| Green Concrete | Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based startup Novacem, is trying to eliminate gren-house gas emissions with a cement that absorbs more carbon dioxide than is released during its manufacture. It locks away as much as 100 kilograms of the greenhouse gas per ton. Read More |
| CO2 to BioFuel, Bypassing Middleman |
Biofuels ultimately come from carbon dioxide and water, so why persist in making them from biomass--corn or switchgrass or algae? Read More |
| Light-Trapping Photovoltaics | In 1995, Kylie Catchpole decided to take a risk on a field that was nearly moribund: photovoltaics. "There was a sense that I might have difficulty ever being employed," she recalls. But her gamble paid off. In 2006 Catchpole, then a postdoc, discovered something that opened the door to making thin-film solar cells significantly more efficient at converting light into electricity. It's an advance that could help make solar power more competitive with fossil fuels. Read More |
| Bacteria Make Diesel from Biomass |
The bacteria, developed by South San Francisco company LS9 in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, make the necessary enzymes for every step along the synthesis pathway and can convert biomass into fuel without the need for additional processing. Read More |
| Flexible Sheets Capture Energy from Movement | Researchers at Princeton University have created a flexible material that harvests record amounts of energy when stressed. The researchers say the material could be incorporated into the soles of shoes to power portable electronics, or even placed on a heart patient's lungs to recharge a pacemaker as he breathes. Read More |
| Carbon Capture with Nanotubes | Membranes made with carbon nanotubes could reduce the amount of energy needed to capture carbon-dioxide emissions from smokestacks, and therefore cut costs, according to a company that will receive $1 million from the new advanced-research projects agency for energy, Arpa-e, to develop the technology. Read More |
| Simple Elixir Called "Miracle Liquid" | Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. U.S. regulators have approved it. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job. Read More |
| Electric Cars to All | An overarching plan to replace the world's gas cars with electric ones--really, really quickly. The nutty thing is, it just might work; the streetside charging outlets for these cars are already under construction in six countries and two U.S. states. (You can watch the story here.) |
| Not Just a Load of Manure |
Farmers Turning to Alernative Sources of Power Fresno Bee Nov. 6th 2008 - With energy prices high and crop prices sluggish, farmers are turning to solar power, converting animal waste to natural gas and planting exotic trees to help them survive in a tough economy.The article looks at a dairy farmer and entrepreneur who spoke this week at the first Farming Clean Energy Conference. David Albers is president of a company that builds facilities to extract methane gas from cow manure. Unlike other companies that use the gas to power farm buildings, Albers’ company pumps it into a pipeline to be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. He and participating dairies benefit by getting paid for the gas while also managing their cow waste in a more environmentally friendly way. He says he has contracts or letters of intent with 100 dairies to join the project. |
| New Energy Source | BlackLight Power (BLP) Inc. today announced the successful independent replication and validation of its 1,000 watt and 50,000 watt reactors based on its proprietary new clean energy technology. This follows BLP's May announcement that it had successfully tested a new non-polluting energy source. Learn More |
| Electric Scooters for Green Commuters | The Vectrix is larger than traditional scooters and easily carries its driver and a passenger - and has a roomy compartment to stash groceries or a briefcase. Read All About It |
| Waste to Oil -a Modern Marvel | Waste-to-oil technology will be featured as one of the country’s newest Modern Marvels in the History Channel’s hit cable series, which showcases America’s passion for ingenuity and innovation. Modern Marvels taped the technology in action at CWT’s Carthage, Missouri, biorefinery this week. The segment is scheduled to be broadcast later this year. Learn More |
| Compressed Air Vehicle for the U.S. | The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way. Read More |
| Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae | What's it all about? Algae. As more evidence comes out daily of the ties between the leaders of petroleum producing countries and terrorists (not to mention the human rights abuses in their own countries), the incentive for finding an alternative to petroleum rises higher and higher. |
| Fuel from Thin Air | Using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically “reenergize” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. Read more |
| Almost Free Hydrogen | Scientists have figured out a metohd for producing hydrogen that requires less energy to make than the output it creates. This has been one of the great obstacles to hydrogen adaptation. Read more |
| Kite Wind | Researchers in Italy have high hopes for a new wind-power generator that resembles a backyard drying rack on steroids. Despite its appearance, the Kite Wind Generator, or KiteGen for short, could produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant............. Read more |
| Geothermal Gets Loopy | A Geothermal Loop System sits securely in the earth underneath your home. It's zig-zag grid of underground pipe acts like a giant, low-energy heating & cooling machine. The system transfers air, water, or coolant through hundreds of feet of underground plumbing. After passing that media through the plumbing, the air, water, or coolant reenters your building, passing over your HVAC's heating & cooling coils and saving you about 80% on your #1 energy expense..........Read More |
| New Development in Hydrogen Fuel Research | Hydrogen-powered cars that do not pollute the environment are a step closer thanks to a new discovery which promises to solve the main problem holding back the technology. Invention could solve “bottleneck” in developing pollution-free cars.......Read More |
| Solar Lighting | Use sunlight to illuminate your rooms. No skylight necessary....Read More |