Keeping it Green
What do you think will be.....
The Next Big Green Thing?
Electricity From Tinted Windows Borrowing the materials and manufacturing process of OLED displays to make a new kind of solar panel. A German startup has developed a new kind of solar panel made of small, organic molecules deposited on polyester films. The technology is similar to wha\t's used for OLED displays for phones and flat-screen TVs. More |
Renewable Power Storage Cambridge company is developing cheap batteries that can store power from wind and solar. Liquid Metal Started operating in fall 2011, and is one of several companies hoping to learn from the challenges faced by an earlier wave of clean-energy startups. Clean-energy companies have struggled in part because fossil-fuel power plants, gas-powered cars, and even conventional solar cells—are so cheap, and because utilities favor established technologies. Read more |
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In response to growing environmental and economic forces, architects, engineers, developers and owners are seeking efficient, innovative building solutions that conserve non-renewable resources. Increasingly, concrete is being recognized for its strong environmental benefits in support of creative and effective sustainable development. When considering the lifetime environmental impact of a building material—extraction, production, construction, operation, demolition and recycling— concrete is an excellent choice to meet these goals. More |
Printing Parts As We Need Them 
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Don't Be "Shocked" By Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine. However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines. Read this Discovery Channel Story and watch the video. |
An Engine To Etalim, a startup company, has developed a new type of engine that could generate electricity with the efficiency of a fuel cell, but which costs only about as much as an internal combustion engine. The engine uses thermoacoustics to achieve these efficiencies. |
Tubine-Free Wind POWER
 From the New York Times Magazine 2011 Ideas Issue Conservationists argue that wind turbines pose a risk to birds, bats and sensitive habitats like shorelines. People living close to wind farms, meanwhile, complain of constant noise and vibration. This year, engineers responded with a new way to draw electricity from the wind: oscillating wind panels. Click the icon on the left to read more and catch the video. |
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OPX Biotechnologies uses genetic engineering to speed the development of organisms that make chemicals and fuel. A startup that has successfully engineered bacteria to make common industrial chemicals is now using its technology to engineer organisms to make renewable fuel. Read More |
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Watch this Em-Tech Video of an interview with CalTech Professor Harry Atwater on making solar competitive with fossil fuels, without government subsidies. We wish those subsidies were not available to the fossil fuels industry, so the playing field would be level to begin with. |
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Companies hope to turn aging trucks, vans, and taxis into more efficient hybrids. Read More |
| "Tuneable" windows would let people adjust light and heat levels, but until now it's been hard to make them affordable. Read More |
| Nikolaos Vlasopoulos, chief scientist at London-based startup Novacem, is trying to eliminate green-house gas emissions with a cement that absorbs more CO2 than is released during its manufacture. It locks away as much as 100 kilograms of the greenhouse gas per ton Read More |
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Biofuels ultimately come from carbon dioxide and water, so why persist in making them from biomass--corn or switchgrass or algae? Read More |
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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 |
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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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
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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.) |
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Farmers Turning to Alternative 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. |
| 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 |
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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 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 |
| 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 |
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Wide Scale 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. |
| 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 |
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Scientists have figured out a method 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 |
| 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............. |
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.......... |
| 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....... |
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Use sunlight to illuminate your rooms. No skylight necessary....Read More |
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