Alternative Energy Diggs

Under the proposal, businesses would reportedly be "eligible for rebates of up to $10,000," while residents could fetch somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 to help offset the high cost of installing panels.read more | digg story

Take fossil fuels, strip out the carbon and replace it with clean-burning hydrogen.read more | digg story

Here are some predictions from Andrew Chung of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm.read more | digg story

Build your own ultra-simple electric motor with only a battery, magnet, and a bit of wire. Takes only a minute to build, but will keep you mesmerized for hours. Makes a... More» hypnotizing spiral screw movement.read more | digg story

Toshiba have stunned the world with their announcement of what's pretty much the holy grail in Lithium battery technology – the Super Charge ion Battery, which recharges up to 90% of its energy in just five minutes, and has a lifespan of over 10 years.read more | digg story

Researchers determine the metabolism by which microorganisms break down oil kilometers below the surface, and suggest that hard-to-reach fuel could be freed as methane by careful management of the existing population of organisms.read more | digg story

Oil reservoirs could have an environmental make-over with the help of bacteria.read more | digg story

Shell, is reported to have sold off most of its long-held solar businesses, affecting both US and Asian operations.read more | digg story

Accelerated Composites, a San Diego, California-area startup, has designed a two-seat, three-wheel parallel hybrid—the Aptera—to achieve up to 330 MPG and sell for less than $20,000.read more | digg story

A comprehensive research study comparing water depths to air speeds will be presented tomorrow. The details of that report demonstrate that of the three leading sites capable of supplying significant amounts of off-shore wind energy for California....read more | digg story

When I first heard of this the other day I was shocked at it's perfection in concept. In my mind this is a superb fit in our current energy quandarys. I am amazed at how perfect the timing of this venture falls into place and the effect it has had to my previous negative position of the manned space program.read more | digg story

A simple metal pad that can recharge cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, cameras, and laptops placed on top of it has just been marketed by a Delaware-based startup called WildCharge -- all without using messy, tangled cables. Wow! Just like what David Kagan wrote about in his book Sunstroke to recharge the power grid, only much smaller. read more | digg story

A green roof can be much more than just a lawn on a building, and the concept is much older than many people realize. Creative green roof designs date back to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. As impressive as those were, however, some modern examples have begun to rival them in terms of complexity, ingenuity and (of course) sustainability.read more | digg story

In an ambitious scheme than even industry proponents seem skeptical of, Britain has unveiled plans to power every home in the country via off-shore wind farms by the year 2020.read more | digg story

Not too long ago, I spoke with Valcent Products Inc. CEO and Principal scientist Glen Kertz about his company’s Vertigro bioreactor system. Judging from the first wave of Vertigro test data, the promise of sustainably producing large amounts of biofuels-ready algae oil is becoming more and more of a revolutionary reality.read more | digg story

The remote Hawaiian island of Kona will be the host for an innovative new fuel-making plant: Royal Dutch Shell plans to open a facility that makes biodiesel from algae.read more | digg story

Terren stands beside his holiday display. To make it, he prepared a wire structure outlining the tree and star. Since sparks tend to stay in one place, the tree can't be lit up with one big jolt.read more | digg story

Spain plans to give people grants to make their homes more environmentally-friendly, the prime minister said on Monday, a sign the government wants to push the green issue ahead of March's general election.read more | digg story

A report commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that renewable energy is making a difference in the fight against global warming and that we need more of it. In fact, renewable energy is the best way to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.read more | digg story

Renewable energy use is growing much faster than 10% per year throughout the world, according to a new report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). Excluding large hydropower, the global electric generating capacity of renewable energy facilities reached 237 gigawatts (GW) this year, up 15% from last year.read more | digg story

New York City has identified 132 energy efficiency projects at municipal facilities that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 34,000 tons annually.read more | digg story

Royal Dutch Shell plc announced on December 11th that it will work with HR Biopetroleum to build a pilot facility for growing algae as a source of biofuels. The facility will cultivate algae in seawater ponds, then harvest the algae and extract oil from them for conversion into fuels such as biodiesel.read more | digg story

The Hummer HX isn't going to change anything in the Hummer/environmentalist situation, but it does show that GM will rarely miss a chance to promote ethanol for its gasoline-engined vehicles. read more | digg story

So here at EcoGeek we love to talk about super-efficient green cars, even when they don't look so great. People might think you're crazy, but after you tell them how far you can go on a two-gallon tank of gas, maybe they'll start to question their own insanity. So when we came across the Twike, we got pretty excited.read more | digg story

New data from NASA's Themis satellites enabled scientists to determine the Aurora Borealis is powered by giant geomagnetic storms possessing the energy equal to a magnitude 5.5 earthquake. Could NASA harness this tremendous energy like the solar power-beaming satellites David Kagan wrote about in his book Sunstroke, and beam it down?

Litroenergy is a patent pending designed light source material that emits light for 12 plus years- without electricity or sun exposure! The light source is inexpensive, non-toxic, and will stay on for 12+ years (half-life point) continuously without having to be plugged into any power source.read more | digg story

The Brown government is set to unveil an ambitious proposal to build 7,000 new wind turbines off Britain's coast by 2020, effectively producing enough electricity - 33 gigawatts - to power all of the country's homes. John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, will make the announcement, backed by both the Labourites and Conservatives ...read more | digg story

GM is keeping the look of the production version of the Chevy Volt under wraps, but today they're letting us peek a bit as a holiday present. A teaser picture of the sleeker Volt is now available (hey, it's actually aerodynamic this time). There's not much to critique, but that won't stop people from trying.read more | digg story

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota (R) and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico (D) have joined forces to promote a “Governors Windpower Coalition” to increase the use of wind energy across the United States.read more | digg story

Atlantic Hydrogen believes its system -- called CarbonSaver -- could be installed at natural gas gateway in communities, allowing the local gas company to deliver "green" natural gas -- what the company calls hydrogen-enriched natural gas.read more | digg story

A canary-yellow two-seater sporting baby-seal-eye headlights and a bumper-to-roof glass hatch, this first production Think City will go about 112 miles (180 kilometers) on a single charge.read more | digg story

A look at the madness of biofuels, which are causing huge increases in food prices - something which much of the world can ill afford..read more | digg story

One the greatest untapped energy resources in the world is the motion of the ocean. And while floating wind turbines and wave-powered generators are being explored throughout the world, there still remains one largely untapped power source,read more | digg story

In a recent lobbying blitz, some of the U.S.'s biggest utility companies have squelched plans to further renewable energy use, because they opposed the requirement to generate clean energy, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.read more | digg story

The White House has raised several objections to the breakthrough energy bill recently negotiated by House leaders. But there’s an interesting and ironic backstory to one of these complaints.read more | digg story

A great collection of do-it-yourself clean energy projects from instructables.com, including instructions for biodiesel, solar energy and wind power.read more | digg story

Using the properties of convection, ocean water and the sun, is it possible to create energy on this scale?read more | digg story

A rear-mounted, all-electric 45 kW (61 PS) motor utilizes the world’s first high temperature fuel cell and twelve lithium-ion batteries plus there's a large solar panel on the roof that feeds up to 150 Watts of extra energy into the battery.read more | digg story

The device, which took first prize in the Environment section of the awards, would have the ability to detect toxic leaks in environments that are unsuitable for humans and could be used as an early warning system in a range of industrial applications.read more | digg story

All UK homes could be powered by offshore wind farms by 2020 as part of the fight against climate change, under plans being unveiled by John Hutton. Up to 7,000 turbines, two per mile of coast, could be installed to boost wind produced energy 60-fold by 2020. read more | digg story

Scientists from University of Delaware have developed a system that not only facilitates vehicle propulsion on electricity, but could also act as energy stores for the power grid while not being driven.read more | digg story

In 2006, Aptera first unveiled its diesel-electric hybrid concept car that the company said was able to achieve 330 mpg. Now, a year or so later, those numbers have dropped a bit, but Aptera says it is ready to release two commercial versions of this two-seater vehicle.read more | digg story

Traditional wind turbines can be unreliable sources of energy because, well, the wind blows where it will. Not the case 1,000 feet up. “At a thousand feet, there is steady wind anywhere in the world,” says Mac Brown, chief operating officer of Ottawa-based Magenn Power.read more | digg story

From a wind resource perspective, this shows some general trends in good potential wind areasread more | digg story

An array of all-electric vehicles and conversions ranged from battery-powered scooters to high-powered electric sports cars, and we felt better about the future of transportation in no time. If the manufacturers attending the symposium get a foothold in the industry, we might make it through the petroleum crunch after all.read more | digg story

Ford, BP and the State of Florida have just opened a new hydrogen station to fuel six Ford Focus cell vehicles that the State is using for different purposes.read more | digg story

The residential prototype calls for eco-friendly materials, photovoltaics on the pitched roof, and energy-saving devices and appliances. The home will be sufficiently roomy at a decent 1,400 sf big, too.read more | digg story

The potential of (first generation) biofuels in Africa. The green fuels hold great promise for the continent, but local research isn't yet in place to reap the rewards or analyse the pitfallsread more | digg story

General Electric is introducing a new Hybrid Locomotive as part of the company's ecomagination campaign. Hybrid locomotives combining diesel with electric power is nothing new. It's the ability of these engines to harness the energy typically wasted as heat during braking that represents a significant step forward.read more | digg story

Recent research findings show that mid-range ethanol blends - fuel mixtures most likely between E20 and E30 - can in some cases provide better fuel economy than regular unleaded gasoline, even in standard, non-flex-fuel vehicles.read more | digg story