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Solar Umbrella House is quite simple the most tranquil green house that one would ever come across and it is a refreshingly new sustainable house design that does not look outrageously lavish, but is simple, serene and filled with captivating magic of solar power. I have always believed that simple stuff with sheer elegance are bigger winners compared to designs filled with pompous glitz that shout out loud. The Solar Umbrella Home is a house that is completely powered and lit by the energy of the sun. In this case when I say completely, I mean the whole 100% and nothing less at all!

A bipartisan group of 27 elder statesmen is sending an open letter to both presidential candidates and every member of Congress saying the country faces "a long-term energy crisis" that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action isn't taken.

If Corus Group, an Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturer, has its way and their new work into developing solar cell paint comes to pass, the whole concept of what types of material can be used for generate electricity through photovoltaics could change. At least that's the promise. Renewable Energy World is saying that production on Corus' solar steel sheets could begin in three years, though doesn't really go beyond that in terms of timelines. The way it would work is this:

Amid growing concerns over the preservation of the environment, the quest for energy efficient and greener technologies is intensifying in Europe, especially after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol. Green initiatives have encouraged the gravitation towards environmentally friendly technologies such as flywheel UPS systems. The European Commission energy efficiency action plan has also helped drive the uptake of flywheel UPS systems. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.powersupplies.frost.com), European Flywheel UPS Markets, finds that market earned revenues of over €25.4 million in 2007 and estimates this to reach €58 million in 2014. "Although the technology has been in existence for a long time, it has seen widespread acceptance and increased uptake only over the past three or four years," says Frost & Sullivan programme manager Malavika Tohani. "Flywheel UPS systems use kinetic energy, eliminating harmful emissions and disposal issues and reducing the impact on the environment."

While the arguments rage on both sides, the experts say that time is running out For the workers at Oldbury-on-Severn nuclear power plant, the next new year celebrations could be rather poignant. Just as Britain is planning the rebirth of nuclear power generation, their ageing plant will be closing down, probably on December 31. Oldbury, in Gloucestershire, has been pouring power into the national grid since 1967 and is the latest in a series of closures that has seen Britain's nuclear generating capacity fall from nearly 40% of the nation's needs in the 1980s to just 15% now. Most of the slack has been taken up by new gas-fired stations.

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."

Energy utility Exelon Corp. spent nearly $1.2 million in the second quarter to lobby on tax credits for renewable energy sources and other issues, according to a recent disclosure report. The Senate on Tuesday passed a broad tax package providing more than $17 billion in renewable energy tax incentives that the solar and wind industries say are crucial if they are to become significant energy sources in the near future. But the legislation faces obstacles in the House, where three separate bills are on the schedule Wednesday.

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."

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens brought is traveling energy road show to the Salt Palace Convention Center on Thursday, and hundreds of Utahns came to hear what he had to say. The oil tycoon and mega-successful hedge-fund manager promoted his strategies for alternative fuel development. The Pickens Plan urges Americans to break their reliance on foreign oil by using clean alternatives, including natural gas, wind, solar and nuclear power.

A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian islands, an achievement that he says proves the technology exists to beam solar power from satellites back to Earth. John C. Mankins demonstrated the solar power transmission for the Discovery Channel, which paid for the four month experiment and will broadcast the results Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. His vision is to transmit solar power collected by orbiting satellites as large as 1,102 pounds (500 kg) to lake-sized receiver stations on Earth.

I'll get my excuses in first and then move on to Kaka later. I have increased my carbon footprint by flying to the low-carb World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi concluding it was not realistic to meet 10,000-plus delegates and visitors via video-link from Blighty. A conference exploring alternative power and clean technology developments like this one is usually most valuable for what people say privately rather the public spiel from the platform.

Our Renewable Nation is possibly the most adorable project ever conceived to advocate renewable energy. It's an eco-video project helmed by the McCullough family, who are traveling across the country in a vegetable oil powered VW Beetle. They're visiting wind farms, solar installations, talking to companies developing sustainable technologies, and documenting all their interviews and travels on video. Each of the videos stars 9-year old Carrick McCollough, the cutest kid to campaign in the name of renewable energy. And it's effective. Don't believe me? Just watch the video after the jump, where Carrick implores grownups to not blow it for him and his generation. How can we say no to this?

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google's co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing. The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that "prints" photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Shin Abe doesn't find it odd that the picturesque little Japanese town of Kuzumaki, where he has lived all his life, generates some of its electricity with cow dung. Nor is the 15-year-old middle school student blown away by the vista of a dozen wind turbines spinning atop the forested peak of nearby Mt. Kamisodegawa. And it's old news to Abe that his school gets 25% of its power from an array of 420 solar panels located near the campus. "That's the way it's been," he shrugs. "It's natural." To Abe, it is. But the blase teen has grown up in an alternative universe - one that might be envisioned by Al Gore. That's because Kuzumaki (population 8,000) has over the past decade transformed itself into a living laboratory for the development of sustainable and diversified energy sources. "When I was growing up, all we had [to generate power] was oil," says Kazunori Fukasawaguchi, a Kuzumaki native who now serves in local government. "I never imagined this kind of change." (Read TIME's Top 10 Green Ideas of 2008.)

While harnessing more energy from the wind could help satisfy growing demands for electricity and reduce emissions of global-warming gases, turbulence from proposed wind farms could adversely affect the growth of crops in the surrounding countryside. Solutions to this, and other problems presented by wind farms - containing huge wind turbines, each standing taller than a 60-story building and having blades more than 300 feet long - can be found blowin' in the wind, a University of Illinois researcher says.

Wales has laid down the gauntlet to Scotland and Northern Ireland in the race to develop tidal energy technology. Last week, Cardiff-based Tidal Energy Limited (TEL) announced plans for a 1MW trial installation at the Ramsey Sound in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. The company hopes its DeltaStream horizontal turbines will be in the water by summer 2010, making them Wales' first signifcant tidal install. TEL says its 12-month test project will use technology that's proven to be grid-compliant, enabling it to connect to the national grid and earn an income from generated power.

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.

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:

The American Massage Therapy Association says that massage therapists will likely experience a 20% to 35% increase in demand in the coming years.

REW has an article on making the switch to a clean energy world - Will the Children of Today Be Living in a World Powered by Renewable Energy by 2050?. The world needs a one-off switch-over to renewable energy -- and this could be largely accomplished in just forty years time, slashing energy costs and greenhouse gases while allowing healthy economic growth, experts say. By 2050, 80 percent of the world's electricity could be coming from renewable energy sources provided efforts are made, in parallel, to improve energy efficiency, according to a study by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). That means, the children of today might well grow up to experience a world where the energy they use comes almost entirely from the sun, wind, sea and biomass. By 2090, the shift to renewable energy around the world could be almost 99 percent completed reducing pressure on the environment and laying the foundations for a new era of prosperity based on green energy.