Apr 04

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: hypermiling, electric FedEx, and frog foam

Posted in: electric car, electric vehicle, ElectricCar, ElectricVehicle, Environment, ev, green, solar, Today's Chili
The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.

This week Inhabitat explored the high-tech side of green building, showcasing Shigeru Ban’s new design for the Pomidou-Metz art museum, and announcing the near-completion of the greenest skyscraper in the world. We also explored green building strategies ranging from super efficient LED lamps.

We also saw several signs that the next generation of efficient vehicles is right around the corner – this week Chevrolet rolled out its first production Volt while Nissan announced the final pricing of its Leaf EV – a remarkably affordable $25,280. Even the hard working vehicles at FedEx are getting some much-needed relief as the company rolls out its first round of electric delivery vans. And if you’re concerned about green vehicles going the distance, look no further than this student-built supercar that’s able to get 2,487 MPG.

This week biotech also blew our minds as researchers unveiled plant-based molecules that could create more efficient solar cells and a new type of photovoltaic frog foam that’s capable of capturing carbon. Finally, sticks and stones may break bones, but scientists have figured out a way to grow new ones — using liposuctioned human fat.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: hypermiling, electric FedEx, and frog foam originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 27

Earth Hour starts at 8.30PM tonight, asks for sixty minutes of natural living

Posted in: Environment, green, power, Today's Chili, video

Time to don your eco-warrior armor, strap on your nature-loving helmet, and flick that big old… light switch. Yes, in honor of the WWF’s Earth Hour, countries around the globe are tonight switching off non-essential lights and appliances for sixty minutes, with highlights including Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Burj Khalifa, and the Empire State Building all going dark in the hope of helping the planet stay green. Timed for 8.30pm your local time, this unorthodox event has already commenced with Australia, New Zealand, China and others doing their bit — videos after the break — and is just now hitting Eastern European borders. So, fellow earthlings, will you be among the projected one billion souls that go au naturel for an hour tonight?

[Thanks, Pavel]

Continue reading Earth Hour starts at 8.30PM tonight, asks for sixty minutes of natural living

Earth Hour starts at 8.30PM tonight, asks for sixty minutes of natural living originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 26

EnergyStar program certifies ‘gasoline-powered alarm,’ other imaginary abominations

Posted in: Environment, government, Today's Chili

It’d be pretty difficult for you to reach Engadget without having seen the EnergyStar logo on something along your way here. Whether it was as part of your motherboard‘s bootup sequence or on the box of your new TFT monitor, EnergyStar certification has become a de facto standard for most electronics being manufactured nowadays. What you might not have known — but probably could have guessed — is that the process for obtaining that sticker is far from bulletproof. The American Government Accountability Office has recently done a bit of spy work by putting forward imaginary products and false claims to the validating authority, and regrettably found its bogus items “mostly approved without a challenge.” The auditors’ conclusion was that the program is “highly vulnerable to fraud,” and the stuff they’ve had certified would seem to corroborate that verdict. Hit up the Times article for the full story of governmental incompetence while the Department of Energy — the body responsible for running the program — tries to get its act straightened out.

[Thanks, Adam]

EnergyStar program certifies ‘gasoline-powered alarm,’ other imaginary abominations originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 05

New Eneloop Bike Recharges On the Flat

Posted in: Environment, Today's Chili, Transportation

sanyo100302_cyspl226l_5_b

Sanyo has added a new electric bike to its Eneloop line-up, and it comes with the brand-new Eco Charge Mode. We first saw the Eneloop bike when we took it for a spin around the car-park at CES in Las Vegas (before being kicked out by a security guard). That bike would charge only on downhill sections and when decelerating, or braking.

The Eco Charge Mode lets the rider charge the battery as he rides on flat roads. The trick is all in the torque-sensing crank, which knows how hard the rider is pedaling. Previously, this was used to decide how much power-assistance was needed. Now it also decides when the hub can be switched into generator mode without making it harder for the rider to pedal.

We expect that it works well. One of the signatures of the Eneloop bike we tried was the very natural way the motor kicked in. With this new eco mode, the bike can run for up to 55Km (34-miles) on a single charge. It also lets you switch off the “power” (or hill-climbing) mode when the battery is dead and recharge it with your legs. Riding on the flat for 1Km will give enough juice to use the power mode for 300-meters.

The new Eneloop will be on sale in Japan from April 21st, for ¥157,290, or $1,760, and will probably make it into US stores as a replacement for the current model.

SANYO Releases New Eneloop bike Electric Hybrid Bicycle [Sanyo]

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Mar 05

AT&T moves toward eco-friendly packaging, earns our approbation

Posted in: att, Environment, Today's Chili

Notice to all gadget makers and vendors: if you reduce your packaging and engage in environmentally conscious behavior, you’ll get free press out of it and positive brand awareness to boot. Take for example AT&T’s newly announced design specifications for its own-brand phone accessories and packaging requirements for cellphone makers. Both are geared toward minimizing the surplus of paper and plastic that tends to come with the purchase of your device, and both will require the use of recycled and recyclable materials. AT&T expects to save 200 tons of excess materials by the end of 2010, which is very encouraging, but also disturbing in that it lets us know we were wasting 200 tons each year that could, presumably, have been saved by some sager planning. Anyway, better late than never — and guess what, it will probably end up costing the company less than those inane advert attacks on Verizon.

AT&T moves toward eco-friendly packaging, earns our approbation originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 04

Personal Solar Panel Twenty Time More Powerful Than Rivals

Posted in: Environment, R&D and Inventions, solar power, Today's Chili

joos_orange_angledtabletopstandalone

The Joos Orange is a solar panel that promises to make sun-power useful, rather than just a hippy’s dream. By using top-end components and some clever circuitry, the panel wrings around 20x the juice from the falling sun-rays than other chargers. Sound impressive? It is, and it manages to do it for just $100.

With just an hour in the sun, the Joos Orange will generate (and store in its li-ion battery) enough power to keep you talking on the phone for two and a half hours. This compares to 5-20 minutes for other chargers (according to the company’s figures). Let the thing lounge in the sun all day long and it will end up with enough power to charge an iPhone four time over.

The Joos Orange comes from California-based Solar Components, and apart from the circuitry which optimizes the use of the charge, it uses a very efficient mono-crystalline solar cell instead of a poly-crystalline cell. It will charge in low light, can be charged via USB if there really is no sun, and the polycarbonate and steel body is waterproof, meaning it’ll even charge underwater. When the battery finally dies after 1,000 cycles you can still power gadgets before the replacement battery turns up.

The Joos Orange will ship in June, but Gadget Lab should be getting its hand on a test unit soon. We’re pretty excited: If the panel lives up to its promise, it pretty much means the end of plugging gadgets into the mains, especially here in sunny Spain. And at just $100, 24-ounces (680 grams) and 6×8×1-inches (half the size of a legal pad) its cheap and portable, too.

Joos Orange [Solar Joos. Thanks, Dave!]

Press release [Eon]


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Mar 03

ComEd launches pilot solar energy program for 100 customers in Chicago

Posted in: Environment, power, solar, solar power, SolarPower, Today's Chili

Chicago utility company ComEd announced earlier this week it will launch a pilot program for 100 of its customers to test out the power of the sun. The program will include the installation of solar panels into 100 homes, and further devices — such as smarter thermostats which do things like lower during the day when no one’s at home, and give out hourly pricing information — in fifty of those homes. The meters will also have the ability to reward customers who generate excess solar power that can be pumped back into the grid — because everybody loves being rewarded, right? ComEd will choose the pilot families by mail-in survey, and by factors such as their roofs, and the amount of shading trees there are in their yards.

ComEd launches pilot solar energy program for 100 customers in Chicago originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 23

United Nations identifies e-waste as an urgent and growing problem, wants change

Posted in: Environment, Today's Chili

E-waste might be one of the biggest misnomers in the history of nomery — the image it creates in the mind is of a bunch of email and document files clogging up your local internet pipes. The reality of it is that electronic waste is rapidly populating ever-growing landfill areas in so-called developing countries (they’re poor, just call a spade a spade) and the issue has now garnered the attention of the United Nations. The UN Environment Programme has issued a wideranging report warning that e-waste in China and South Africa could double or even quadruple within the next decade, whereas India could experience a five-fold rise. Major hazards exist in the unregulated and informal recycling of circuit boards and techno gadgets, as processes like backyard incineration for the retrieval of gold generate toxic gases while also being wildly inefficient. The whole point of the report is to encourage some global cooperation in setting up modern and safe recycling facilities in the affected countries to ameliorate the problem, though being generally more careful in our consumption and disposal of electronics wouldn’t do the environment’s chances any harm either.

United Nations identifies e-waste as an urgent and growing problem, wants change originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 22

The Bloom Box: a power plant for the home (video)

Posted in: Environment, Google, green, Today's Chili
Those two blocks can power the average high-consumption American home — one block can power the average European home. At least that’s the claim being made by K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy, on 60 Minutes last night. The original technology comes from an oxygen generator meant for a scrapped NASA Mars program that’s been converted, with the help of an estimated $400 million in private funding, into a fuel cell. Bloom’s design feeds oxygen into one side of a cell while fuel (natural gas, bio gas from landfill waste, solar, etc) is supplied to the other side to provide the chemical reaction required for power. The cells themselves are inexpensive ceramic disks painted with a secret green “ink” on one side and a black “ink” on the other. The disks are separated by a cheap metal alloy, instead of more precious metals like platinum, and stacked into a cube of varying capabilities — a stack of 64 can power a small business like Starbucks.

Now get this, skeptics: there are already several corporate customers using refrigerator-sized Bloom Boxes. The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000 and are installed at 20 customers you’ve already heard of including FedEx and Wal-mart — Google was first to this green energy party, using its Bloom Boxes to power a data center for the last 18 months. Ebay has installed its boxes on the front lawn of its San Jose location. It estimates to receive almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago — an estimate we assume doesn’t factor in the millions Ebay paid for the boxes themselves. Bloom makes about one box a day at the moment and believes that within 5 to 10 years it can drive down the cost to about $3,000 to make it suitable for home use. Sounds awfully aggressive to us. Nevertheless, Bloom Energy will go public with details on Wednesday — until then, check the 60 Minutes sneak peek after the break.

[Thanks, Abe P.]

Continue reading The Bloom Box: a power plant for the home (video)

The Bloom Box: a power plant for the home (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 22

Ontario and Samsung seal $6.7 billion renewable energy deal

Posted in: canada, Environment, green, samsung, Today's Chili

Need to know how much it would cost you and your town to generate 2,500 megawatts of pure green energy? Your wind and solar farm infrastructure costs will come to 7 billion CAD (just under 6.7 billion in US currency), which includes a 437 million CAD “sweetener” to get Samsung on board. Plenty of curmudgeons have emerged from the woodwork to trash the deal as costing above market prices, but this appears to be the largest venture of its kind, so we’re not entirely sure “market prices” exist yet. For its part, Samsung will create 16,000 jobs in the area, 4,000 of them permanent, as it builds toward the stated goal of providing enough energy to fully power 4 percent of Ontario’s population.

[Thanks, Dan]

Ontario and Samsung seal $6.7 billion renewable energy deal originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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