . When Landsvirkjun, the national utility, said it would build a 690-megawatt hydroelectric power plant 30 miles away, Alcoa took the plunge for $1.5 billion. New technology captures emissions from the plant's smokestacks.
. . Over the past 10 years, the price of electricity, compared with a broad measure of inflation, has fallen 75% in Iceland. In 2004, per capita electricity use in Iceland was nearly twice the amount in the US.
. . Iceland is one of the world's wealthiest nations, measured by income per capita, and the U.N. Human Development Index rates it the most livable nation on the planet.

Apr 9, 08: US Geothermal reached an important project development milestone by signing a 16 MW power purchase agreement for its Raft River Unit Two facility in southern Idaho. Idaho is eager to fill a potential void in electricity generation left by diminishing hydroelectric production.
. . The Florida-based FPL is the largest American-based wind generation company. Along with IPP [Independent Power Producers], they led North America in new wind build for the third straight year, adding 956 MW of new wind capacity. Further, FPL consolidated its equity position in 108 MW of operating wind capacity in California. Competing for third place globally: Acciona and EDP nearly tied at approximately 2.8 GW apiece.
. . Chinese power generation giant DaTang has joined LongYuan in representing the recent explosive Chinese wind market growth in EER’s global rankings.

Apr 9, 08: An annually updated ranking of wind energy companies shows Spanish-based Iberdrola is now Numero Uno. Last year they bought out Scottish Power’s assets in Ireland, Britain and the U.S.
. . Investment in wind power is surging globally, rising from an $8 bn per year plateau from 2002-2004 to more than $18 bn annually on average for 2008-2010, with most of the growth in North America and Asia.

Apr 2, 08: Nothing riles Southern Californians like a new tax on their God-given right to drive. Yet motorists in Los Angeles County might be paying an extra 9 cents per gallon at the gas pump --or an additional $90 on their vehicle registration fees. The purpose? It would help fight global warming.
. . Voters will decide whether to approve a "climate change mitigation and adaptation fee" under a proposed law being debated by the state legislature. It has already been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
. . The money would be used to fund public transportation and other projects that ease traffic congestion at a time when the state budget is strapped and money from Washington has all but dried up. Critics are hopping mad. They say that it exploits public sympathy for global warming in order to fund projects that are already sucking down taxpayers' dollars.
. . Supporters point out that many ambitious public transportation projects, including the Subway to the Sea, the Wilshire bus-only lane and the extension of the Gold Line subway aren't fully funded --and risk being sidelined.
. . The tax would pull in an estimated $400 million a year, which makes it a model that other cash-strapped states will no doubt find enticing. California voters will have to decide whether or not it's fair.

Apr 2, 08: Apparently, scientists (and some of our readers, surely) have known that we can grow oil for years, and not in the grow-corn-make-oil kind of way. The Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii can be tapped (ala maple syrup) for a natural diesel fuel that requires only simple filtering before being poured into a truck. The catch? The diesel only has a shelf-life of about 3 months.

So how many trees would it take to match the oil output of, say, Saudi Arabia?
. . Saudi Arabia Oil Output Daily: 11 Million Barrels
. . Output of One Acre of Copaifera langsdorfii Yearly: 25 Barrels
. . Number of Acres Needed To Match Saudi Arabia Yearly Output: 182,500,000 (Total Trees: 18,250,000,000)
. . Number of Acres in North America Alone: 6,050,697,738
. . Number of Acres in North America Used For Corn (2007): 90.5 million
. . Amount of American Corn Spent on Ethanol: 15% and growing
. . Frequency: Corn Needs Replanting Every Season
. . Frequency: Copaifera langsdorfii Needs Replanting Every 90 Seasons
. . *It should be noted that oil barrels and diesel barrels are not a precise 1:1 ratio.
. . Some interesting metrics to think about. On a worldwide scale, it doesn't seem all that impossible to alleviate oil shortages with plants...and the natural CO2 offsets seem worthwhile. It's just too bad these trees take 15-20 years to mature.

Apr 1, 08: And as National Public Radio reports, U.S. manufacturing capacity is maxed. What's galling is that carmakers continue to push these hybrids --especially SUVs-- in ads. Greenwashing an entire company with token products has proven to be enormously successful, and not only for the car industry, but for just about anyone else. The markup at dealerships is shameless.

Mar 27, 08: The city of London announced that it is upping the ante in its effort to reduce congestion by tripling the current charge levied against gas-guzzling cars and SUVs entering the city’s central district. Starting October 27, cars with poor mileage ratings will be subject to a fee of $49 -—a 300% increase—- to enter the busiest section of the city.
. . 17% of the cars that visit central London each day -—about 33,000 vehicles -—will pay the $49 charge, and just 2%—- those in the most fuel efficient vehicles—- will enter for free. The remaining 81% —and trucks— will continue to pay the pre-existing fee of $16.

Mar 28, 08: Ten years from now, the U.S. could produce 10 gigawatts of wave power and 3 gigawatts of tidal power, said Roger Bedard, ocean energy program leader for the Electric Power Research Institute and an admitted optimist on the subject. That's enough for 4.3 million homes (assuming 3 kilowatts a home).
. . Pacific Gas & Electric, the large Northern California utility, has signed a power purchase agreement with Finavera Renewables for 2 megawatts of electricity that will come from a wave farm, which Finavera will build 4km off the coast. Ideally, the wave farm will start producing power in 2012. It will offset 245 tons of CO2 annually, and if it succeeds, Finavera will expand the wave farm to 100 megawatts.
. . Finavera makes a device called the Aquabuoy, a buoy connected to a long underwater piston. As the buoy bobs up and down on the waves, it pushes the piston, which pressurizes a chamber filled with seawater. The pressure cranks a turbine. A full-scale buoy from Finavera will be capable of generating 250 kilowatts, enough for 80 homes. The 2-megawatt field will consist of eight devices. A 100-megawatt array of them could be squeezed into a few square miles on the sea.
. . Unlike wind or sunlight, waves and tides are fairly predictable, a major plus for utilities looking for stable green sources of power.

Mar 28, 08: Sharp sees its total solar cell output rising from the current 710 megawatts to 1.7 gigawatts around 2010. The cells will be thin-film type which are best suited for use in hot countries where there is plenty of sun.
. . Total worldwide demand for solar cells was about 2.5 gigawatts last year and is expected to almost double to 4 gigawatts this year. The company expects demand to continue rising and hit 10 gigawatts in 2010.
. . One of Sharp's highest profile customer wins for its solar business came last year, when Google kicked off an ambitious deployment of Sharp solar cells on its Mountain View campus. The solar panels, which cover almost the entire roof space of the complex, are now in operation and produce about 1.6 megawatts. That's enough to cover about one-third of the total energy consumption of the campus.

Mar 28, 08: California regulators have drastically cut the number of zero-emission vehicles required to be sold in the state by the year 2014, a decision that frustrated environmentalists but came as a relief to auto manufacturers.

Mar 27, 08: Utility Southern California Edison said it would spend $875 million to build a network of 250 megawatts of photovoltaic solar power generation, making it the biggest solar cell project in the nation. SCE said its new photovoltaic project was possible because recent advances had cut in half the traditional cost of installed solar generation in California. The new solar stations will be installed at a rate of one megawatt a week.
. . SCE said the photovoltaic cells on 65 million square feet of rooftops in southern California would generate enough power to serve 162,000 homes. The project, which was submitted to state regulators for approval, is an effort to meet the state's mandate that 20% of California's electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2010.
. . Yesterday, FPL Group Inc, the nation's largest generator of wind and solar power, announced it planned to build a 250-megawatt thermal solar plant in California's Mojave Desert.

Mar 26, 08: An MIT spin-off with Ethernet co-inventor Bob Metcalfe on its board has landed seed money to bring the cost of solar power to the much-pursued level of $1 per watt. Called 1366 Technologies, the company raised $12.4 million from North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, where Metcalfe is partner, to build a pilot solar cell plant in Lexington, Mass., co-founder Ely Sachs said.
. . Rather than design new materials in pursuit of a solar cell efficiency breakthrough as many newly formed solar companies are doing, 1366 Technologies is focusing on manufacturing improvements around silicon cells.
. . A combination of two manufacturing technologies will allow it to make polycrystalline cells 25% more efficient at converting light to electricity, executives said. The technology was developed in the labs of Sachs, a noted professor at MIT who developed the "string ribbon" manufacturing process commercialized by Evergreen Solar. Its goal is to produce solar cells at one dollar per watt, or 10 cents per kilowatt hour by 2012, which is about half the manufacturing cost now. At that price, solar power is competitive with electricity from coal.
. . he company's name comes from the solar constant, or the average amount of solar radiation that hits the earth's atmosphere, which is 1366 watts per square meter.

Mar 24, 08: The UK's chief environment scientist has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK. Professor Robert Watson said ministers should await the results of their inquiry into biofuels' sustainability. Some scientists think biofuels' CO2 benefits may be currently outweighed by negative effects from their production.

A substitute for neon. Mule Lighting has managed to make the flexible LEDs have the appearance and brightness of neon. The biggest advantage of this product is the efficiency level —-it reduces energy costs by about 70%.

Mar 21, 08: Rice U, where scientists have found that buckyballs --molecular balls made up of 60 or more carbon atoms-- can store hydrogen quite well. The molecules can store around 8% of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, Rice found. The federal government, meanwhile, has set a goal of finding materials that can store 6% of its weight in hydrogen.
. . The density of the hydrogen is about the same density that hydrogen would be held at the center of Jupiter. "Based on our calculations, it appears that some buckyballs are capable of holding volumes of hydrogen so dense as to be almost metallic."
. . Conceivably, the buckyballs could be reduced to a powder and sprinkled into a fuel tank: a chemical or physical agent could then be added to release the hydrogen at a steady rate from its carbon cage.
. . Hydrogen can't be sent down ordinary pipelines --a lot of the gas would escape as well as damage the pipe. Compressing the gas and storing it in tanks takes energy and results in bulky storage.

Mar 19, 08: When you think about discarded tires, you probably think of huge mounds of unwanted rubber, serving as mosquito motels and home to never-ending tire fires. In 1990, more than ONE BILLION tires lay neglected in tire dumps, but today that number is down to fewer than 188 million. That’s remarkable, especially considering that we manufacture more tires now than in 1990.
. . Entrepreneurs are striving to find all sorts of uses for discarded tires. Blumenthal said the most popular market is for fuel. Tires burn like coal, except cleaner and hotter. But the fastest-growing use is for making products like belts and hoses and for mulch and cover for playgrounds and sports fields.

Mar 19, 08: First Minister Alex Salmond has officially opened a Ł90m biomass power station near Lockerbie. It's the largest wood-fired facility of its kind in the UK. Steven's Croft more than doubles Scotland's biomass electricity generating capacity from 39 to 83 megawatts. The plant converts waste from the wood industry into energy.

Mar 18, 08: Luxim's new bulb may only be the size of a Tic-Tac, but this little bugger can crank out way more light at 250 watts than a traditional 400 watt LED. It gives off as much light as a streetlight. It can achieve this feat thanks to gas that is heated inside the bulb via electrical energy delivered to it by a "puck." As the gas turns to plasma, the bulb is illuminated. However, since most of the energy is not lost to heat, the light can reach a high level of brightness. In fact, it can produce up to 140 lumens per watt which is twice that of an LED and around 10 times that of a standard bulb. It has a long useful lifetime, full spectrum and dimming.

Mar 17, 08: On a perfect New Mexico winter day —-with the sky almost 10% brighter than usual-— Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems (SES) set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25% net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4% was toppled Jan. 31 on SES’s “Serial #3” solar dish Stirling system at Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility.

Mar 17, 08: Ann Arbor is on its way to being the first U.S. city to light up its downtown with 100% LED-based streetlights. The city expects to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights beginning next month. The city anticipates a 3.8-year payback on its initial investment.
. . The LED lights typically burn five times longer than the bulbs they replace and require less than half the energy. The LED streetlights currently installed in Ann Arbor are by Lumecon, which contain LED light engines from Relume Technologies. The light engines are based on the Cree XLamp LED.
. . Full implementation of LEDs is projected to cut Ann Arbor’s public lighting energy use in half and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,425 tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent of taking 400 cars off the road for a year. Detroit Edison, Ann Arbor’s local utility provider, will meter the new LED streetlights with the intent to gather sufficient information to develop new LED-based tariffs.
. . Other North American cities like Raleigh, N.C., and Toronto, have started installing LED streetlights too.

Mar 17, 08: If ultracapacitors can be made successfully at a competitive price point, conventional hybrids will transition from batteries to ultracapacitors because of the capacitor’s longer life span and lower internal resistance, as well as its deep-discharge tolerance. While a battery pack can be damaged by being discharged completely, capacitors simply don’t care.
. . Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, will still likely use batteries for their main battery pack, and capacitors for reclaiming energy while slowing down and to provide high-current acceleration. This will let the batteries discharge and recharge at moderate current, which should offer better performance and battery life over the long haul.

Mar 17, 08: Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008. Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.
. . Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction. But that doesn’t mean the major automakers can write it off as a bizarre Indian experiment — MDI has signed deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.

Mar 17, 08: The LifePort offers owners a DIY-assembled carport. Manufactured with recycled steel and weighing no more than 100 pounds per main piece, this 22 x 22-ft. solar structure's setup is eminently doable-and customizable, since it still works when covered by stucco and other materials to match your roof, vinyl siding and the like.
. . At 200-watts each, the 24 solar panels generate a robust 4.8 kW of juice --enough to power most homes. (An optional system can produce 6.4 kW.) "This is a constantly growing market", Envision CEO Robert Noble told PM this weekend. LifePort runs at $45,199, but there's a $2000 federal tax credit for generating your own solar power, plus $10,000 if you live in California. And when you consider that a solar garage can recharge your car, power much of your home's electrical needs and add future resale value (who won't want a panel-top carport come 2015?)

With one-fifth of all its energy needs satisfied by wind power, Denmark is a forerunner.

Mar 14, 08: A parabolic dish tracks the sun and feeds its rays into a cable composed of 127 optical fibers. Just two fibers deliver light equivalent to a 50-watt incandescent bulb.
. . Hybrid Solar Lighting by Sunlight Direct channels visible light into buildings through a bundle of plastic optical fibers. These fibers hook into special luminaires that distribute the light indoors. As daylight wanes, a sensor kicks on conventional electric bulbs to maintain a constant level of illumination.

Mar 14, 08: Improving the environmental performance of buildings in North America can cut the region's CO2 emissions more than any other measure, a study suggests.
. . The rapid take-up of current and new technologies could save the equivalent of the amount of CO2 emitted by transport in the US, it concluded. However, it added that developers and homeowners were not willing to pay the extra cost for energy saving measures. Buildings are responsible for about 35% of the region's man-made CO2 emissions.
. . The report said it was possible for the most efficient buildings to consume 70% less energy than conventional properties. "Green building represents some of the ripest 'low-hanging fruit' for achieving significant reductions in climate change emissions."
. . Despite the potential energy and financial savings, the study found that less 0.5% of homes in the US and Canada could be called "green buildings". Almost three-quarters of the buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been built, research shows.

Mar 14, 08: A newly created firm, Torresol Energy, said it plans to build at least two large concentrating solar power plants a year with a goal of generating 320 megawatts over the next 5 years and 1,000 megawatts in 10 years. A large coal-fired power plant typically can produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity.
. . In a solar tower, mirrors reflect light to generate heat at the tower top where steam is made to turn a turbine. One of the designs that the venture intends to use is a solar receiver tower to be built in Abu Dhabi. In a tower construction, several mirrors are mounted on the ground to reflect light to the top of a tower, where steam is created to turn an electricity turbine. A handful of other companies, including BrightSource Energy and eSolar, are pursuing a similar tower design.
. . A number of solar thermal power plants are being proposed for the Southwest United States and Spain, where conditions are best. Sener already operates three 50 megawatt plants that use parabolic troughs to reflect light and generate heat. They also incorporate molten salt storage to generate electricity when the sun is not shining.

Do you all know who controls the patents for all NIMH batteries large and small...Cobasys owned by none other then Chevron; yes, an oil company holds ALL the patent rights to all the fundamental chemical technology for NIMH batteries in the world. They just took Panasonic to court and won because Panasonic was producing batteries with more than 10 amp hours capacity without Chevrons permission. You need 100-90Ah cells for a plug in hybrid. In the court deal, Panasonic agreed not to produce any NIMH 10Ah+ batteries for "certain vehicle use" in North America till the year 2015. Do a google search for Panasonic +Chevron +NIMH its all there in nice legalize. Yet again, Big oil squashed competing technology. I bet you all didn’t know that A123 is going to be gobble up by Cobasys soon. “Cobasys and A123Systems announced today that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to enter into a partnership to develop, manufacture, sell, and service lithium ion energy storage systems for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications. The scope of the agreement will include joint development, marketing and supply of A123Systems nanophosphate lithium batteries and Cobasys systems integration and manufacturing of battery systems for HEV markets.” Cobasys is a joint venture between Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation and Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=13809

Mar 12, 08: They may look leafless and lifeless, but Kyaw Sinnt is certain his nut-trees are the key to Myanmar's chronic energy shortage. Others are less sure, saying the junta's plan to turn the country into a giant plantation of biofuel-producing "physic nuts" is yet another example of the ill-conceived central planning that has crippled a once-promising economy.
. . They decreed that every farmer with an acre of land had to plant 200 physic nut seeds around the perimeter of their plots. Now, jatropha groves can be seen across the country. Nobody knows whether the generals have kept their side of the bargain and built the refining plants necessary to turn sacks of hairy brown nuts into biodiesel.
. . Sean Turnell of Australia's Macquarie U said, "The whole episode is illustrative of a more profound and pervasive system of centralized and often irrational decision making that lies at the heart of Burmese agriculture."
. . "It's a complete waste of time", said one businessman in the town of Nyaung U, 30 km away who did not wish to be named for fear of recrimination. "There is no processing plant, and if there was, it would cost four times as much as normal diesel. It's all for show --just like our wonderful new irrigation channels that never have any water because they never turn the pumps on."

Mar 11, 08: The growth of the solar power industry is poisoning land in China, according to the Washington Post. Polysilicon, which is widely used to make solar panels, is in short supply. In the rush to make it cheaply, a Chinese company reportedly is dumping toxic waste into the ground, killing wildlife and endangering human health.
. . The newspaper describes green fields in the nation's eastern central Henan Province that have turned snow white from the powdery waste of silicon tetrachloride, four tons of which result from every ton of polysilicon created. Toxic hydrogen chloride gas and acids waft from the waste.
. . New factories there are set to produce more than twice the amount of polysilicon as is currently manufactured in the world. Silicon tetrachloride can be recycled. But manufacturers reportedly can make polysilicon about two-thirds more cheaply if they ignore environmental protections.

Mar 11, 08: Peak demand for electricity in the Republic of Ireland comes to about 5,000 megawatts. Studies show that onshore and offshore wind turbines located in the republic could deliver approximately 5,000 megawatts of power over both parts of the island.
. . This figure takes into account only sites where it would be somewhat practical to put wind turbines, wind speeds, the geography, and the transmission grid. If Northern Ireland is counted, the figure jumps to 6,000 megawatts. In all, the wind blowing over the island contains 8,000 megawatts of power. "There is enough onshore-accessible wind for about 100% of our electricity requirements."
. . The Republic of Ireland already has installed about 800 megawatts worth of wind turbines, and wind park developers have or are expected to file applications to put an additional 3,700 megawatts worth of wind onto the grid. The government will likely surpass its goal of having 1,200 megawatts of wind by 2010.

Mar 11, 08: Drivers should be helped to see that a "cleaner" car is good for their bank balance as well as the environment, a government adviser has said. In a report to be published alongside the Budget, Prof Julia King wants the lifetime costs of running a car to be prominently displayed in the showroom. Currently, new car buyers are told the cost of owning a car for a year. But Prof King argues it would be more persuasive to show running costs for a decade or longer.
. . The report says a 4.4 litre petrol Range Rover, driven 12,000 miles a year for 10 years, would cost more than Ł35,000 in petrol and vehicle excise duty. Another family car --a diesel Peugeot 307-- would cost around Ł11,000.
. . Prof King believes that information presented in this form will jolt buyers into greener choices. She also proposes a color-coded road tax disc dependent on emissions levels. This would help to create peer pressure, and make it easier for local authorities to run schemes such as Manchester City Council's offer of 25% discounts in car parks to owners of cleaner cars.

Mar 10, 08: Coal-fired power stations will remain a "key source" of British energy, Cabinet minister John Hutton has said. Mr Hutton, who is considering proposals to build a new coal station in Kent, said fossil fuels were needed to back up nuclear and renewable energy. He said the UK was playing a leading role in "clean coal" power generation.
. . The Lib Dems said without CO2 capture and storage technology, clean coal was "a total myth" - the Tories said that technology was years away. "Without CO2 capture and storage, clean coal is a total myth. This monstrosity will only emit 20% less than previous coal-fired stations and a massive 75% more than a gas-powered plant. "Kingsnorth should not be given the go-ahead unless CO2 capture and storage is part of it from day one", he said.

Mar 8, 08: Nissan wants to talk about more than a way to drive at its soon-to-be-finished Americas headquarters. The Japanese automaker is showing off "green" features of the $100 million project. There's a 50-acre campus with a restored wetland.
. . A sci-fi sounding "light harvesting system" automatically dims or turns off interior lights in the 460,000 square feet of offices. Sun shades outside —-sort of like reflective visors-— with computer-designed blades direct sunlight to reduce glare and heat in the Southern summer.
. . Air conditioning and heat are controlled through outlets at each work station. The headquarters should consume about 35% less energy than a traditionally designed building. There's greenery almost everywhere else on space that would have been paved if not for a parking deck tucked at one end of the 400-foot-long building.

Mar 8, 08: Solar-power-plant company Ausra has released a paper claiming that solar-thermal electric technology can provide 90% of U.S. grid electricity, with enough left over to power a fleet of plug-in electric vehicles. The company estimates that such a changeover would eliminate 40% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions with a land footprint of 9,600 square miles, about the size of Vermont.
. . The key to the scenario, however, is developing the ability to store energy for 16 hours, thus creating a stable power source through cloudy periods and the night, a feat that has so far eluded engineers. "If we can do storage", Ausra CEO Bob Fishman said, "We can take on coal." The paper says Ausra expects to commercialize its energy-storage technology within two years. A prototype of the system will go into a model plant the company plans to finish this summer in Bakersfield, California.
. . Solar-thermal power is gaining adherents, including Google.org, which cut a deal with another player, eSolar, as a way to cleanly generate cost-competitive, city-scale amounts of power. Unlike traditional photovoltaics, which use panels to convert sunlight into electricity, solar-thermal plants focus the sun's rays on liquids to make steam that powers turbines. Solar-thermal is flat-out more efficient -- at 20 to 40% -- than photovoltaics, which in the field convert sunlight to electricity at about 15 to 22%. And solar-thermal fits into the industrial model of power production, meaning that it works in big plants, not distributed across a bunch of houses and buildings.
. . Mills' paper reveals some interesting statistics about the construction cost of solar-thermal technologies: $3,000 per kilowatt of capacity, but estimated to drop to $1,500 per kW over the next "several" years. The New York Times last year quoted GE Energy executives giving construction costs for coal plants at $2,000 to $3,000 per kilowatt.
. . Ausra says it can generate electricity for 10 cents a kilowatt hour, which is close to the cost of natural gas, and it expects the price to drop even further. The company has received a lot of attention because of its compact linear Fresnel-reflector technology.
. . In total, it's announced real commitments for 1,500 megawatts of solar power deployments from California's Pacific Gas & Electric (1000 MW) and Florida Power and Light (500 MW). Fishman, however, says the company has several thousand more megawatts of deals in the pipeline.
. . Companies have been piling into the solar-concentrating space. Stirling Energy Systems, SkyFuel, Solel, BrightSource, Rocketdyne, Abengoa and the aforementioned eSolar are all working on using mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy in one way or another. That's a lot of competition for a still-small chunk of the energy business.
. . Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all require between 15 and 20% of their power to come from solar sources. Solar-thermal is the only technology that could realistically deliver that type of power. Any sort of system that puts a price on emitting CO2 -- either a CO2 tax or a cap-and-trade framework -- would be helpful because it would penalize coal and aid cleaner technologies.
. . Ultimately, though, these companies want to dominate the grid. As Mills wrote in the paper, solar-thermal "is probably the only currently available technology which can be considered for a globally dominant role in the electricity sector over the next 40 years."

Mar 8, 08: When wireless industry technicians speak of "green" cell towers these days, they're not just talking about making them look more like trees. They're talking about towers powered by wind turbines or solar panels, antennas that get backup energy from hydrogen fuel cells and geothermal cooling for computer equipment.
. . Cell phone companies are experimenting with these and other strategies to reduce their increasingly ubiquitous industry's environmental impact. To be sure, the "greening" of wireless communication is still in its infancy. The vast majority of the nation's more than 200,000 cell towers and antennas run off the same electric grid everybody else does.
. . The average cell tower requires four to eight times as much power as a typical household, and cell companies say power from conventional supplies is still cheap compared to alternative sources. They say they would use green power mainly in remote areas where towers don't face the same aesthetic and zoning limits as in neighborhoods and cities.
. . Sprint Nextel Corp. began seriously investigating alternative energy in 2004 and has since deployed hydrogen fuel cells at several of its roughly 65,000 sites. "It solves a lot of issues for us regarding the traditional use of diesel generators."
. . The company has also installed a wind turbine at its headquarters, is experimenting with geothermal cooling as a replacement for conventionally-powered air conditioning in warmer climates and is testing mini turbines in California that are fueled with natural gas and used for backup power. "It has the advantage of being quieter", he said of the mini turbines. "They're more reliable and we think they're more efficient than traditional diesel power generators."

Mar 4, 08: California energy company PG&E started generating energy from a rather unusual source: cow manure. Yes, cow poop emits methane as it decomposes. And while usually that's a bad thing, with methane being a potent greenhouse gas and all, it can be captured and turned into a renewable source of energy.
. . So that's just what PG&E are doing, using manure to power up to 1,200 homes in California. It's all part of new regulations in the state that are to require utility companies to have 20% of their energy coming from renewable sources by 2010. With a figure that high, they need to look outside the standard solar and wind sources.
. . The covered lagoon, or "digester", is the size of nearly five football fields and 10 meters deep. It is lined with plastic to protect the ground water and the cover, made of high density polyethylene, is held down at the edges by concrete. The digester's cover was sunken into the lagoon on Tuesday, but officials said it would be taut and raised in a few days as the gas collects underneath it.
. . Weights on top of the digester channel the gas to the small facility where it is "scrubbed" of hydrogen sulfide and CO2. The end product is "close to 99% pure methane."

Mar 7, 08: Toyota has taken the wraps off the for-sale version of its iQ mini car, which is set for production in late 2008 at 100,000 units globally within the first year. You’ll have a choice of two gasoline engines and one diesel.

Mar 7, 08: Volkswagen will almost certainly build the Golf TDI Hybrid it brought to Geneva. It'll cost about as much as a Toyota Prius. But the odds are only 50-50 that it will come to America.

Mar 7, 08: Britain's reliance on nuclear energy should increase over the next two decades, business secretary John Hutton has told The Financial Times. Mr Hutton announced plans in January for a new generation of nuclear plants to replace the UK's 10 ageing stations. The nuclear industry believes it can get the first new plant on-stream by 2017. But Mr Hutton told the FT he would be "disappointed" if the proportion of energy generated by nuclear did not rise above the current 19%.
. . Mr Hutton says private operators will be expected to meet the full cost of building nuclear plants, decommissioning and disposing of waste. [oops!]
. . The government's nuclear plans could be still be subject to a legal challenge from Greenpeace, which successfully challenged an earlier government review backing nuclear power in the High Court. It claims research shows that even 10 new reactors would cut the UK's CO2 emissions by only about 4% some time after 2025.

Mar 6, 08: European Union leaders will receive a stark warning next week of potential conflict with Russia over energy resources at the North Pole as global warning melts the ice cap and aggravates international security threats.

Mar 4, 08: The UK needs a "modal shift" from road to rail if greenhouse gas emissions from transport are to be curbed, a report concludes. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) says changes are needed to government policies on transport pricing, energy and town planning.
. . A train journey can produce about one tenth of the CO2 emissions generated if the same trip is made by air. "85% of transport emissions come from roads, so if we are serious about doing something, we must hit road transport." IMechE calculates that on average London to Paris trips, people travelling by car generate two and a half times more CO2 than those relaxing in a train, while an air passenger produces 10 times more.
. . The report's authors said Britain could learn much from countries with superb rail systems, such as Japan, where trains routinely arrive and depart on the minute, equipment failures are rare, and where many railway stations form centerpieces of cities and districts.
. . One remedy they suggest is proper pricing of all transport options to include environmental impacts. They also suggest tickets could include references to the relative CO2 output of different modes of transport.
. . Whatever changes are made, IMechE considers the "modal shift" will necessitate some investment in infrastructure, including new high-speed lines that can carry more trains significantly faster than the UK's existing stock.

Mar 3, 08: The city of London announced last week that it is upping the ante in its effort to reduce congestion by tripling the current charge levied against gas-guzzling cars and SUVs entering the city’s central district.

Mar 3, 08: Amid the sharp displays and booths offering up the latest gadgets and gizmos at the annual CeBIT trade and technology fair, the key undercurrent is the greening of the industry.
. . The fair is working with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Its objectives are to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases caused by the use of computers by 54 million tons annually. Cisco Systems Inc. manager Jan Roschek estimates that the IT sector is responsible for about 2% of the world's CO2 emissions.
. . Striving for more efficient energy use, the IT industry is also examining how it can cut costs, too. If the far-reaching objectives were realized, some $5.5 billion in electricity costs could be saved. "It is also a matter of pointing out to every single person how he or she can make his or her own contribution to climate protection and cost cutting."

Feb 29, 08: The solar power plant Abengoa Solar will build in Gila Bend, Arizona, won't rely on fancy photovoltaic panels. Mirrors focus the sun's rays into tanks of heat-transfer oil, heating it to about 400°C, boiling water for a steam turbine. The plant goes operational in 2011, and will generate 280 megawatts.
. . The appeal of the system is its low cost and high scalability. MIT's Technology Review says that, according to one expert, "solar thermal power will become cost competitive with other forms of power generation decades before photovoltaics will." And even though solar thermal costs more than wind power (around 15 cents per kilowatt versus wind's 8 cents), solar thermal energy, trapped in the form of heat, is much more easy to save up. Energy can be generated even when the sun isn't shining -—in the case of Abengoa's Arizona plant, part of the heat doesn't directly boil water but is transferred to molten salt tanks, where it can be stored to power the turbine for up to six sunless hours.

Feb 29, 08: Dell Computer says it has become the first computer company to join The Climate Group, a non-profit organization that focuses on working with both the public and private sector to inspire action intended to aid a broad shift to low-carbon business policy.

Feb 29, 08: Right now, the DOE says we get half our energy in the U.S. from coal. And we claim a quarter of the world’s coal that's still in the ground. What may be most interesting: do coal-fired companies get into nuclear power or will they try to play on public opposition to block further nuclear development?

Feb 29, 08: Tianjin, China’s third largest city, has become the first city in that country to join the LED City program backed by Cree and other cities that support the installation of energy-efficient LED lighting. 1,500 LED streetlights now illuminate the university’s streets.
. . LED City is a organization focused on promoting LED as a way to save energy, reduce municipal maintenance costs and improve public safety. http://www.ledcity.org/

Feb 28, 08: VW is considering the hybrid drivetrain in a Jetta and Audi A3. the Golf hybrid will be offered for sale in Europe by the end of '09.Chrysler Corp said it'd go ALL hybrid, but didn't say by when!

Feb 28, 08: South Dakota ranks fourth in the nation for potential wind capacity but 17th in wind generating capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The state has seven commercial wind farms that produce enough electricity to power 29,400 homes.

Feb 28, 08: The federal government should set aside large tracts of federal land that are environmentally appropriate for renewable energy production, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told a renewable energy conference.

Feb 25, 08: To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Galapagos' Islands discovery, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa launched a program to end the use of fossil fuels on the Galapagos by 2015.

Feb 29, 08: The UK's first Energy Saving Day has ended with no noticeable reduction in the country's electricity usage. Colder weather than forecast in some regions may have led to higher use of heating, masking any small savings. The event also received very little publicity.

Feb 28, 08: The battle against climate change has been described by a church leader as a "moral issue", at the launch of a strategy to reduce UK electricity use. The Bishop of London said parts of the world are already affected by change. Bishop Dr Richard Chartres made the moral case for taking part. "Let us remember people in the Ganges delta who are already feeling the effects of sea level rise and climate change", he said.
. . Energy Saving Day, which is backed by environmental and religious groups and major energy companies, asks people to turn off electrical devices not in use.

Feb 28, 08: GlobalGreen wants to change things with its street-light replacement LEDs. Using a mere 50 watts of power (about a 60% reduction), this light is very bright (3500 lumens) and will last for 60,000 hours before needing replacement, the company claims.
. . The superinsulating window sample shown here, which features a transparent jelly between the two panes of glass to reduce heat loss.
. . Heliotron, a small Greek company, is offering a type of concentrating solar for home use that it claims can generate 420 watts of power and 210 liters of hot water, too. [210L per...? day?]

Feb 27, 08: Even in China, with its strict religious policies regarding divorce, more homes are breaking up and housing units being built to accommodate the separated families. In the US, 38 million extra rooms were needed in 2005 to accommodate the dearly departing, with additional costs for heating and lighting. The remedy they recommend: Fall back in love. Cohabitation saves the planet by reducing urban sprawl.

Feb 27, 08: Energy Saving Day, a 24-hour initiative aiming to reduce the UK's electricity use, begins on this evening. A coalition of environmental groups, religious leaders and energy companies is asking people to curb climate change by turning off devices not in use. The National Grid will monitor how much difference it makes to consumption, while power companies will identify customers wanting home insulation. Dr Prescott believes savings are likely to be small, up to 3%. But even this could be the equivalent of taking a coal-fired power station off line.
. . The Bishop of London is due to speak, and the event will feature a bicycle-powered cinema showing short films relating to climate change.

Feb 26, 08: Manufacturing 1 ton of newsprint, which is enough to create approximately 280,000 broadsheet pages, requires the contents of 12 mature trees. So let's say your weekly indulgence is the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which averages 172 pages and has a circulation of 606,698. Those numbers translate into 4,472 trees' worth of paper every week, or 232,544 trees per year.
. . 40% of the Star Tribune's newsprint comes from recycled material, 5% higher than the national average. (American newspapers lag behind their European counterparts in this regard -—the average for British papers, for example, is 80%.) More than 57% of American newsprint originates in Canada, mostly the Canadian Boreal Forest; according to Forest Ethics (PDF), a Canadian NGO, clearcutting is the preferred technique in these regions. Though many logging companies replant felled trees on a one-to-one basis, environmentalists believe these replacement forests (which are often harvested once the trees reach a certain age) are not as effective at storing CO2 as old-growth forests.
. . Newsprint production accounts for roughly two-thirds of a paper's energy consumption. Wood pulping is perhaps the "dirtiest" part of this process (PDF); overall, the Department of Energy estimates that the paper manufacturing industry is the nation's fourth-largest emitter of CO2, trailing only the chemical, petroleum and coal, and primary metals industries.
. . Finally, you've got distribution costs—trucking all those copies to newsstands and homes, then trucking them back to recycling centers or landfills. About 69% of American newspapers are recycled, with about one-third of that newsprint getting shipped to China.
. . The end result? According to a 2006 report, a single copy of the British tabloid the Daily Mirror, weighing in at 6.4 ounces, accounts for 6.1 ounces of CO2 emissions.
. . Paper may be an energy hog, but so, too, are the servers and desktops that make online newspapers possible. The Swedish report calculated that a person using a 160-watt desktop with a 120-watt screen who reads an online paper for 30 minutes actually does more environmental damage than if he or she had purchased the dead-tree edition. Granted, this report involved 40-page tabloid newspapers, and the wattage figures are a little outdated. You can also quibble over the assumptions about the environmental cost of disposing of computer hardware, which is factored into the Swedish equation -—wouldn't we still buy (and throw away) computers if there were no online newspapers? By the time the industry gets around to making changes, however, we may have already entered the age of the ubiquitous e-reader.

Feb 26, 08: IBM rolled out a new mainframe computer boasting a 50% performance boost and dramatically lower energy costs than its predecessor.

Feb 25, 08: You've read about the brilliant success of the Vélib' in Paris --the free bike system that enables pedestrians to pick up a bike in one place, drive it, and leave it at another station, all for little or no money. Barcelona is also having a love affair with theirs as is Lyons. But somehow the Brussels experiment, CycloCity, has flopped. During three days of research, this treehugger came across only one station in the center of town, and it was full--almost no one had taken a bike (see picture). Perhaps one could blame it on the cobblestones, or traffic, or climate but Paris, Lyons and Brussels share similar urban traits. Antwerp also has cobblestones and traffic and it was over-run with cyclists, many with carriage contraptions attached to the front of the bicycles for their children. It seems that in Brussels only the tourists use the bicycles to get from one tourist site to another, not the locals.
. . There are very few (20) stations set up around town. There are also very few bikes provided: 250 for a million inhabitants, compared with 20,000 bicycles for two million Parisians. There is no link or co-operation with the 19 suburban areas because they have their own system set up with a competing advertiser, Clear Channel.
. . There is a charge for the first twenty minutes of the ride in Brussels, as compared to Lyons and Paris where it is free --this is seen as an important factor in the success of their schemes. The starting fee is a disincentive to give it a try. In addition, the bicycles themselves are much heavier than the French ones and only have three speeds; which is problematic in a hilly city like Brussels. Local solutions adapted to suit local cultures seem to be key to success.

Feb 25, 08: Volkswagen will unveil a diesel-electric hybrid version of their Golf hatchback (known as the Rabbit in North-America) at the Geneva Motor Show. The information that has filtered out so far is promising: Fuel economy of 83.1 mpg imperial, 69.9 mpg US. Only 89 grams of CO2 per kilometer (for comparison, the Toyota Prius hybrid emits 104 g/km).
. . Also, the diesel engine used in the Golf Hybrid has been developed specifically with the US market in mind, and California in particular, so it will meet all Euro 5 emissions criteria and also pass the stringent Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standards.

The 12 greenest cars:
. . 1. Honda Civic GX
. . 2. Toyota Prius
. . 3. Honda Civic Hybrid
. . 4. Smart ForTwo
. . 5. Toyota Yaris
. . 6. Nissan Altima Hybrid
. . 7. Toyota Corolla
. . 8. Mini Cooper / Clubman
. . 9. Ford Focus
. . 10. Toyota Camry Hybrid
. . 11. Honda Civic
. . 12. Honda Fit

But it was the 12 meanest list that had a couple of surprises, not the least of which is the Volkswagen Touareg (with the 5-liter V-10 diesel engine) being worst, below such gas-guzzling supercars as the 8-liter 16-cylinder Bugatti Veyron and 6.5 liter V-12 Lamborghini Murcielago. The dirty dozen are:
. . 1. VW Touareg
. . 2. Bugatti Veyron
. . 3. Mercedes Benz GL320 CDI
. . 4. Jeep Grand Cherokee
. . 5. Mercedes Benz R320 CDI
. . 6. Lamborghini Murcielago
. . 7. Mercedes Benz ML320 CDI
. . 8. Mercedes Benz G55 AMG
. . 9. Hummer H2
. . 10. GMC Yukon 2500
. . 11. Bentley Azure
. . 12. Bentley Arnage

Feb 25, 08: In San Francisco, Cisco Systems has rigged up municipal buses with free Wi-Fi to coax commuters out of their cars.

Feb 23, 08: Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using the most advanced wave powered boat on the planet. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion. His boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, turns wave energy into thrust using two fins mounted beneath the bow. These fins move up and down with the waves and use them to generate "kicks" that propel the boat forward.
. . The problem is: all of that new fangled technology will only manage to scrape together a top speed of 5 knots. Therefore, it will take about three months to achieve what a diesel powered boat can achieve in only one. Plus, all of the radios and electrical equipment are solar powered. Sounds pretty dangerous, but this is the same dude that made a solo trip across the Pacific in 1999 on a catamaran made from recycled beer barrels.

Feb 21, 08: Biofuels should only be produced if they meet strict environmental standards, an international group of lawmakers have concluded. The forum was hosted by Brazil, one of the world's biggest biofuel producers.
. . The legislators said the fuels also had to deliver significant savings of greenhouse gas emissions. If such criteria were met, they said there should be an urgent review of the tariffs that currently block imports into markets such as the EU and US. Biofuels have become a highly controversial issue, with claims that the rapid expansion of energy crops could threaten global food security, and add further pressure to sensitive ecosystems including rainforests.
. . It is also argued that in some cases the benefits to the climate of burning plant material instead of fossil fuels are outweighed by the energy needed to produce and transport biofuels, and by the release of CO2 from soils by changes in land use.
. . The gathering of legislators from the Group of Eight (G8) richest economies and five key developing countries heard repeated claims from its Brazilian hosts, led by President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, that ethanol made from sugar cane was highly efficient.
. . There was consensus on the main elements of the tests that should be placed on biofuels. These included that they should not be made from materials grown on land with recognised value for biodiversity. Also, that the greenhouse gas emissions involved in their production and use should be significantly less than those produced by fossil fuels. That would place in doubt many fuels such as biodiesel from palm oil that has been implicated in the destruction of Indonesian rainforests.

Feb 21, 08: Governors who want clean energy to be a national priority are trying to bring together states with wildly different ways of producing power, like tapping ocean temperature differences off Hawaii.
. . But a souring economy has tightened state budgets and forced spending cuts that could temporarily short circuit renewable energy development. Twenty states now project budget gaps, which together total $34 billion for 2009.
. . Pawlenty has embraced renewable fuels, conservation and a requirement to cut global warming emissions in Minnesota by 80% by mid-century. He also supports clean coal technology and coal-burning power plants where CO2 is captured and sequestered. Pawlenty said the national association has worked closely with governor's offices around the country to bring states together on the issue. "Although there are certainly differences in how each state approaches energy policy, there is consensus that more needs to be done to create a cleaner, more secure and more independent energy future", he said.

Feb 21, 08: Soaring production of solar panel and wind turbines is now spurring a race to develop the winning energy storage technologies which will drive the electric cars and appliances of the future. The race is heating up as manufacturers with entirely different solutions near the moment of commercial production.
. . For example, UK-based ITM Power sees the future of energy storage in the explosive gas hydrogen. The company is developing a piece of kit called an electrolyzer which uses solar or wind power to split water into H and O. The H is then stored in a pressurized container until it is needed. "The one problem everyone's had is how to store. The ability to take (surplus) renewable energy and make useful fuel out of it is almost priceless", Heathcote said.
. . EnerDel has patented a lithium-ion battery which it says is lighter and cheaper than the nickel metal hydride batteries currently used in hybrid electric cars.
. . VRB will start mass production this year of a longer-lasting rival to the lead acid battery.

Feb 21, 08: New York has 13,150 cabs carrying 240 billion people a year. The city should tell the auto industry, "This is what we want. Build it." Nope. Automakers and cab companies have always called the shots. Sorta like cellular carriers.
. . But but just as Steve Jobs bitch-slapped the carriers with the iPhone, Gotham is shaking up the taxi biz with its vision for a cleaner, greener cab. New York wants automakers to build the "taxi of tomorrow." You can bet someone will build it because every cab in New York must be a hybrid by 2012 anyway.
. . It is fuel efficient and eco-friendly. It complies with the Americans With Disabilities Act. It's smaller on the outside but bigger on the inside and more comfortable to boot. And it is instantly identifiable as a New York Icon. Think hackney carriage but not quite so British.
. . Nowadays, 90% of the city's cabs are Crown Vics. But the Vic gets about 14 mpg in New York traffic.

Which OJ to buy: In 2001, it cost a Florida manufacturer roughly 20 cents to process a pound of frozen OJ, but just 7 cents per pound to truck it to the northeastern US. In the end, not-from-concentrate orange juice sold by the carton comes out slightly ahead of frozen OJ sold by the canister in terms of energy use. As a green consumer, your worst choice would be to buy juice that's been rehydrated by the supplier, then placed in cartons.

The new Fiesta is set for a multi-stage release in Europe, Asia, South Africa, Australia, and yes, even the Americas, starting this fall and continuing through 2010. At this point, Ford has five powertrains in the works. Best: a 1.4-liter turbodiesel with 64 horsepower.

February 13, 08: Toyota says it will unveil a production version of its revolutionary iQ microcar next month. The lilliputian runabout measures just under 10 feet long, but it's about as wide and tall as the Toyota Yaris and can carry four people thanks to an innovative interior layout. There's no word on just what it'll have under the hood --Autoblog Green guesses a 1-liter engine-- or what the production version will look like, but we hope Toyota sticks with the conceptual design Car Magazine deemed the best concept of 2007 and "the most significant small car since the original Smart City Coupe back in 1997."
. . Toyota has broken new ground with the iQ. Everything about the car, from the size of the dashboard to the placement of the gas tank, was designed to maximize interior room and make the iQ much bigger than it seems. With the auto industry beginning to embrace small cars --subcompact sales are booming-- it's nice to see designers putting as much effort into the smallest cars as they do the biggest.
. . They said the iQ will go into production late this year but will be sold in Europe only. As far as what sort of drivetrain it will have, how much it will cost and whether Toyota plans to bring it to America, all the company would say is, "We cannot comment."

Feb 20, 08: Lithium-ion power ain't cheap. And because lithium-ion cells often show some degree of capacity degradation within a year, no matter how often or how vigorously they're used, and because they've been known to drop dead altogether before the three-year mark, you just have to cringe a little each time a slick new lithium-ion-powered vehicle shows up.
. . Awaiting an official debut at next month's New York International Auto Show —-six lithium-ion-powered vehicles, including a $39,500 electric version of the $11,350 Toyota Yaris hatchback called the LiV Wise.
. . Perhaps harping on the weaknesses of the lithium-ion battery is akin to complaining because gasoline is flammable. The battery does its job quite well, thanks to a relatively high energy density, a low self-discharge level, and generally maintenance-free operation. And until the next great leap in energy storage technology —-capacitors layered in charge-holding carbon nanotubes look quite promising-— it's here to stay.

Feb 19, 08: Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard said he is confident he can fly a solar-powered airplane on the first round-the-world trip of its kind, even though he needs more money to build the craft.

Feb 16, 08: Unique marine life in Antarctica will be at risk from an invasion of sharks, crabs and other predators if global warming continues, scientists warn. Crabs are poised to return to the Antarctic shallows, threatening creatures such as giant sea spiders and floppy ribbon worms, says a UK-US team. Some have evolved without predators for tens of millions of years. Bony fish and sharks would move in if waters warm further, threatening species with extinction, they say.
. . In the last 50 years, sea surface temperatures around Antarctica have risen by 1 to 2C, which is more than twice the global average. The researchers said global warming could fundamentally change the ecosystem, leading to the loss of some species. Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines.
. . "In the course of a process we call Antarctic cooling that started about 40 million years ago, all major seafloor predators such as sharks and crabs went extinct in Antarctica because they were not able to cope with these extreme conditions."

Feb 15, 08: An advertisement on Beijing's subway proclaiming "Squeezed in?! Go and buy a car then!" has angered passengers who said it only encourages traffic jams, a state newspaper said.

Feb 15, 08: A solar farm has opened in Spain that consists of 120,000 solar panels over 100 hectares (247 acres). It also has a peak capacity of 20 megawatts and it can power up to 20,000 homes—making it the world's largest solar farm to date. The farm is expected to generate an estimated annual income of $28 million and reduce CO2 emissions by about 42,000 tons a year.

Feb 15, 08: Al Gore advised Wall Street leaders and institutional investors to ditch businesses too reliant on carbon-intensive energy — or prepare for huge losses down the road.
. . "You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you —-as my longtime good redneck friends in Tennessee say, I guarandamntee you-— that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime CO2 assets", the former vice president said.
. . Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to warn about climate change, compared the financial risks facing investors in carbon-using industries with the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages.
. . Peter Darbee, chairman and CEO of PG&E Corp in San Francisco, said cleaner-burning utilities should be rewarded and "those that burn coal should have to pay for clean energy." At the last such meeting in 2005, participants pledged to invest $1 billion in clean energy technologies and followed up by doing that in less than a year.

Feb 15, 08: Scientists told the Norwegian government that exploiting thorium, a radioactive metal, for nuclear power production is an interesting but far-away alternative with unknown economic potential.
. . A report commissioned by the government found that current knowledge of thorium-based energy production and the geology of the natural resource are not solid enough to draw any conclusions about the potential value to Norway. "Technically, there is plenty of thorium, but what are the economics of thorium? That we do not know", Mikko Kara, a Finnish professor who led the study, told a news conference.
. . Reports that Norway has the world's third biggest thorium resources have sparked discussion about its potential and prompted one Norwegian start-up, Thor Energi, to propose building a thorium-based nuclear power plant in Norway.
. . Though thorium energy production is more expensive than conventional nuclear plants fired by uranium, and the technology is still being pioneered, thorium has a shorter half-life and cannot be used to produce atomic weapons. So far only India is taking concrete steps to develop thorium-based nuclear power generation.
. . Some environmentalists have blasted the idea of exploiting Norway's thorium, saying it has detracted from the search for renewable energy sources and led people to believe thorium is a "free lunch."

Feb 15, 08: Scientists claim to have discovered a new compound that will capture damaging CO2 from power plants using a technique commonly used to by the pharmaceutical industry to find new drugs.
. . The sponge-like material, called ZIF-69, promises to hold 60 times its volume in CO2. The compound, along with twenty-four others like it, were discovered using so-called high-throughput screening, a massively parallel technique for testing chemicals.
. . Capturing CO2 requires that you can sort that CO2 molecule from other particles. That's a trick that has proven quite difficult. Previous efforts have required heat to trap the CO2 particles. Heat requires energy, and that energy costs money. Making CO2 capture more efficient could reduce the cost of the process and bring "cleanish" fossil fuel plants closer to reality.
. . Yaghi's paper describes more than just the properties of one CO2 capturing material. It defines a new process for creating materials with the properties that scientists want with unprecedented speed.
. . ZIF-69 is like a CO2 trap, allowing only CO2 in, while screening out molecules with different shapes. Under pressure, the compound allows the CO2 in, but not back out. Then, when scientists decompress the material, the gas is released, allowing scientists to dump the captured CO2 into a storage system. Such properties could make CO2 capture substantially more efficient, although its efficacy under real conditions is unknown. Yaghi doesn't think the material will be ready for field tests for several years.
. . Concerns lead environmental groups to deride CO2 capture and sequestration as a pie-in-the-sky idea that entrenched fossil fuel companies promote to stave off the implementation of truly renewable technologies like solar and wind power. "We are against coal CO2 sequestration", said Daniel Kessler, a Greenpeace spokesperson. "The reality is that the technologies are going to require billions of dollars of investment. If we go that way, it's going to come at the expense of renewable energy."

Feb 15, 08: A phone made of recycled materials and a transmission tower that uses 50% less energy were two of the green technologies on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

Feb 15, 08: Just 15 miles off Florida's coast, the world's most powerful sustained ocean current —-the mighty Gulf Stream-— rushes by at nearly 20 billion liters per second [=20 cubic kilometers! Seems a decimal high...] And it never stops. To scientists, it represents a tantalizing possibility: a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean energy.
. . Florida Atlantic U researchers say the current could someday be used to drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as much energy as perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of Florida's electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed within months.
. . From Oregon to Maine, Europe to Australia and beyond, researchers are looking to the sea — currents, tides and waves — for its infinite energy. So far, there are no commercial-scale projects in the U.S. delivering electricity to the grid.
. . Because the technology is still taking shape, it is too soon to say how much it might cost. But researchers hope to make it as cost-effective as fossil fuels. While the initial investment may be higher, the currents that drive the machinery are free.
. . There are still many unknowns and risks. One fear is the "Cuisinart effect": The spinning underwater blades could chop up fish and other creatures.
. . Researchers said the underwater turbines would pose little risk to passing ships. The equipment would be moored to the ocean floor, with the tops of the blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below the surface, because that's where the Gulf Stream flows fastest. But standard navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them around the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers said.
. . And unlike offshore wind turbines, which have run into opposition from environmentalists worried that the technology would spoil the ocean view, the machinery would be invisible from the surface, with only a few buoys marking the fields.
. . The Gulf Stream is about 50 kms wide and shifts only slightly in its course, passing closer to Florida than to any other major land mass. "It's the best location in the world to harness ocean current power", Driscoll said.
. . Researchers on the West Coast, where the currents are not as powerful, are looking instead to waves to generate power. Canada-based Finavera Renewables has received a FERC license to test a wave energy project in Washington state. It will eventually include four buoys in a bay and generate enough power for up to 700 homes. The 35-ton buoys rise above the water about 2 meters and extend some 20 meters down. Inside each buoy, a piston rises and falls with the waves. Finavera eventually wants to supply 30,000 households.
. . Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute said an analysis by his organization found that wave- and tide-generated energy could supply only about 6.5% of today's electricity needs.
. . Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, said he fears the wave technology could crowd out his industry, which last year brought in 50 million pounds of crab and contributed $150 million to the state's economy.
. . "We've got a limited amount of flat sandy bottom on the Oregon Coast where we can put out pots and where we can fish, and the wave energy folks are telling us they need the same flat, sandy bottom", Furman said. "It's not the 10-buoy wave park that has the industry concerned. It's that if it's successful, then that park turns into a 200- or 400-buoy park and it just keeps growing."

Feb 13, 08: Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology grew zinc oxide nanowires around kevlar textile fibers. Then the researchers wove the fibers together; when the wires rubbed against each other, an electric charge built up and was channeled into a cathode output.
. . The fabric is the latest and most personalized form of piezoelectric power generation, in which mechanical stress is turned into electricity. Other piezoelectric garments have been proposed, but they involve polymer inserts rather than fundamentally charge-generating textiles.

Go for the laptop. Annual CO2 savings: 495 pounds. If each of us did this, it would be equivalent to taking more than 300,000 cars off the road for a year.

By integrating LED lighting and motion detectors, Clavero's streetlight design only uses full power when people pass by. The rest of the time it remains at one third power to save power and reduce light pollution.

Feb 8, 08: The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded.
. . The researchers said that past studies showing the benefits of ethanol in combating climate change have not taken into account almost certain changes in land use worldwide if ethanol from corn —-and in the future from other feedstocks such as switchgrass-— become a prized commodity.
. . The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands", releasing much of the CO2 formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels.
. . The study, affiliated with Princeton U and a number of other institutions, maintains that previous analyses "were one-sided" and counted the CO2 benefits of using land for biofuels but not the CO2 costs of diverting land from its existing uses.
. . The study said that after taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20%, will increases it by 93% compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period. Biofuels from switchgrass, if they replace croplands and other CO2-absorbing lands, would result in 50% more greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers concluded.
. . "We should be focusing on our use of biofuels from waste products" such as garbage, which would not result in changes in agricultural land use, Searchinger said.

Feb 8, 08: Scientists in the US and Canada said they have developed a unique device that can be strapped on the knee that exploits the mechanics of human walking to generate a usable supply of electricity. It generates enough power to charge up 10 cell phones at once.
. . A shoe-mounted device was nice and light, but did not generate much electricity. A backpack device that generated power as it bounced up and down while a person walks generated a lot of electricity, but was heavy to lug.
. . The knee device collects energy lost when a person brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step. "It generates a fairly substantial amount of power compared to previous devices and it does so in a way that doesn't affect the user very much." With a device placed on each leg, volunteers walking on treadmills generated about 5 watts of electricity walking at a leisurely 3.5 kph. Each of the devices weighs about 1.6 kg, which Kuo said was still too unwieldy, adding that he thinks it can be made smaller and more practical.

Feb 8, 08: A seagoing glider that uses heat energy from the ocean to propel itself is the first "green" robot to explore the undersea environment, U.S. researchers said. They said the glider had crisscrossed the 4,000-meter-deep Virgin Islands Basin between St. Thomas and St. Croix more than 20 times since it was launched in December. And it could keep going on its own for another six months.
. . Such robots can carry sensors to measure temperature, salinity and biological productivity. They usually surface from time to time to fix their positions using the Global Positioning System and to communicate via Iridium satellite to a laboratory.
. . Most gliders rely on battery-powered motors and mechanical pumps, the researchers said. This one draws its energy from the differences in temperature between warm surface waters and the colder, deeper layers of the ocean.

Feb 7, 08: Honda, Toyota and Fiat are among the companies developing competitors to the Nano. The proliferation of cheap vehicles could prompt as much as 25% of the 50 million people who ride scooters to buy cars. India is the world's fourth-largest overall producer of the greenhouse gas (it ranks far lower in per-capita terms). Its CO2 emissions are expected to triple by 2020.
. . Tata counters that the Nano is cleaner than the scooters it will replace and claims the car's catalytic converter cuts emissions by 80%. The Nano supposedly emits 30 grams of CO2 per kilometer, well below the 160 g/km average of Europe's cars and far less than the 130 g/km standard the European Union will adopt in 2012. Even if half a million Nano's hit the road and each of them travels 5,000 miles a year, they will be responsible for less than 8% of India's annual CO2 emissions, Economic Times reports.
. . Scooters, which typically get much better fuel economy. Second, the Nano --and the cheap cars that are sure to come along to compete against it-- are "gateway vehicles" the automakers hope will entice customers to upgrade to larger, and less fuel efficient, cars down the line. If India is going to follow the West's development model, it's better that they do it in subcompact cars that get 50 mpg than SUVs that get 15.

Feb 6, 08: The Ministry of Defence has expressed concerns that some wind farms interfere with military radar, making aircraft flying over the turbines "invisible". Government energy officials say they are working with the MoD to resolve problems over the issue.
. . Tests in 2004 and 2005 showed that wind turbines create a "hole" in radar coverage. The shadow of the blades is magnified considerably, and the movement of the propellers is visible on radar screens. The Royal Air Force says it has to be able to detect all aircraft flying into areas covered by its radar for safety and security reasons.

Feb 5, 08: The Enercon E-126, the world's largest wind turbine, is currently being installed in Germany. This monster generates over 7 Megawatts of juice, which is enough to power about 5,000 four-person households in Europe. It's got an insane 830-foot wingspan, and it's specially designed to kill as few birds as possible.

Feb 5, 08: A British firm claims to have designed a hypersonic passenger plane that could one day fly between Europe and Australia in less than five hours.
. . The A2 airplane, designed by Reaction Engines in Oxfordshire, would carry 300 passengers at a top speed of 4,000mph. The company said the aircraft, which is still at the concept stage, could be operating within 25 years. It said the A2 would be able to keep a sustained speed of 3,800mph, more than twice the speed of Concorde. At 143m long, the A2 is roughly twice the size of the biggest current jumbo jets. It would run on a liquid hydrogen engine.

Feb 5, 08: The Philippines will phase out incandescent bulbs by 2010 in favor of more energy-efficient fluorescent.

Feb 4, 08: The EU should ban the sale of cars that do under 35 mpg, the ex-chairman of oil giant Shell says. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart's rule would apply only to new cars. Eventually, old polluting cars would die quietly of their own accord. While car-makers could improve the efficiency of many sports cars to meet such a target, they would struggle to get some heavy, luxury cars to qualify.
. . He also wanted very tough efficiency standards applied to other sectors, such as buildings and lighting. He added that the rich should not escape their responsibility to tackle climate change.
. . Opinion polls consistently show that people are prepared to change their ways to tackle climate change --but only if their neighbors are forced to do the same. This fact is regularly ignored by politicians fearing a potential backlash.

Feb 4, 08: a new method scientists have derived for converting heat energy into electricity, using silicon to instigate the conversion. Researchers have more investigations to carry out, but if preliminary findings are indicative of what is to come, appliances that charge using your own body heat may be on the horizon.
. . Using "rough" silicon wires, produced by a process known as "electroless etching", where silicon nano-wires are synthesized in an aqueous solution, over a thin, semiconductor crystallized base, the scientists have been able to exploit the process of galvanic displacement of silicon. This displacement technique, which uses silver ions, causes the thermoelectric efficiency to be increased on the rough surfaces of the nano-wires.
. . The breakthrough comes from the boffins at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U of California, who believe they have found a way to increase the conversion efficiency by a factor of 100. Though they are unable to pin the exact physics of why this works, what they can be certain of is that it definitely does work.

Feb 2, 08: Last year, wind farms installed almost 3,200 turbines, boosting the nation's wind energy capacity by 45% and cranking out an additional 5,200 megawatts, or enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes. The American Wind Energy Association, a Washington, D.C-based trade group, estimates the industry employs about 20,000 people, not including those making turbines or other equipment.

Jan, 08: Built for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, Treasure Island was claimed as a Naval base during World War II. When the base was finally decommissioned 11 years ago, San Francisco began studying how to redevelop it. From nearly 300 meetings among city officials, engineers, architects and the public emerged a plan for the most ambitious new community in the US -—a 13,500-person "urban oasis" that will rise from the soil of reclaimed Superfund sites, combining cutting-edge technology with restored natural systems to leave a light footprint on the Earth. After ground is broken in 2009, Treasure Island will become a testbed for the newest ideas in energy efficiency, water conservation, waste management and low-impact living. Says Rogers, with idealism undaunted by the task ahead: "We want it to be the most ecological city in the world."
. . Completely man-made, Treasure Island consists of 20 million cubic yards of sea bottom that has been dredged up, dumped into walls made of 287,000 tons of quarried rock and topped with 50,000 cubic yards of loam.
. . Current renters will be able to apply for new multifamily units and residential towers concentrated on the island's south and west edges. Housing density will increase from eight to 75 units per acre, allowing developers to double the amount of land left as open space while accommodating five times as many people.
. . 90% of residents will be within a 10-minute walk of downtown. There, they will be able to access stores and services such as a post office and a new ferry terminal that will provide frequent shuttles to San Francisco. Bicycle lanes will connect residents to Yerba Buena Island and the east span of the Bay Bridge.
. . San Francisco has aggressively reduced the amount of garbage that it sends to landfills, but it has set the bar even higher for Treasure Island—hoping to zero out solid waste by 2020. One important step toward that goal: All food scraps and grass clippings will be composted and used to fertilize the farm.
. . The impermeable portion of Treasure Island will shrink from 64% to 39%, so more water will seep into the ground; the remainder will be channeled into wetlands that will cleanse it of pollutants.
. . Solar panels will cover 70% of all rooftops. This strategy will generate 30 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
. . At the other end of the island, large-scale wind turbines will spin purposefully in the strong breeze. On the tops of buildings, small-scale vertical turbines will provide individualized power. Solar water-heating systems in the residential areas will supply up to 80% of hot-water needs—a significant chunk of home energy use.
. . San Francisco Bay, winking at us between the gaps in buildings, may offer another strategy for renewable power: Installing tide-driven turbines on the floor of the Golden Gate channel would harness the energy of the narrows.

Jan 30, 08: Richard Swanson of SunPower Corporation spoke today to give an update on solar photovoltaic technology, predicting that panels should reach $1.50 per watt -—what he called the “magic number”, because it represents price parity with the electrical grid—- by 2012. For the record, that’s three years earlier than many in the industry have predicted.

A kilowatt of photovoltaics costs about $7000; a kilowatt's worth of hot-water system is about $2000.

Jan, 08: Illinois will be the home to the FutureGen coal gasification plan, which aims to convert coal into hydrogen and electricity while capturing and storing CO2 underground. That might mean 275 megawatts without dirty emissions.
. . Heat stored beneath the Earth’s surface holds 50,000 times the energy of all the oil and gas in the world combined. If it could be harnessed, it would be an ideal source of base-load power: Geothermal is cleaner than fossil fuels, and more reliable than alternative sources like tidal, wind, wave and solar. Today, geothermal plants in the US generate nearly 3000 megawatts of electricity -—enough to power South Dakota. Almost all of it comes from reservoirs that are at least 300 F.
. . 165 F. Experts didn’t think it was hot enough to produce serious power. But with the nearest electrical grid 32 miles away and generators burning through $1000 worth of diesel fuel daily, Chena had the incentive to prove the experts wrong. Now, its tepid water not only generates electricity, it heats the resort’s buildings, maintains a greenhouse and keeps an ice museum frozen year-round. There are thousands of such low- to moderate-temperature geothermal systems scattered throughout Alaska and the rest of the country. Power plants like the one at Chena could tap them to produce tens of thousands of megawatts of electricity.
. . A binary system uses water to heat a fluid with a lower boiling point. A binary system just requires a heat source and a sink: 165 F water can produce electricity if the ambient air or surface water temperature is at least 100 degrees lower. While that may be tough to find in the deserts of Nevada, in Alaska cold air and water are abundant resources.
. . Chena’s two 200-kilowatt modules provide more than enough power for the entire resort and have reduced the cost of electricity from 30 cents a kwh to only 5 cents. With a capital cost of $2.2 million, including exploration and drilling, the project is expected to pay for itself in four to five years.
. . This fall, Chena and United Technologies received a Department of Energy grant to install a demonstration plant at an oil or gas well in the US. The nation’s wells produce at least 40 billion barrels of wastewater per year, much of it low to moderate temperature. That’s another 6000 to 11,000 megawatts of potential electricity, according to a study.

Jan 27, 08: European governments and the European Commission are being urged to hasten the development of housing that produces no greenhouse gases. European governments have agreed to boost energy efficiency by 20% by 2020.
. . The European Energy Network (ENR), which includes energy advisory bodies across the EU, says better enforcement of green building codes is also needed. Less than a quarter of EU states have introduced certification schemes for houses, as required under EU law.
. . For national governments, ENR says, a priority should be to introduce energy performance certificates that give houses an "energy rating", a key requirement of the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive.

Jan 27, 08: Britain is likely to face a shortfall in electricity generation within five to seven years, a report concludes.
. . Energy and environment consultancy firm Inenco says that the number of nuclear and coal plants coming out of service over the period makes shortages likely. Old coal plants, whose operating hours are limited under European legislation, have been running more than expected because of higher gas prices. But other analysts say new plants can be built quickly and shortages avoided.
. . Earlier this month, the government announced it was prepared to approve applications to build new nuclear reactors, but anticipates it would be 10 years before they came on stream.
. . Currently, he said, gas plants with a combined capacity of about 7GW are going through the consent procedure. About 6GW of wind capacity is either in construction or approved, according to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).

Jan 22, 08: Subway switched from buying plastic cutlery made from polystyrene to polypropylene, he noted. The switch saves about 100,000 pounds of resin a year, which translates to 2,800 barrels of oil saved and 1,200 metric tons of CO2 not ejected into the atmosphere.
. . It also switched to polypropylene for its cups. That saves about 515,000 pounds of resin, or 10, barrels of oil saved. The company now stores more inventory closer to its outlets. The program has cut diesel consumption by about 1.6 million gallons annually.
. . One initiative the company will closely watch is a new eco outlet in Kissimmee, Fla. The recently opened outlet sports LED lighting, low-water plumbing fixtures, sensors that flip on the lights in the bathroom only when people are actually present, and passive cooling (i.e., using wind rather than air conditioning). The ovens also come with variable control fans to cut down air conditioning.
. . By 2010, Wal-Mart and its suppliers are going to be a lot more energy efficient. The retailing giant has set a goal of getting suppliers to increase the energy efficiency of its products by 25% in three years. For some suppliers, the standards are a little more stringent. By 2010, the company will only sell Energy Star-rated air conditioners. Flat panel TVs will have to be 30% more energy efficient than they are now.
. . The company might also start building charging stations (powered by solar panels) so that customers can charge up their plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

Jan 22, 08: Transonic has come up with a fuel injection system that increases the pressure inside of diesel engines. Putting Transonic's system into a diesel lets the engine run on regular gas (which is cleaner). Mileage also goes up to 100 miles per gallon. The system sounds similar to a technology called HCCI being tinkered on at Toyota and GM.

Jan 22, 08: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world to put the looming crisis over water shortages at the top of the global agenda this year and take action to prevent conflicts over scarce supplies.

Jan 22, 08: In the U.S, 24 nuclear plants may face shutdown because they are too thirsty in the parched southweastern states. And we can’t just open a giant spigot and give ‘em more water. The arid western states already use huge amounts of energy just to move water from where it is to where it’ll be used. Like Vegas and Phoenix sitting serenely in the desert using water pumped from afar, or below the earth (now there’s a real fool’s plan, pumping dry the aquifers for golf and swimming pools in the sun). You do NOT want to own a golf course or a pool cleaning service in Phoenix in 2050.

Jan 22, 08: A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said. Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol. "It's not five years away, it's not 10 years away. It's affordable, and it's now."
. . The discovery underscores the rapid innovation under way in the race to make cellulosic ethanol cheaply. With the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requiring an almost five-fold increase in ethanol production to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022, scientists are working quickly to reach that breakthrough.
. . Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process yields 99.7% pure ethanol.
. . Gasification and bacterial conversion are common methods of producing ethanol, but biofuel experts said Coskata is the first to combine them. Doing so, they said, merges the feedstock flexibility of gasification with the relatively low cost of bacterial conversion.

Jan 22, 08: The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said. Regan Suzuki of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization acknowledged that biofuels are better for the environment than fossil fuels and boost energy security for many countries.
. . However, she said those benefits must be weighed against the pitfalls —-many of which are just now emerging as countries convert millions of acres to palm oil, sugar cane and other crops used to make biofuels. Foremost among the concerns is increased competition for agricultural land, which Suzuki warned has already caused a rise in corn prices in the US and Mexico and could lead to food shortages in developing countries.
. . She also said China and India could face worsening water shortages because biofuels require large amounts of water, while forests in Indonesia and Malaysia could face threats from the expansion of palm oil plantations.
. . India is facing criticism that its plans to plant 30 million acres of jatropha trees by 2012 for biofuel could force communities from their land and worsen deforestation. There are also concerns that it will be unable to find the 100 million acres of vacant land it needs to grow the shrub-like plants.

Jan 22, 08: The European Union's plan for tackling climate change calls for imposing emissions cuts on member states, building more windmills and making it costlier for major polluters, according to documents to be unveiled.
. . The proposals by the European Commission, the bloc's administrative body, are intended to get emissions of CO2 and other gases linked to global warming down a fifth by 2020 —-as pledged by leaders of the 27 EU nations last year.
. . Draft documents describe Europe and the rest of the world as being at a crossroads in dealing with global warming. The documents call for "decisive and immediate action" in developing homegrown renewable power sources. But EU officials acknowledge their approach will carry a high cost —-at least 0.5% of the bloc's gross domestic product, some $80 billion a year-— and likely see electricity prices go up.
. . The documents insist the spending envisioned by the plan would be balanced by a $72 billion reduction in the EU's bill for oil and natural gas imports. They also say forcing cuts in emissions and energy use would give Europe a boost in the race to produce energy-efficient goods and renewable power technology for export.
. . Many European countries would have to rapidly ramp up their amount of wind, solar or hydro power to hit new binding targets. Britain, which generated 1.3% of its energy from renewable sources in 2005, is expected to be ordered to increase that to 15%. Hydropower-rich Sweden, meanwhile, already is close to 40%, while Denmark's wind farms provided 17% of its energy.

Jan 22, 08: Details of a feasibility study into the Severn Barrage (dam), a tidal power plan that could provide about 5% of UK electricity, have been announced. The government said the scale of the project and the impact it could have on securing energy supplies and tackling climate change was "breathtaking". The study will also look at lagoons, and the social, environmental and economic impacts of all the proposals. "The need to take radical steps to tackle climate change is now beyond doubt. Tough choices need to be made. We must consider all our low CO2 energy options."
. . The barrage could extend from the South Wales coast to Weston-super-Mare. It would harness the power of this estuary using a hydro-electric dam, but filled by the incoming tide rather than by water flowing downstream.
. . Environmental groups have warned that a barrage could affect wildlife. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said it would put thousands of birds, salmon and other fish at risk. The estuary contains mudflats, saltmarshes, rocky islands and food that support some 65,000 birds in winter.

Jan 21, 08: The EU should abandon its biofuels targets because they are damaging the environment, a committee of MPs says. The Environmental Audit Committee says biofuels are ineffective at cutting greenhouse gases and can be expensive. It also says problematic emissions from cars can be cut more cheaply and with lower environmental risk.
. . In a draft, the EU admits that the current target of 5.75% biofuels on the roads by 2010 is unlikely to be achieved. But it maintains its target of 10% road biofuel by 2020. It states that in the future, biofuels should not be grown on forest land, wetland --including peat-- or permanent grassland, a move that will please critics. Committee chairman Tim Yeo said: "Biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road transport --but at present most biofuels have a detrimental impact on the environment overall." The report is strongly backed by the RSPB which calls current biofuels targets "farcical".

Jan 21, 08: The government of Abu Dhabi has announced a $15bn (Ł7.5bn) initiative to develop clean energy technologies. The Gulf state describes the five-year initiative as "the most ambitious sustainability project ever launched by a government". Components will include the world's largest hydrogen power plant. Hydrogen will be manufactured from natural gas by reactions involving steam, producing a mixture of hydrogen and CO2.
. . The CO2 can be pumped underground, either simply to store it away permanently or as a way of extracting more oil from existing wells, using the high-pressure gas to force more of the black gold to the surface.
. . Currently, most companies make hydrogen by combining methane with water and heating up the mix to 815 degrees C. That takes a lot of energy, but it also produces 9.3 kilograms of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen. Whoops. Hence, critics like Joseph Romm assert that hydrogen cars actually pollute more than regular cars.
. . The government has also announced plans for a "sustainable city", housing about 50,000 people, that will produce no greenhouse gases and contain no cars.

Jan 21, 08: Oil at more than $90 a barrel is concentrating minds in the shipping industry. Higher fuel costs and mounting pressure to curb emissions are leading modern merchant fleets to rediscover the ancient power of the sail.
. . The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela today, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20%, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill. The 10,000-ton 'MS Beluga SkySails' --will use a computer-guided kite to harness powerful ocean winds far above the surface.
. . Shipping companies seeking immediate answers to soaring fuel prices and the need to cut emissions are, simply, slowing down.
. . The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90% of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tons of CO2 each year. That's about 5% of the world's total. Also, their fuel costs rose by as much as 70% last year. "Slowing down by 10% can lead to a 25% reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down."
. . In Hamburg, the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company is not waiting for 2012. It reacted to rising fuel prices by cutting the throttle on its 140 container ships traveling the world's oceans, ordering its captains to slow down.
. . The company, in the second half of last year, reduced the standard speed of its ships to 20 knots from 23-1/2 knots, and said it saved a "substantial amount" of fuel. "We calculated that 5 knots slower saves up to 50% in fuel." Slowing down has not involved a decrease in capacity for the company. For container ships carrying mainly consumer goods from Hamburg to ports in the Far East, the round-trip at 20 knots now takes 63 days instead of 56, but to make up for this it added a vessel to the route to bring the total to nine.
. . Hapag-Lloyd board member Adolf Adrion told a news conference in London that speeds are now being cut further, to 16 knots from 20, for journeys across the Atlantic. A fuel bill for a big container ship over a 25-year lifespan adds up to nearly $900 million."
. . The trend is also catching on among ferry services. Norway's Color Line ferry between Oslo and Baltic destinations said in early January it would add 30 minutes to the 20-hour trip from Oslo to Kiel.
. . If the maiden voyage is a success, inventor and chief executive Wrage hopes to double the size of its kites to 320 square meters, and expand them again to 600 square meters in 2009. The company hopes to fit 1,500 ships by 2015.
. . He also saw scope for designers to create slower speed engines with better fuel efficiency rather than just having ship owners operate fast-propulsion engines at reduced speeds.

Jan 21, 08: The world's largest energy consumer, the US, called for a global push for increased energy efficiency to help meet rising demand and alleviate the impact of high prices on economic growth. The U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels per day of oil, around a quarter of the world's supply. Record oil prices have cooled U.S. appetite for gas guzzling cars and, along with increasing environmental concerns, leant weight to calls for more sparing use of energy.
. . The country last month passed a bill requiring increased fuel efficiency in vehicles for the first time in over 30 years. "We must promote increased energy efficiency", U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said in a speech to a green energy conference. "The biggest source of immediately available 'new' energy is the energy that we waste every day."

Jan 21, 08: The Renault-Nissan alliance signed a deal to begin mass producing electric cars as part of an Israeli-led project to develop alternative energy sources and slash oil dependency.

Jan 18, 08: The European Union is expected to tell the UK that 15% of energy needs must be met from renewable sources by 2020. The figure, currently about 2%, will include all energy used for heating and cooling buildings. The EU, which is trying to create a low-CO2 economy in Europe, will announce its decision next week.
. . As current heating and cooling technologies are unproven on a mass scale, electricity generation is expected to meet much of the target --primarily through offshore wind, however the government is also looking favorably on the prospect of a tidal barrage across the Severn.
. . It is expected that the UK will have to obtain between 30% and 40% of its electricity from wind, wave and solar sources by 2020 --up from the current level of 5%. "The target is do-able but only if we really pull out all the stops", observed Gordon Edge, head of offshore energy at the British Wind Energy Association. He said there was still a problem with "interconnectors", cables that transport the electricity from the offshore wind farms to the National Grid.

Jan 18, 08: According to the American Wind Energy Association, South Dakota ranks fourth in the nation with the greatest wind potential. However, South Dakota's installed wind power capacity is low compared with other states.
. . A new project is located in Roberts, Marshall and Day counties. Company officials said the project has the potential to produce more than 750 megawatts of wind energy spread over 700 square miles of agricultural land. Ultimately, at full completion, Dakota Wind's project could produce enough electricity to power more than 200,000 homes and displace almost 2,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Jan 17, 08: Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google Inc (GOOG.O), said it is expanding beyond funding for alternative energy to focus on projects in health and combating poverty and climate change.
. . Google.org is working with partners in five fields who will get $25 million in new grants and investments and help from Google employees. Three of the projects are new, including one that will use of information technology to "predict and prevent" ecological, health or social crises in vulnerable regions. Its initial focus will be on Southeast Asia and tropical Africa.
. . InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) will receive $5 million to strengthen early warning systems in Southeast Asia and build local capacity to prevent a new pandemic on the scale of SARS or a bird flu epidemic.
. . These projects join two Google.org efforts begun last year. RechargeIT, launched in June, will provide $500,000 to $2 million in funding to for-profit projects to support widespread commercialization of plug-in electric hybrid vehicles.
. . In November, it launched Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal to support potential breakthroughs in geothermal, solar thermal power, wind power and other alternative energy technology. It pledged $10 million to eSolar, the Pasadena, California-based developer of a utility-scale solar thermal generator that can replace a traditional power plant boiler.

Jan 16, 08: This year, CAFE and NASA are sponsoring the 2008 General Aviation Technology Challenge, a competition to press forward advances in aircraft design with the lure of $300,000 in prize purse money put up by NASA.
. . Prizes will be awarded for noise reduction, speed, safety, and tellingly, for the first time, a "Green Prize" for transportation: specifically, the number of miles per gallon achieved in an aircraft.

Side-by-side refrigerator/freezers use roughly 7-13% more energy than similarly sized top-freezer models.
. . Anti-sweat heaters boost consumption by 5 to 10%.
. . Automatic ice-makers typically increase energy use by 14 to 20% and increase the price of a refrigerator by about $75.

A Consumer Reports test of a 19 cubic foot Sun Frost model indicated savings of 14 to 40% compared to mass-produced refrigerators. Sun Frost's higher efficiency is achieved with thicker insulation and two efficient top-mounted compressors. The thick (CFC-containing) insulated walls and door take up more space in your kitchen that standard refrigerators and, because the company custom makes each fridge, their price tag is high ($2,000 and up for standard models). One bonus of the Sun Frost is that they maintain a high humidity so that vegetables will stay fresh longer.
. . Sun Frosts are most popular for homes with independent electric systems because they can be built to run on 12 or 24 volt systems and the high cost of photovoltaic (solar) panels justifies the investment in this electricity-saving refrigerator. Sun Frost refrigerators are manufactured with manual defrost in sizes ranging from 4 to 19 cubic feet.
. . Whirlpool has also begun selling other models and sizes of CFC-free refrigerators, and the race for efficiency continues. Manufacturers' innovations, such as vacuum insulating panels, duel evaporators, and new compressors now contribute another 10-30% in energy savings.
. . Manual defrost freezers consume 35-40% less electricity than comparable automatic-defrost models. They'll cost you less to run, and do a better job of storing food, since auto-defrosters remove moisture and can dehydrate food, causing freezer burn.
. . Chest (top-loading) freezers are 9-22% more efficient than upright (front-loading) models because they are better insulated and less warm air enters the freezer compartment when the door is opened.

Jan 15, 08: Methane Hydrates: In marine settings, fine-grained shale and clay result in widely disseminated hydrates. The sandy soil below Arctic permafrost, on the other hand, tends to have concentrated bands located in areas that overlap with existing oil and gas infrastructure. "Production will happen first where it is most convenient", says Scott Wilson, a petroleum engineer in Denver.
. . Two main extraction methods have been successfully tested at an experimental site on Canada's Mackenzie Delta. The first, called depressurization, involves drilling a hole into the hydrate layer to draw down the pressure, causing hydrates to dissociate and gas to flow up the pipe. Thermal injection, the second technique, destabilizes hydrates by pumping hot water into the deposit. Because depressurization requires less energy, Wilson calls it the "lowest-hanging fruit."
. . A third method appears promising, too, but has so far only been tested in a lab. Injecting CO2 into a hydrate formation displaces methane, and has the added benefit of locking away an abundant greenhouse gas.
. . According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 100,000 to 300 million trillion cu. ft. (tcf) of methane exists globally in hydrate form --most of it in the ocean floor. "There's more energy potential locked up in methane hydrate formations across the world than in all other fossil energy resources combined", says Brad Tomer, director of the Department of Energy's Strategic Center for Natural Gas and Oil.
. . Up to 200,000 tcf of methane is in hydrates in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Two Rhode Island-size areas in the Blake Ridge, east of the Carolinas, contain a total of more than 2012 tcf --110 times the country's annual natural gas consumption. Substantial new deposits are still being found, including one in California's Santa Monica Basin that was announced in December.
. . Hydrates form and stabilize in a very specific zone of high pressure and low temperature, where water solidifies around gas molecules to form a crystalline structure.

The average U.S. household has 45 light bulbs —-replacing that number of 75-watt incandescent bulbs with CFLs would save $180 per year.

Jan 15, 08: Researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.
. . The increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium --which holds the charge-- that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life.
. . Silicon anodes have the "the highest theoretical charge capacity" according to Cui's paper, but they expand when charging and shrink during use: a cycle that causes the silicon to be pulverized, degrading the performance of the battery. For 30 years, this dead end stumped researchers, who poured their battery life-extending energy into improving graphite-based anodes.
. . They overcame it by constructing a new type of silicon nanowire anode. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture.

Jan 15, 08: Illinois alone has more energy than Saudi Arabia, but turning coal into fuel for consumers has a big catch.

Jan 15, 08: A single aluminum smelter near Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, gobbles four times as much power as the entire rest of Mozambique. On average, the World Bank says, fewer than one in four sub-Saharan Africans are hooked to national electricity grids. Moreover, some grids are so poorly maintained that electricity suppliers get paid for as little as 60% of the power they generate. The rest is either stolen or lost in ill-maintained networks.
. . Yet South Africa’s woes pale beside those of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Only 19 of 79 power plants work, the government said in April. Daily electricity output has plunged 60% from its peak, and blackouts cost the economy $1 billion a year
. . In Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and parts of West Africa, drought has shrunk rivers and slashed the generating capacity of hydroelectric dams. Drought in Ghana, for example, has crippled gold and aluminum production
. . Uganda’s gas stations are now short of diesel for vehicles —-in part, paradoxically, because power shortages are shutting down a pipeline from Kenya. News reports say the nation has spent enough on diesel-fueled power generation to build two hydroelectric dams.
. . In Zambia, barely 20% of households are wired for power —-only 3% in rural areas-— but the Zambia Electricity Supply Company, known as Zesco, is signing up 10,000 new customers a year. Zambia’s plan, like the plans of dozens of other nations, is to build its way out of the power crunch. Zesco plans $1.2 billion in generating upgrades and new capacity, financed mostly by China and India. South Africa plans more than $20 billion in upgrades; Congo is contemplating a hydroelectric station that by itself would increase capacity outside South Africa by 50 to 75%. The World Bank says its financing of power projects in sub-Saharan Africa is ballooning, from $250 million five years ago to $660 million last year to $1 billion in 2007.
. . There is an alternative: saving energy. Namibia plans a wind farm on its southern coast, while in South Africa, Eskom has handed out five million fluorescent bulbs and 140,000 insulating blankets for water heaters, and has paid industrial customers to switch off equipment during periods of high demand.

Jan 14, 08: Subaru dropped a D-bomb, announcing a diesel version of its trusty old four-cylinder boxer engine that will go on sale in Europe later this year. Of far more interest to us is the diesel and hybrid ForTwos that made a mad-dash from Los Angeles to Detroit for the show. Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetesche says the hybrid got 49 mpg and the diesel got 59.8. Smart says there's "no announcement" on whether either car is headed to the U.S.
. . We're on a path to surpass 1 billion cars by 2020.
. . The Indian $2,500 Nano is a vest-pocket four-seater has a diesel engine barely bigger than those powering some American lawn mowers.

Jan 14, 08: A group of technology companies is offering to share some of its patents to encourage the development of environmentally friendly technologies.
. . IBM, Nokia, Sony and bulk-mailing equipment manufacturer Pitney-Bowes have together donated patents to the Eco-patent Commons, an organization set up to share the patents for technology with environmental benefits. Any organization willing to donate a patent for environmentally friendly technology to the commons can join the group. The patents are made available for use by members and nonmembers alike.
. . So far, patents pledged to the commons cover fields such as waste water treatment, air purification, cell-phone recycling and reducing printer ink consumption. IBM has pledged 27 patents, Pitney Bowes two, and Nokia and Sony one each.

Jan 14, 08: Biofuels may play a role in curbing climate change, says Britain's Royal Society, but may create environmental problems unless implemented with care.
. . In a new report, the Society suggests current EU and UK policies are not guaranteed to reduce emissions. It advocates more research into all aspects of biofuel production and use. "But it would be disastrous if biofuel production made further inroads into biological diversity and natural ecosystems. "We must not create new environmental or social problems in our efforts to deal with climate change." But, he said, there was a need to keep problems in perspective, particularly the idea that rainforest-destroying palm oil plantations were being established all over southeast Asia simply to provide biodiesel. "Only about 0.7% of palm oil used in the EU is used for biofuel production", he said.

Jan 13, 08: There won't be many desktop computers qualifying for the Energy Star rating —-their power consumption is growing, with many now hitting 400 watts. Marvell Technology Group Ltd. will be demonstrating chips for power adapters that it says can curb that trend, by convert alternating current into the direct current in a more efficient way, potentially power consumption by half.
. . The Consumer Electronics Association, the organization that also puts on CES, estimated last year that consumer electronics, including home computers, consume 11% of residential electricity in the U.S., more than doubling its share in 10 years.
. . Television sets are another big power draw, and will become more so as analog TVs are replaced with high-definition sets. Though more energy efficient per inch of screen size, their larger size more than makes up for any gain in efficiency. Plasma sets in particular easily draw 400 watts, or as much as four older tube-type TVs.
. . A much more power-efficient screen technology was on display at CES: Samsung Electronics Co. will be bringing a 31-inch TV made of organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs. For now, however, the technology is much too expensive for the mass market, and there's no word on when or if Samsung plans to sell the screen. Sony has announced an 11-inch OLED display for $1,700.
. . Cell phones, while hardly power-hungry, are quite wasteful: Nokia says two-thirds of the energy a charger uses is drawn when the connected phone is already fully charged. GreenPlug of San Ramon, Calif., will be previewing a solution to that problem, a universal power adapter that "talks" to gadgets to determine their energy need. Apart from cutting wasted electricity, GreenPlug aims to eliminate the need for a different adapter for every phone, MP3 player, and other portable gadget.

Jan 12, 08: China has 11 nuclear plants and plans to bring more than 30 others online by 2020. And a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report projects that it may need to add as many as 200 reactors by 2050.
. . Of the more than 100 nuclear reactors now being built, planned or on order, about half are in China, India and other developing nations. Argentina, Brazil and South Africa plan to expand existing programs; and Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt and Turkey are among the countries considering building their first reactors.
. . The concerns are hardly limited to developing countries. Japan's nuclear power industry has yet to recover from revelations five years ago of dozens of cases of false reporting on the inspections of nuclear reactor cracks.
. . The Swedish operators of a German reactor came under fire last summer for delays in informing the public about a fire at the plant. And a potentially disastrous partial breakdown of a Bulgarian nuclear plant's emergency shutdown mechanism in 2006 went unreported for two months until whistle-blowers made it public.

Jan 12, 08: Chinese state media reported that nearly 3,800 people died in mine accidents last year. While that is about 20% less than in 2006, it still leaves China's mines the world's deadliest. A Finnish study published in 2005 said India's annual industrial fatality rate is 11.4 people per 100,000 workers and the accident rate 8,700 per 100,000 workers.

Jan 11, 08: A new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK has been given formal backing by the government. Business Secretary John Hutton told MPs they would give a "safe and affordable" way of securing the UK's future energy supplies while fighting climate change. He said any plants would be built at or near existing reactors by private firms and said he hoped the first one would be completed "well before 2020".
. . The government will not be building any reactors itself --but it says it will take steps, such as streamlining the planning process and identifying likely sites, to encourage private operators to build them. Mr Hutton conceded that no nuclear plant had been built anywhere in the world without public money --but he insisted there would be no subsidies from the UK government.
. . Critics say new reactors will be expensive, dirty and dangerous. Steve Webb, for the Liberal Democrats, attacked the decision, warning the country faced being locked into a technology "for the best part of a century, when other technologies like CO2 capture and storage, like renewables, are evolving practically every day". He added: "I can't decide whether new nuclear is a white elephant or a red herring. But very clearly what it isn't is the answer to the energy problems we face today."

Jan 9, 08: New research shows that prairie grasses grown using only moderate amounts of fertilizer on marginal land can produce significant amounts of ethanol. In the five-year study of switch grass, researcher Ken Vogel said he estimates that an acre would produce an average of 300 gallons of ethanol. An acre of corn grown in those same states produces about 350 gallons of ethanol on average. Plus, some of the byproducts created in the process can be burned to generate electricity. Sorum said the key will be developing an economic way to break down the cell walls of cellulose-based fuel sources.
. . The energy bill will emphasize cellulosic ethanol, made from such feedstock as switch grass and wood chips, after 2015 when about two-thirds of the nation's ethanol is supposed to come from such non-corn sources.
. . Last year, the Department of Energy announced plans to invest $385 million in six ethanol refineries across the country to jump-start ethanol production from cellulose-based sources, a process that has not yet been proven commercially viable.

Jan 9, 08: Indian automakers are designing a $2,500 car, and Chinese half-price Smart knockoffs are showing up in Italy, some Europeans hoped Smart would be more in reach of the ordinary pocketbook. The new small Euro Fiat city model, for example, is about $12,000. US Smarts will go from $11,590 for the basic "fortwo", to $16,590 for a deluxe fortwo convertible.

Jan 8, 08: Producing biofuels from a fast-growing grass delivers vast savings of CO2 emissions compared with petrol, a large-scale study has suggested. A team of US researchers also found that switchgrass-derived ethanol produced 540% more energy than was required to manufacture the fuel. One acre (0.4 hectares) of the grassland could, on average, deliver 320 barrels of bioethanol, they added.
. . The team also calculated that the production and consumption of switchgrass-derived ethanol cut CO2 emissions by about 94% when compared with an equivalent volume of gas. Burning biofuels releases CO2, but growing the plants absorbs a comparable amount of the gas from the atmosphere.
. . In order to maximize the CO2 reductions, he said: "A biorefinery will have a feedstock supply radius of about 25 to 50 miles, so the feedstock of any biorefinery needs to be localized."

Jan 8, 08: It is estimated that oil sands —-or bituminous sands-— represent 2/3 of the world’s oil reserves. Still, it’s expensive and difficult to extract oil from these sands. Even with today’s crude oil prices, the industry is still looking for cheaper ways to produce energy from the so-called ‘tar’ sands. Now, according to the U of Calgary, an international team of researchers has found a way for using microbes to extract methane from oil sands. To get heavy oil out, you've basically got to melt it', says Larter. This means using energy to produce steam to extract the gunk, he says. 'It's like turning gold into lead.' Only 17% of the oil can usually be recovered. Methane gas, on the other hand, simply rises to the surface. But it has been unclear how methane is produced by microbes in heavy-oil fields.
. . With its enormous reserves, Canada could become one of the major oil producer in the 21st century. Field tests of this new technology should start in 2009. The largest heavy oil reserves are located in the Canada province of Alberta.

Jan 5, 08: Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle CO2 and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.
. . The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels like methanol or gasoline. Researchers said the technology already works and could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, although large-scale implementation could be a decade or more away.
. . S2P uses a solar reactor called the Counter-Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator, or CR5, to divide CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen. "It's a heat engine", Stechel said. "But instead of doing mechanical work, it does chemical work."
. . The prototype will be about the size and shape of a beer keg. It will contain 14 cobalt ferrite rings, each about one foot in diameter and turning at one revolution per minute. An 88-square meter solar furnace will blast sunlight into the unit, heating the rings to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, cobalt ferrite releases oxygen. When the rings cool to about 2,000 degrees, they're exposed to CO2.
. . Since the cobalt ferrite is now missing oxygen, it snatches some from the CO2, leaving behind just carbon monoxide --a building block for making hydrocarbons-- that can then be used to make methanol or gasoline. And with the cobalt ferrite restored to its original state, the device is ready for another cycle. Fuels like methanol and gasoline are combinations of hydrogen and carbon that are relatively easy to synthesize, Stechel said. Methanol is the easiest, and that's where they will start, but gasoline could also be made.
. . The technology could be 15 to 20 years from viability on an industrial scale. The Sandia team originally developed the CR5 to generate hydrogen for use in fuel cells. If the device's rings are exposed to steam instead of CO2, they generate hydrogen. But the scientists switched to carbon monoxide, so the fuels they produce would be compatible with existing infrastructure.
. . The Sandia team envisions a day when CR5s are installed in large numbers at coal-fired power plants. Each of them could reclaim 45 pounds of CO2 from the air daily and produce enough carbon monoxide to make 2.5 gallons of fuel.

Jan 3, 08: Councillors in Kent have voted in favor of building a coal-fired power station, the UK's first for 24 years. But opponents say the move would be a serious setback to efforts to cut the UK's carbon emissions, with Greenpeace labelling it "dinosaur technology". The final decision on the plan will now be made by the government. The last coal-fired plant to open in the UK was built in Northern Ireland 24 years ago.
. . E.ON says it would demolish an existing power station at the Kingsnorth site and replace it with one that is 20% cleaner. Paul Golby, chief executive, said the company had made a public commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by half by 2030. He added that the new power station would hopefully become the UK's first clean carbon demonstration plant, with carbon captured from it and stored in depleted oil fields under the North Sea.

Jan 2, 08: There's a solar technology manufacturing facility being built in Las Vegas by Australian company Ausra. Now, it turns out that nearby Nellis Air Force Base has just completed the largest solar photovoltaic installation in the US.
. . The array, which includes more than 72,000 solar panels, is supposed to provide Nellis with an estimated 30 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That’s roughly 25% of the electricity needed by the base, where about 12,000 people live. The installation was started in April, but apparently has been in the works on paper for about three years. It covers 140 acres and was built by the Air Force along with Sunpower Corp., Nevada Power Co. and MM Renewable Ventures.
. . Other stats worth parroting: The plant is supposed to save the Air Force about $1 million in utility costs per year and the estimated reduction in CO2 emissions is about 24,000 tons.

Jan 2, 08: Americans want our gasoline, or ethanol. That means Midwestern farmers are raising the most corn in sixty years. And that, unnaturally, means more fertilizer is being used. That means more nitrogen-rich run-off from the corn fields. That run-off goes into the Mississippi and thence into the Gulf of Mexico. There that fertilizer is destroying all the life in a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
. . No matter how big the profits, no matter how glowing the political slogans, we humans cannot act on the planet without consequences. John Muir’s Law is true: everything on Earth is connected.

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