Archive for December, 2007
Friday, December 14th, 2007
Driverless Car Rally
All those sci-fi novels with the hero of the story taking a nap in the back of the car while driving across the country are starting to look like they could come true.
DARPA, the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, sponsored a rally in November of 2007 offering a $2 million prize to the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Brett
Friday, December 14th, 2007
Commuter Car Round-up
I just found this great page of one- or two-person electric cars that are available today or will be soon. There are good descriptions an pictures of these odd-looking little wonders, whose price tags range from $8,000 to an incredible $84,000!
My favorite (and the priciest–imagine that) is the Tango T600, looking like a laterally-compressed ocean [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Gadgets & Products by Brett
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Google Lays Out the Big Bucks for Renewable Energy
In late November, Google announced that it plans to spend somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars to support the development of renewable energy infrastructure in 2008 and hundreds of millions in the near future. Their plan is to spur the development of high-altitude wind generation (a technology as [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General, Solar, Wind by Brett
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Infinitely Recyclable Carpet
Last year I had the privilege of attending the US Green Building Council’s 2006 Greenbuild Conference and seeing, among other wonders, Shaw Industries’ amazing Ecoworx carpet.
Just like any other carpet, you lay it down and use it for years (it’s available in tiles so you can replace the most-used portions without re-carpeting the whole house), [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Gadgets & Products, General, Green Building by Brett
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Germany Mandates Heating New Homes with Renewable Energy. Why Haven’t We Thought of That?
The Renewable Energies Heating Law just passed in Germany requires all new homes built after January 1st, 2009 to provide 14% of their heating and hot water energy with renewable sources. The German government is promising $517 million dollars a year in grants to help make this happen. [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Geothermal, Green Building, Solar by Brett
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
Finding Geothermal sites on the cheap by searching for Helium on the surface.
Geothermal is possibly one of the best natural power sources in the world. The geothermal resources of the USA alone in theory could provide 3000 times our current energy needs. The issue has never been using it, but it has been one of finding it cheaply. The technique so far has been to guess [...]
