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It was a day when the shift from the past to the future was almost palpable. It started Thursday morning in Berkeley where Green Wombat was moderating a panel of tech luminaries gathered at the University of California's Global Technology Leaders Conference. As Shai Agassi, founder of electric car infrastructure company Better Place, makes the case for harnessing Silicon Valley's technological innovation to Detroit's manufacturing might to create a sustainable car industry, dispatches from the automotive apocalypse roll down my BlackBerry: Ford (F) shares sink to $1.01…GM's (GM) stock falls to its lowest level since World War II…U.S. automakers beg for a bailout…California Congressman Henry Waxman ousts Michigan's John Dingell - the Duke of Detroit - from his 28-year chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Agassi slips out of the conference and an hour later I catch up with him across the Bay at San Francisco City Hall where he and representatives of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland announce a $1 billion project to build a regional network of electric car charging stations. Better Place has signed similar deals with governments in Israel, Denmark and Australia, but California is the company's first foray into the U.S. market. Planning for the Bay Area network begins in 2009 with construction scheduled to start in 2010 and commercial rollout set for 2012.

A home wind turbine already installed at 250 sites in Scotland is now being sold across the pond. Cascade Engineering said Monday the Swift wind turbine, for homes and other buildings, is available in the U.S. and Canada. (Credit: Cascade Engineering) The Swift tries to set itself apart from existing small wind turbines with a design that reduces noise. Also, the turbine can be attached to a home, rather than to a free-standing pole or tower. Like other wind turbines, the Swift has blades that turn and power a generator. But rather than the typical three blades, the Swift has five and a ring that goes around them. That "outer diffuser" ring cuts the noise level to 35 decibels and reduces vibration, according to the company.

Swedish company Home Energy recently revealed an innovative wind turbine that spins in a spherical formation. Eschewing traditional rotors for a sleek orb structure, this beautiful rethinking of conventional wind turbine design utilizes the Venturi principle, which funnels wind within the turbine's blades. The resulting spherical wind turbine features increased efficiency and lower noise levels - making it ideal for small scale energy needs such as personal home use. Best of all it's called the Energy Ball: the fun name is an added bonus.

Following last summer's record minimum ice cover in the Arctic, current observations from ESA's Envisat satellite suggest that the extent of polar sea-ice may again shrink to a level very close to that of last year. Envisat observations from mid-August depict that a new record of low sea-ice coverage could be reached in a matter of weeks. The animation above is a series of mosaics of the Arctic Ocean created from images acquired between early June and mid-August 2008 from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard Envisat. The dark grey colour represents ice-free areas while blue represents areas covered with sea ice.

The cost of oil peaked above $140 a barrel this summer, nearly double the price a year earlier and 40% higher than worst-case scenarios discussed just months earlier. Gas prices followed suit, peaking well above $4 a gallon during peak driving season and sending drivers, carmakers and politicians all into fits. Heating oil prices started climbing to record levels months before heating season.

British inventors have designed a washing machine that takes eco-friendliness to a new level: it uses just a single cup of water to wash a load of clothes. Instead of water the Xeros machine uses thousands of special plastic chips (about 44 pounds' worth) in each wash, and when that single cup of water is heated, these chips absorb the dirt-including tricky stuff like coffee and lipstick. The chips are removed when the wash ends, and can be reused up to 100 times. Though it's still in prototyping, the inventors are intending to commercialize their machine, and it may even hit the shops next year for a price similar to conventional machines.

At first glance, they look like a couple of giant inflatable garden chairs that have washed out to sea But they are, apparently, the ultimate solution to rapidly rising sea levels. This computer-generated image shows two floating cities, each with enough room for 50,000 inhabitants.

The Upper Great Plains Wind Energy Programmatic EIS Information Center Web site was launched September 11, 2008. This Web site is the online center for public information and involvement in the Upper Great Plains Wind Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. The U.S. Department of Energy, Western Area Power Administration (Western), and the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), will prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate the impacts of wind energy development within Western's Upper Great Plains Customer Service Region (UGP Region), which encompasses all or parts of the States of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota; and on the Service's landscape-level grassland and wetland easements in North Dakota, South Dakota, and eastern Montana.

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.

Electricity generation and electricity sales reached record levels in 2007, according to "Electric Power Annual 2007″, released today by the Energy Information Administration. Following a year of relatively weak growth in 2006, net generation of electric power increased by 2.3 percent, rising to 4,157 million megawatthours and retail sales rose by 2.6 percent to 3,765 million megawatthours in 2007. Continued economic growth in 2007, combined with changes in winter and summer temperatures relative to 2006 that added to electricity use for space heating and cooling requirements, contributed to the increase in electricity sales.

The South Korean government has allocated 18.3 trillion won (about US$14.2 billion) for an energy efficiency initiative that will run until 2012 and save 34.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe). The goal is an 11.3% improvement in energy efficiency by 2012, compared with the level seen in 2007. Among the steps are a 16.5% increase in new vehicle average fuel economy by 2012. In 2004, South Korea replaced its voluntary, unenforced standard with a mandatory program-the Average Fuel Economy (AFE) system-that started in 2006 for domestic vehicles and will start in 2009 for imports. (Earlier post.) The current standards are 12.4 km/l (29.2 mpg US) for vehicles with engine displacements of 1.5 liters or less and 9.6 km/l (22.6 mpg US) for vehicles with engine displacements of more than 1.5 liters. Credits can be earned to offset shortfalls.

How important is it to eat organic? Is it a fad, a craze or is it a warning against chemical fertilizers and GMO crops, which will help protect the next generation? Organic farming is natural farming, that means no chemical fertilisers, no genetic modification for either food crops or feed crops. Commercial farming pushing demand for agricultural produce forced a shift towards chemical fertilisers and farming methods to maximise output, for maximum profit, unaware of the significantly unnatural processes being used can be harmful. At the consumer level organic produce is a relatively new phenomena. On the supermarket shelves we are finding products labelled 'organic', most of us think it means 'natural' or 'cruelty free'. When you buy organic you are buying a green product . That means methods such as green fertilisers, crop rotation and biological pest controls are used instead of toxic chemical fertilisers and genetically modified organisms which are harmful to the land. Organic farming composes about 2% of all farming on the planet.

The world needs a "revolution" in science and technology to solve global warming, says Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, made the remarks in today's New York Times. The article was short on specifics, but Chu, former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said Nobel-level breakthroughs were needed in electric batteries, solar power and crops that could be turned into fuel. "Science and technology can generate much better choices," Chu, a long-time proponent of alternative energy development, told the newspaper. "It has, consistently, over hundreds and hundreds of years." Among the points he made:

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Scientists have found new evidence that the Earth's natural feedback mechanism regulated carbon dioxide levels for hundreds of thousands of years. But they say humans are now emitting CO2 so fast that the planet's natural balancing mechanism cannot keep up.

Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.

BTM Consult has released its 14th annual update on the status of the international wind power industry. According to the reports, 2008 saw the highest ever level of wind turbine installations. With 28,190 megawatts (MW) of new capacity installed, the growth rate was 42% compared with 2007, resulting in a cumulative worldwide total of 122,000 MW. Although it will be impacted by the current economic crisis in 2009 and 2010, the future looks bright for the wind power industry, BTM said. The report's five year forecast up to 2013 projects significant growth. Over the past five years the average growth in annual new installations has been 27.6 % per year. In the forecast up to 2013 an average annual growth rate of 15.7 % per year is expected. More than 200 GW of new wind power capacity could come on line before the end of 2013.

Renewable Energy World has a report on a new Scottish wind farm - Europe's Largest Onshore Wind Farm Is Switched on in Scotland. Today, the final phase of Europe's largest onshore wind farm is being turned on in Scotland. The 322-megawatt (MW), 140-turbine Whitelee wind farm was built by ScottishPower Renewables, which is part of the Spanish power business Iberdrola. In Spain and internationally, the Iberdrola Group, is the world's largest developer of wind power, with nearly 9700 MW of installed capacity. The wind farm uses Siemens 2.3-MW machines. Positioned 370 meters (1200 feet) above sea level, 15 kilometers (9 miles) outside of Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, the new wind farm has over half a million people living within a 30-km radius of it. It's one of the first large-scale wind farms to be constructed close to a large population center. The first phase of the wind farm started feeding power into the grid in January 2008.

A residential air sealing technician specializes in energy efficiency to help businesses and homeowners lower energy costs, increase comfort levels and improve indoor air quality.

Basically, the job of an environmental lobbyist involves persuading politicians on the local and national levels, in both the legislative and executive branches of government, to pass laws, policies and regulations for a cleaner environment.

The Kaco Solar blue planet xi series of grid-tied inverters has introduced a new energy output level for inverters as a whole.

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