Eco20/20

Hawaii has become the first state to require solar water heaters in new homes. The bill was signed into law by Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican. It requires the energy-saving systems in homes starting in 2010. It prohibits issuing building permits for single-family homes that do not have solar water heaters. Hawaii relies on imported fossil fuels more than any other state, with about 90 percent of its energy sources coming from foreign countries, according to state data.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Department of Energy (DOE); and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Department of the Interior (DOI), are preparing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate utility-scale solar energy development, to develop and implement Agency-specific programs that would establish environmental policies and mitigation strategies for solar energy projects, and to amend relevant Agency land use plans with the consideration of establishing a new BLM solar energy development program.

A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F). The Drake Landing Solar Community collects solar energy in a heat storage fluid through an array of solar panels on the roof of each home and covering all of the garages at the back of each home. The heated fluid is transferred to a neighborhood energy center, and then into the ground beneath an insulated layer, where the heat is stored in the earth.

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.

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.

It's Tuesday morning and the streets of Bangalore are, as always, jammed with traffic and saturated with smog. A young tech worker and his pregnant wife navigate the dusty roads on a tiny scooter, a 125-cc Hero Honda. Srinivasan Chandra's hands sweat onto the handlebars as he waits for the light to turn green. The journey from home to office is only 6 miles, but road conditions and rush hour have turned the four-lane highway into a cross between a parking lot and a demolition derby.

Environmentalists have hailed recent announcements by the US Interior Department that purport to protect wildlife, but both of these announcements carry with them asterisks that should give greens pause. On Friday, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management announced that some 340 square miles of ecologically sensitive land in the northeast section of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve will be off limits to drilling.

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.

A new energy concept called a solar tower could generate enough electricity for 200,000 homes. Looking like a giant smokestack, it would release no noxious fumes - just sun-heated air.

Global investment in sustainable energy amounted to $148 billion in 2007, a 60 percent gain over 2006, according to a United Nations report (PDF) Tuesday. That will grow to $600 billion past 2020, reported New Energy Finance, a consultant to the U.N. Environment Programme.

In a ruling believed to be unprecedented, a Georgia judge halted the construction of Dynegy's Longleaf coal-fired power plant because it had not made provisions for reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most widely implicated in man-made global warming.

t's becoming crystal clear that the resolution of America's energy crisis is now the centerpiece of the current election campaign; it could conceivably be the decisive issue that decides the future occupant of the White House. Advertisement This is increasingly motivated by public opinion, which heavily favors a "drill now" commitment.

Innovative concept could make wave energy more affordable A device consisting of a giant rubber tube may hold the key to producing affordable electricity from the energy in sea waves. Invented in the UK, the 'Anaconda' is a totally innovative wave energy concept. Its ultra-simple design means it would be cheap to manufacture and maintain, enabling it to produce clean electricity at lower cost than other types of wave energy converter. Cost has been a key barrier to deployment of such converters to date.

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 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:

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.