Hasta La Gadget!

Like a lot of green technologies, one of the major issues with solar panels is that they are expensive. But a team of researchers from the University of Oxford may have stumbled upon a way to make solar cells much less expensive.

And they found the answer in a tube of toothpaste.

The team discovered that a metal oxide commonly found in toothpaste can be combined with a special dye and imprinted onto glass, making an instant solar cell. The glass can be created in a variety of colors, and the creators say that it has a great deal of potential.

“It opens up a lot of versatility and a lot of possibilities for building design,” Dr Henry Snaith told the BBC, though he admitted that it’ll take some time before the solar glass will be a commercially viable product.

“Coupled with our extremely low cost of manufacture and processing and the ongoing research effort to improve the overall performance of the device, we think it’s only a short while till our performance will be competitive.”

We just learned that the Ford Focus is going electric, and now we’re finally learning some details about the EV. Ford has revealed EcoMode, a software program that tracks driving behavior and aims to help drivers reduce fuel consumption.

The information is displayed in the instrument cluster, and the car will actually score drivers based on how well they use fuel-efficient driving techniques. These include everything from driving in the highest gear to avoiding too much idling.

“The foot of the driver has one of the biggest impacts on real-world fuel economy of a vehicle and was the starting point for the development of EcoMode,” Ford engineer Thomas Schick said in a statement. “This is a useful tool that creates awareness between personal behavior and fuel consumption and offers up hints on how to improve. Applying those hints and recommendations is all up to the driver.”

The car will also feature a feature called EcoRoute, which gives drivers the most fuel efficient route to their intended destination.

Via Autoblog Green

As part of a UAE competition, a group of designers has come up with the Lunar Cubit: a solar powered pyramid that both provides power and looks beautiful.

The Lunar Cubit won first prize in the Land Art Generator Initiative, which is a competition focused on aesthetically pleasing green energy facilities. Essentially, the design is little more than a pyramid-shaped solar plant covered in solar panels. THe nine pyramids–one large one surrounded by smaller plants–are also equipped with a series of LED light that light up the night according to the current lunar phase.

Attractive or not, the Lunar Cubit does seem a touch impractical, as one nine-pyramid set-up is only able to power around 250 homes.

Via Fast Company

A new report claims that we could dramatically decrease our energy consumption by simply being a lot more efficient.

The study, which was led by Julian Allwood from the University of Cambridge, looked at buildings and transportation and applied numerous efficiency improving techniques, including triple-glazed windows to keep the heat in, covering pans with lids while cooking, and even lowering the weight of cars to under 300 kilograms. The results showed that around 73 percent of global energy use could be eliminated simply by implementing these types of changes.

“We think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll find a good response to the threat of global warming on the supply side alone,” Allwood told New Scientist. “But if we can make a serious reduction in our demand for energy, then all the options [for changing the energy supply] look more realistic.”

Carol Browner is the director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Or, at least, she was. Yesterday White House officials announced that the country’s top green energy administrator would be leaving her post.

“Carol is confident that the mission of her office will remain critical to the president, and she is pleased with what will be in the [State of the Union address] and in the budget [next month] on clean energy,” a White House representative told Politico. “The president’s commitment to these issues will of course continue, but any transition of the office will be announced soon.”

There’s currently no word on who will replace Browner or when the position might be filled.

Browner was the first ever person to hold the postion of director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, a role she began in January 2009. Prior to that, she spent eight years as the director of the Environmental Protection Agency. She hasn’t announced where she’ll be going next.