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Concurrent with the release of its annual financial report, Toyota has published Sustainability Report 2008: Towards a New Future for People, Society, and the Planet. The report, which is the third since Toyota switched from environmental to sustainability reports in 2006, is structured around three themes: sustainable mobility (products), sustainable plant initiatives (manufacturing), and contributing to the development of a sustainable society-also referred to as "nurturing society."

For coal, the future of both extraction and consumption depends on new technology. If successfully deployed, innovative technologies could enable the use of coal that is unminable by gasifying it underground; reduce coal's carbon emissions; or allow coal to take the place of natural gas or petroleum. Without them, coal simply may not have much of a future. Are these technologies close to development? Are they economical? Will they work?

New greenhouse gases emitted in making flat-screen televisions or some refrigerants might be capped under a planned U.N. treaty to combat global warming, delegates at U.N. talks in Ghana said on Friday. Emissions of the recently developed industrial gases, including nitrogen trifluoride and fluorinated ethers, are estimated at just 0.3 percent of emissions of conventional greenhouse gases by rich nations. But the emissions are surging.

If electric vehicles aren't your thing, then you may be pleased to hear that at least one company is working on giving that tried and true internal combustion engine a major boost. Artemis, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based company, has developed a hydraulic hybrid transmission that could potentially double the mileage of most vehicles -- by accident, as it happens. The firm's original goal had been to simply reduce CO2 emissions on the highway by 30% (a goal it also achieved).

The solar industry is booming. With waves of investment and grants, the solar power industry is for the first time becoming a serious business. New power plants will soon be pumping power out to consumers, while other firms market to sell panels directly to the consumer, providing them with a more direct means of experiencing solar energy.

An indigenous Panamanian tribe has driven its king into exile over his approval of a £25m hydro-electric project in its jungle realm. The Naso tribe, whose millennia-old royal inheritance system is recognised by the state, banished King Tito Santana for opening the kingdom to developers.

Important article showing how and why it is important not to leave out the poor and disinfranchised living in urban communities in the greening of America. Excellent plans for urban development and opportunities for green jobs.

Engineers are putting hybrid drivetrains into everything from SUVs to locomotives these days, and General Electric wants to take the technology to sea in a tugboat that could burn 35 percent less fuel and emit 80 percent less pollution than anything else on the water.

Environmental Issues: Land Use Change was developed at Lehigh. UBD interdisciplinary technology-embedded middle school science unit focusing on environmental changes related to land use.

James Dyson is working on a solar-powered car to match the success of his bagless vacuum cleaner. Engineers at the entrepreneur's Wiltshire HQ are developing a lightweight electric motor that could power a family saloon for hundreds of miles.

(NaturalNews) A new combination of nano and solar technology has made it possible for solar electric generation to be cheaper than burning coal. Nanosolar, Inc. has developed a way to produce a type of ink that absorbs solar radiation and converts into electric current. Photovoltaic (PV) sheets are produced by a machine similar to a printing press, which rolls out the PV ink onto sheets approximately the width of aluminum foil. These PV sheets can be produced at a rate of hundreds of feet per minute.

With wind turbine towers popping up on the U.S. landscape at a rate of almost 10 per day, the need for people to maintain and repair them is reaching the critical point. Community colleges in North Dakota and other states are jumping at the chance to help fill that need and develop a niche for themselves at the same time through wind tech programs.

A Canadian company says that it has developed a way for makers of precast concrete products to take all the carbon-dioxide emissions from their factories, as well as neighboring industrial facilities, and store them in the products that they produce by exposing those products to carbon-dioxide-rich flue gases during the curing process. Industry experts say that the technology is unproven but holds great potential if it works.

San Jose, California-based SunPower Corp. announced Thursday that it has clinched a deal with Florida Power and Light for the development of a 35 megawatt solar power system in Florida, the largest in the United States, according to reports. The project involves the construction of two solar power generation facilities, a 25 megawatt plant in DeSoto County in 2009, and a 10 megawatt plant at Kennedy Space Center in 2010.

The White House is currently blocking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from complying with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that directed the agency to develop global warming pollution regulations under the Clean Air Act. Below is a statement by Brendan Bell, a Washington representative with the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Last week, Pickens stopped by The Times to discuss his push to wean the U.S. off foreign oil by dramatically ramping up development of its infrastructure for wind and natural gas. Below is a partial transcript. T. Boone Pickens: We are now importing oil that costs us $700 billion a year. That's four and a half times what the Iraq war costs. Nobody running for president even speaks about this. Yet they talk a lot about the Iraq war. When you look at it, the world oil supply is about 85 million barrels of oil a day. And demand is about 86-plus million barrels a day.

BPA - Elliot Mainzer takes the key role in developing energy agency policy on climate change, planning and renewables As renewable energy becomes a bigger slice of the Northwest's energy pie, few institutions have as important a role to play as the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that markets electricity generated at 31 dams and a nuclear plant in the region. BPA's regionwide web of transmission lines delivers electrons generated at wind farms east of the Cascades to power-hungry consumers in the Willamette Valley. The agency's flexibility to modulate electricity production at dams on the Columbia allows utilities to safely feed their spiky supply of wind energy onto the grid.

Alternative energy giant Horizon Wind Energy wants to trap the immense potential of wind energy. They are planning to open an Indianapolis office for developing up to four new wind farms in Indiana. It will cost them more than $2 billion. Indiana wind farms will be the largest of the Horizon's farms and the proposed site will be at Meadow Lake in White County. The company will install up to 660 turbines spread over 100,000 acres. When the project is fully operational it could produce more than 1,000 megawatts per year - enough to power 300,000 houses.

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.

Builders and developers who install solar hot water on new homes are now eligible to receive a $1,000 discount. The discount is currently available for installations carried out before March 31, 2009. Eligible new buildings include single-family residences or small multi-unit residences without a common entrance and comprising less than 600 square meters of building area - or three or fewer stories of building height. These new incentives are available through registered SolarBC contractors, who will provide you with technical advice, professional installation services and will help you apply for your $1000 discount