India’s “Barefoot Engineers” Light Up The World

The Barefoot College in northern India teaches women skills to bring solar power to their villages and to manage the energy system in rural areas.

The students are mostly women. Some are grandmothers. Hundreds have come here from villages across India and a dozen other countries to learn how to install and maintain solar energy systems in rural areas. (more…)

Energy efficiency boom leads 9 clean technology predictions for 2009

SHANGHAI, China, December 4th, 2008 – Continuing an annual tradition, the Cleantech
Group™, founders of the cleantech investment category and providers of leading global
market research and financial services for the cleantech ecosystem, today issued nine
predictions for clean technology markets in 2009, forecasting progress in some sectors,
but delays and setbacks in others.

A reflection of undercurrents in the global clean technology category from the company’s
conversations with industry and government leadership worldwide, the nine predictions
include a global focus on energy efficiency as a job creation and economic engine, and an
increase in valuations of global wind companies. (more…)

The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It’s badly needed as around half the seed banks in developing countries are at risk from natural disasters or general instability.

Superman had it right: if you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That’s the thinking — more or less — behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every nation keeps collections of native seeds so local crops can be replanted in case of an agricultural disaster. The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It’s badly needed — as many as half the seed banks in developing (more…)

Go to earth911.org to find a recycling site near you. Just type in what you
want to recycle or hit ‘more’ and select from the list, add your zip, city,
or state and hit ‘go’. Now don’t expect to find many places that recycle CFLs.
Because of the mercury worries involved with these bulbs, those that do will
normally only accept spent CFLs from their area residents.

There are numerous places on the internet that will ship you a kit to hold
your spent fluorescent and/or HIDs (high intensity discharge lamps), etc.
Then when full you ship back via a ground carrier like FedEX (prepaid). The (more…)

Well, finally, CNN decided that the air car might generate some interest by
writing about it.  The comparison with the Prius is stirring up some questions
but the air car will beat it out.

The air car is still coming to America in 2010 and have produced a plan on how
production would be handled below. (more…)