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Warnecke, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, has been generating lots of attention lately for his work with termites. The insects are remarkably efficient at turning cellulose into sugar-the first step in making fuel from plants like switchgrass or poplar trees. Scientists can't compete with termites.

The cost of operating an automobile has intrigued me since I started riding a bike as an adult. From asking owners, I estimated in 1965 that a car cost about 25¢ a mile to operate, which caused a fellow student to scream at me. In the late 70's, when I was an owner, I figured the operating cost at 14¢ a mile, which was unrealistically low. We tend to believe what we want to believe.

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more - if more should be required - the future of human civilization is at stake.

Chemists claim that by mimicking photosynthesis in the lab, they could revolutionize fuel production within five years. Katharine Sanderson reports. Dan Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, made a bold statement at the American Chemical Society's fall meeting in Philadelphia last month. He claimed that within five years he could build a device capable of producing locally sourced hydrogen gas, which could power all the world's houses, fill people's car batteries and revolutionize energy supply in the developing world. "I guarantee, in under five years, you'll see this," he said.

Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power. The researchers believe their breakthrough shows promise that graphene (a form of carbon) could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon. "Through such a device, electrical charge can be rapidly stored on the graphene sheets, and released from them as well for the delivery of electrical current and, thus, electrical power," says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor and a physical chemist. "There are reasons to think that the ability to store electrical charge can be about double that of current commercially used materials. We are working to see if that prediction will be borne out in the laboratory."

The solar power installation at Applied Materials' headquarters is further evidence that companies looking to go green should think blacktop. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker of gear for making high-tech products announced Friday that it has completed the installation a pair of solar power systems that together can produce 2.1 megawatts of energy--which qualifies it, the company says, as the "largest solar power deployment at a corporate facility in the United States."

Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power.

The idea of painting our roofs and roads white to offset global warming is not new, but a recent study has calculated just how significantly white surfaces could impact greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley presented their study at California's annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento. If the 100 largest cities in the world replaced their dark roofs with white shingles and their asphalt-based roads with concrete or other light-colored material, it could offset 44 metric gigatons (billion tons) of greenhouse gases, the study shows. That amounts to more greenhouse gas than the entire human population emits in one year, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. The strategy could also offset the growth in carbon dioxide emissions, which account for about 75% of greenhouse gases, for the next 10 years.

From Holland, the country famous for its windmills, comes a new design for home wind power. Looking like an eggbeater, it spins quieter and at lower wind speeds than a lot of traditional propeller-type turbines. It's now standard for big wind turbines to have propeller blades. Much of the turning force is generated at the tips, which slice perpendicularly through the air, causing a swooshing noise that some residents nearby have said they find unnerving.

Scientists at the Ohio State Institute for Materials Research recently announced that they have developed a new hyper-efficient solar material that is able to capture light from every spectrum of the rainbow. Whereas most photovoltaics are limited to collecting energy from a small range of frequencies, the new material is able to absorb energy from all spectrums of visible light at once. The breakthrough development heralds a new breed of extremely efficient solar panels on the horizon.

With fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling, more and more inventors are turning their creativity towards cars that work without the need for barrels of gasoline. True, there have been a number of vehicles released that run on electricity but now designers are turning to another precious resource - air. It's not a new concept, as early as the 1920s, car designers were dabbling with the idea of cars that could run off air alone - one involved cycling air through a propeller at the front of the car - but few came to fruition. Now, designers are again looking at how air can be used to power a car.

Here at Inhabitat we love to see innovative reuses for organic waste, and so we're perpetually fascinated by the potential of poo to be used as a renewable source of energy. Last week Dutch agriculture minister Gerda Verburg announced a groundbreaking development for the field as she unveiled the world's largest biomass power plant to run exclusively on poultry manure. The plant will convert a third of the nation's chicken waste into energy while running at a capacity of 36.5 megawatts - enough to power 90,000 homes!

On Tuesday the 23th of September, the deployment of the first commercial wave energy farm in the world started. A Pelamis unit was towed into the sea, connected to an underwater cable and moored to the sea floor, at a site were it will stay for the next 15 years. The Industry was present at the highest level, as so a Minister and even the Navy showed up with a frigate to join the celebration.

Kramer Junction. Nevada Solar One. Andasol 1. Kimberlina. They're obscure names today. But they'll be household names tomorrow. The reason? Each is now providing 'here and now' proof concentrating solar power (CSP) works. That can't be said for cabon capture and storage. Nor can it be said for 'next generation' nuclear. Each faces years of additional research and development before some 'first mover' will be game enough to build one. That just isn't the case with concentrating solar power. It's got 20 years of proven commercial operation (Kramer Junction) behind it. It also has new innovations coming on line (Nevada Solar One), with solar thermal storage (Andasol 1), and the promise of super-low costs in coming years (Ausra's Kimberlina). What it adds up to is a price-declining research and development juggernaut in concentrating solar power. This is rapidly bringing concentrating solar power closer to competitiveness with dirty fossil fuels. The California Energy Commission estimates this price 'cross over' could happen by 2015. Bulls predict sooner. And in an industry where new plants and equipment can last 40 years, 5-7 years from now is like tomorrow. What this means is that for forward planning of new infrastructure, concentrating solar power is already nipping at the heels of coal. Toss in carbon prices and the reduced likelihood of protesters chaining themselves to bulldozers as they are likely to at any new coal plants, CSP starts looking like a VERY good deal indeed.

The thin film solar field is still a hot bed of activity - Technology Review has a post on a prototype cell that uses photonic crystals - Efficient Thin-Film Solar Cells. Researchers at MIT have unveiled a new type of silicon solar cell that could be much more efficient and cost less than currently used solar cells. Materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and his colleagues presented results of the first device prototype at a recent meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston. The design combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. This helps trap red and near-infrared light, which can be used to make electricity, in the silicon. The research team is licensing similar technology to StarSolar, a startup in Cambridge, MA.

When you first look at the Dell Studio Hybrid Computer, you may not even think it is a computer. Yet, it is and it is a good quality computer at that.

Save money and the environment by filling up at home

iGo Technologies provides solutions for charging up gadgets more efficiently by ditching standby power. They're debuting a few more cool looking products at the upcoming CES. Read on for a glimpse of what tech we'll get to see in just a couple weeks. Three products iGo is planning on showing off are: - iGo Laptop Charger: Charge your laptop and other devices from any standard wall outlet, including automatic shut-off and recovery to reduce vampire power. - iGo Surge Protector: An eight outlet surge protector with shut-off and recovery to reduce vampire power. - iGo Wall Outlet: A wall outlet with automatic shut-off and recovery.

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

Technology Review reports that the idea of hybrid gas-solar thermal power plants is being considered for coal fired plants now - Cutting Coal Use with Sunshine. Feeding heat from the sun into coal-fired power stations could turn out to be the cheapest way to simultaneously expand the use of solar energy and trim coal plants' oversize carbon footprints. At least that's what the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a nonprofit organization backed by the electricity industry, is hoping. Last week, the institute launched a nine-month, $640,000 study to pin down the scale of the opportunity and the engineering challenges involved with making these seemingly disparate technologies work together. The study will examine the potential use of solar-thermal technology at a pair of coal-fired power stations, in New Mexico and North Carolina.