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Technology Review has an article on plastic solar cells with "near-perfect internal efficiency" - Pushing Plastic Solar Cells. Plastic solar cells are lightweight, flexible, and, most important, cheap to make. But so far, these devices have been too inefficient to compete with silicon solar cells for most applications. Now researchers from a few institutions claim to have made polymer solar cells with record-breaking efficiencies. These cells still aren't good enough to compete with silicon, but polymer efficiencies have been increasing at a rate of about 1 percent a year. If they can keep this up, say researchers, plastic solar cells will be competing with silicon within a few years.

Winds rush through the capital city of China, blowing dust storms that envelop it in grit from the encroaching Gobi Desert each spring. Last year, the government finally took advantage of those winds, installing 33 wind turbines manufactured by domestic company Xinjiang Gold Wind at the Guanting wind power field to harvest this energy and use it to supplement the electricity provided by polluting coal. Those suburban turbines began turning in earnest on January 20, providing 35 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to Beijing through July, or roughly 300,000 kilowatt-hours a day.

The U.S. government will spend tens of millions of dollars to assess and clean up uranium contamination across the vast Navajo Reservation, but the effort is unlikely to erase decades of frustration over what has been characterized as a slow and sporadic federal response. The new five-year plan is the first coordinated push to measure and fix the environmental damage that resulted from a Cold War hard-rock mining boom in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Perhaps it's not surprising that balmy Hawaii is home to a company that's pushing the envelope of solar thermal technology. Start-up Sopogy, based in Honolulu, has taken the basic design of large solar thermal power plants and shrunk it down so it can fit on a building's roof.

KINGSTON, Ontario, Jun 25 (IPS) - North America's abject failure to meet the challenge of climate change has been "un-American", environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki told delegates Tuesday at the World Wind Energy Conference, the first ever in the region. "We're facing an ecological crisis, a crisis far, far worse than Pearl Harbour," Suzuki said. Twenty years ago this week, one of the United States' leading scientists warned Congress of the imminent danger of climate change and said that waiting decades to take action was too risky. Now James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has published new research indicating that greenhouse gas concentrations have pushed the climate near a dangerous tipping point that will unleash far-reaching changes in the atmosphere and oceans that could take millennia to reverse.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has warned that without a comprehensive international agreement to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming, humanity faces "oblivion." "The world's scientists have spoken with one voice: the situation is grim and urgent action is needed," Ban said. "The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically.

Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains. When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

T. Boone Pickens is a billionaire oil man and a career corporate raider who loves George Bush so much he donated $250,000 to his 2004 inaugural ball. He was, and still is, fully behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq and makes no bones about it. So why is he now pushing for the use of alternative energy sources like wind and solar in his Pickens Plan?

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.

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.

CNN reports that Obama is planning an economic stimulus package based on energy efficient buildings and improved internet access - Obama outlines initiative to create 2.5 million jobs. President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday outlined some of his plan to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, and said he will push for immediate action by Congress when he takes office in January. Obama wants to make public buildings more energy-efficient, repair roads and bridges, modernize schools, increase broadband access and ensure that health care professionals have access to the latest technology. "Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world," he said in the weekly Democratic radio address.

WorldChanging has a post on a Rocky Mountain Institute backed initiative to pave the way fro smart grids and electric vehicles - Project Get Ready Aims to Create Electric Vehicle Revolution. Creating a well functioning smart grid - cyclically connected to smart vehicles and buildings and houses, as well as personal and public renewable energy systems - will be no small infrastructure feat. Utility providers, technology innovators, neighborhood councils and local governments will need to come together to provide needed support -- both monetarily and ideologically. Although U.S. President Obama and the recently passed stimulus plan are pushing the renewable, electric energy revolution forward, residents across the nation might need more motivation to make the leap from fossil fuel users to plug-in pioneers. A new project, headed by "think-and-do" tank the Rocky Mountain Institute, is offering to help city leaders provide community members with that extra inspiration. The initiative, Project Get Ready, supplies a menu of strategies that are meant to help cities prepare for the "plug-in" transition. According to RMI, problems related to individual hesitancy toward purchasing electric vehicles and investing in the infrastructure itself, can "be overcome if cities/regions become ecosystems that welcome electric vehicles."

As the push for fuel consumption savings increase, more Americans have taken to riding the bus to work.

Identifying the different areas of growth within this new green push will help the current unemployed gain leverage with the economy gets better.

DONG Energy, E.ON and Masdar have announced that they will invest EUR 2.2 billion (US $3 billion) in building the first 630-megawatt (MW) phase of the London Array offshore wind farm in England's Thames Estuary. The wind farm is set to be build the world's largest offshore wind farm. The consortium hopes the first phase of 630 MW will be completed and generating in 2012. The first phase will consist of 175 turbines. The announcement comes after the UK Government's recent proposal to increase its support for offshore wind power. The partners are satisfied that the project is now financially viable and are now keen to push ahead with construction and to produce the first renewable power in 2012. Onshore work is now due to start in the summer, with offshore work due to start in early 2011.

olar domestic hot-water systems don't grab as many headlines, probably because they're not considered as high-tech as their solar PV cousins, where science is pushing the boundaries of sunlight-to-electricity conversion. I'm always surprised that residential solar thermal systems don't get much attention in the United States, particularly in the south where many homes have swimming pools (that need heating) and where the sun shines warm all year, making the payback dramatically better than PV. In Canada, where the conditions are less ideal, we seem for some strange reason to have a greater appreciation for rooftop solar thermal systems, and indeed, have many startups, such as EnerWorks, and academics spending considerable time improving on the technology.

Identifying the different areas of growth within this new green push will help the current unemployed gain leverage when the economy gets better.

Researchers in the US are using pioneering technology to create long-lasting, more efficient nuclear batteries. We talk to Patrick J Pinhero, Alan K Wertsching and Jae Wan Kwon of the University of Missouri about pushing the boundaries of betavoltaic electricity generation. The University of Missouri (MU) is pushing boundaries in betavoltaic electricity generation.