NewWays for Environmental and Social Change

I hate my lawn. I’ve seriously considered ripping the whole thing out to expand my veggie garden. I hate it for a couple of reasons. First, it requires water, a lot of it, to keep it green. But in California where I haven’t seen rain since February, that’s not exactly practical…or cheap. And secondly, it [...]

The first large-scale ocean-based wind power project is set for beginning research.
StatoilHydro announced plans to test offshore wind turbines, starting with a 2.3-megawatt turbine measuring 65 meters high, buoyed and tied down by three anchors. While not the only ocean-bound wind turbine project in the works, this new project, called Hywind, will launch in 2009 [...]

Take a little bit of soil, add some microbes, a little bit of human ingenuity and you’ll find yourself with the most unlikely source of power ever - dirt! Building off of this simple concept, a team from Harvard led by Hugo Van Vuuren have just been named amongst the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa 2008 Development Competition. Their idea is to develop a series of dirt based fuel cells that are capable of lighting high efficiency LED lamps and their goal is to light up Africa.

If you’ve ever been on a road trip, you’ve probably seen this sight at a rest stop: one, or many big rig trucks, just…idling. Not going anywhere. What is this, like a computer on “sleep,” ready to go? No. The answer may surprise you. At least in the US, truck drivers are required to rest 10 hours for every 11 driven.

It’s been 40 years since Mr. McGuire pulled Benjamin Braddock withdrawal apart from his degree and said: “I just want to say one word to you. … Just one word are you listening? Plastics …. There is a great future in
plastics. ”

In our recent profile of ways to turn all of the world’s billions of tons of excess CO2 into useful products, we mentioned a little company called Carbon Sciences. The company is as small as they come…one employee. And yet they have a demonstrated (though not patented) technology that allows them to turn CO2 into useful (and in some cases) very valuable commercial products.

The higher up in the air you go, the faster wind travels - so naturally the further from the ground a wind-turbines gets, the more efficient it can be. Thats why the idea of a flying wind-turbine is a such a win-win (or win-wind) proposition. Combining wind power with floating blimps, Selsam has been hard at work expanding the horizons of alternative energy with a revolutionary new breed of SuperTurbines that promise to take wind power to new heights.

For a year, I’ve been trying to convince Minnesota’s affordable home builders concerned about a slowing market what Greg Pinn, a San Jose home-builder, already knows. “When a buyer has a choice between a home that isn’t energy-efficient and…one that [is], the choice will be very easy.”

Editor’s note: We’re pleased to welcome Max Gladwell, of MaxGladwell.com, as a regular guest writer on sustainablog. Max Gladwell covers the nexus of social media and green living. We feel that these two trends and technological developments hold tremendous promise for improving quality of life for everyone on the planet.
If you’re reading this blog, then [...]

In 2005, Popular Mechanics gave Konarka Technologies an award for being one of the years top innovators. Konarka Technologies was honored by PM for its flexible solar film called Power Plastic. At that time they were manufacturing Power Plastic through proprietary means of printing. In March 2008 though they announced that they have successfully printed [...]

This morning, the E-Fuel Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup, introduced the first ethanol refinery system designed for home use. The Micro Fueler, a backyard fueling station, can create pure E100 ethanol from sugar feed stock. “It’s third-grade science,” says Thomas Quinn, founder and CEO of E-Fuel. “You just mix together water, sugar and yeast, and in a few hours, you start getting ethanol.” The $9995 Micro Fueler has a can fill its own 35-gallon tank in about a week by fermenting the sugar, water and yeast internally, then separating out the water through a membrane filter.

VW’s ultra-low emission Jetta BlueTDI will be coming to the US mid-summer, according to an announcement made late last month at the Vienna Motor Symposium.

This newer version of the Jetta will meet the strictest emissions standards in the world—BIN5/LEV2—which are enforced by 5 US states: California, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Vermont. BIN5/LEV2 standards severely cap nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions (0.05 g/mile), one of the two tailpipe pollutants that have given diesels a bad rap (that and particulate matter).

Did you know that there’s 250 million people around the world who are hearing-impaired? Even worse, two-thirds of them live in the developing world. Odds are, these people don’t have the type of moneyneeded to buy conventional hearing aids, primarily because their expensive batteries last only about a week. What if you could design anaffordable hearing aid for the world’s poor?

Salazar Packaging, a distributor of packaging materials and equipment with a focus on sustainable packaging, recently launched its own brand of corrugated boxes made from 100% Post-consumer recycled content.  The new boxes are available in standard and custom sizes offering a cost effective option for businesses looking for 100% post consumer recycled corrugated boxes.
via sustainableisgood
“We [...]

It’s pretty well known that electrical power is at the core of Green Living. It breathes life into our entertainment, hobbies, our work and probably a lot of other stuff too. But getting a good grasp on how much power various devices consume can be somewhat difficult to reckon.The Kill-A-Watt allows [...]

This striking modern structure cuts a profile every bit as sleek as it is streamlined for efficiency. It is composed of four single family units joined by a flowing fusion of glass and “smog-eating” photo-catalytic concrete, creating a series of separate yet structurally connected spaces. Italian architects Iosa Ghini Associati designed the residence to integrate [...]

Dow and Global Solar Energy have teamed up to take on the Department of Energy’s “Solar America Initiative (SAI)” to create building-integrated solar. The purpose of the SAI is basically to create an incentive for
the development of cheap, simple building-integrated photovoltaic systems. Dow Building Solutions  wants to take Global Solar Energy’s panels and, basically, turn [...]

Utility-scale, thin-film solar manufacturer OptiSolar just released plans to create the largest solar photovoltaic farm in the world. The farm would be built in San Luis Obispo County, California, and would, at peak production, produce about 500 MW of solar power. This is roughly the same amount as a coal-fired power plant, enough to power [...]

THINNER IS BETTER?:
Thin-film photovoltaic cells, like those in the array seen here in Mainbernheim, Germany, can harvest as much energy from the sun with far less semiconductor material.
COURTESY OF FIRST SOLAR

The sun blasts Earth with enough energy in one hour—4.3 x 1020 joules—to provide all of humanity’s energy needs for a year (4.1 x 1020
joules), [...]

Hymotion, a division of advanced battery maker A123Systems just emailed us to tell us that they’re finally commercializing their plug-in Prius conversion module. The Hymotion L5 battery pack can be installed into
any 2004-2008 Prius for just $10,000, giving it a fuel economy of more
than 100 miles per gallon while the charge lasts (30 to 40 [...]