Eco20/20

Harnessing the energy of the sunlight that you purposefully block from your eyes while out on a bright and cheery day. Sounds very waste not, want not, right? Well, a group of designers came up with just the solution you may want for this notion, and it just might be the best looking solar powered accessory we've seen so far. The glasses are called SIG, or "Self-Energy Converting Sunglasses" and they can power your iPod or PSP while you're out walking around. The lenses are made of dye solar cells, and your iPod can plug into the jack at the bottom of the frame.

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.

A MAJOR criticism of wind farms is that they are intermittent. Wind does not blow consistently and, as a result they do not provide a continuous supply of power, but must be backed up by conventional fossil fuel plants. However, a renewables firm believes it has hit on a solution, and is hoping to use it in Scotland. A hydrogen plant would store energy from the wind farm, creating a reserve that could be dipped into on demand, so that even when the wind was not blowing, an electricity supply would be available.

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.)

The nature has paid the price for extraordinary expansion of human civilization; the non-renewable energy resources of the world have been nearly exhausted. Now scientists all over the world are trying to work out a solution to make up the energy shortage that the human civilization is going to face in the coming years. Among many other products under development, the scientists have invested great hopes in the potentials of wind powered electricity generators. This is a system that harnesses the power of the wind to produce usable energy.

Scientists have found that a polymer material is an excellent catalyst in a process to produce hydrogen fuel using sunlight and water. The material meets the basic requirements for an ideal catalyst -- including being abundant, easy to work with, and non-toxic -- and could help this "green" alternative-energy production method become mainstream. Creating hydrogen gas by splitting water (H2O) molecules with solar energy is a promising way of generating hydrogen fuel, which, by either being burned directly or used in fuel cells, can power many types of vehicles, including automobiles, buses, and even airplanes. The study's corresponding scientist is Xinchen Wang, a chemist affiliated with the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, and Fouzhou University in Fouzhou, China.

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.

Today the Department of Energy (DOE) announced the award of 16 new Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) that could result in up to $80 billion in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation projects at federally-owned buildings and facilities. ESPCs help to meet the federal government's energy efficiency, water conservation, and renewable energy goals. The federal government is the largest single user of energy in the United States and these awards demonstrate a commitment to sound government stewardship by recognizing efforts to save energy, reduce federal energy costs, cut greenhouse gas emissions, bring more cutting-edge technologies to use, strengthen national security, and create a stronger economy.

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to tackle the vast problems ahead for America, he has consistently made two bold proposals. First, he intends to make an immense investment in infrastructure - roads, bridges, railways - to jump-start jobs. Second, he plans to boost clean green technologies to make up for the squandered opportunities of the Lost Decade. These are both powerful, worthy ideas. But they would be far more powerful if they were directly connected. The incoming administration has a historic opportunity to accomplish five major goals at once through a massive investment in stopping the waste of energy and dollars pouring out of American homes.

Earlier today I received an email from the office of Pittsburgh city councilman Bill Peduto announcing an ambitious plan that will reduce Pittsburgh's carbon footprint while saving the city millions in electricity costs. Peduto, who has been the only city legislator to propose green legislation of any sort over the last few years, wants the city to convert all 40,000 of its street lamps to energy efficient LED lighting. The cost of the program will be around $24 million and will be paid using a combination of the annual costs savings and funding from the state's Guaranteed Energy Savings Agreement. Pittsburgh would join cities such as Austin, Raleigh (home LED manufacturer CREE), and Toronto as major cities who have adopted LED lighting on a large scale. According to Peduto, Pittsburgh would be the largest city in the US to roll out a complete conversion to LED lighting. This would be great news for Pittsburgh's green agenda, especially in light of today's Pittsburgh Penguin's press conference, where they announced the 21 year naming rights deal for their new arena, which will be known as the Clean Coal Center.

Growing concerns over climate change and energy security have kicked research on alternative energy sources into high gear. The list of options continues to expand, yet few papers have comprehensively reviewed them. And fewer still have weighed the pros and cons in as much depth as a new study published earlier this month in the journal, Energy & Environmental Science. The results are a mixed bag of logical conclusions and startling wake-up calls. The review pits twelve combinations of electric power generation and vehicular motivation against each other. It is a battle royal of nine electric power sources, three vehicle technologies, and two liquid fuel sources. It rates each combination based on eleven categories. And it was all compiled by one man, Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

A Seattle company is hoping to convert the motion of the ocean into electricity. Grays Harbor Ocean Energy Company has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permits to harness energy from waves off the coastline of six states. In all, the company would build seven harnessing sites - in federal waters off California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island - each covering about 100 square miles.

We provide an easy, fast, and safe way for you to sell electronics and recycle electronics. When you sell cell phones, mp3 players, laptops, or other gadgets to us, you'll earn cash and help save the environment by keeping old, used gadgets out of landfills. You get green while being green! The bottom line is you want to sell electronics and we want to buy electronics. A perfect match!

If you have ever wished to stop wasting money on your electrical bill, help the global economy and save the Earth, then you've arrived at the right page. HomeMadeEnergy.org is the website created to help you slash your electricity bill by 80% or even eliminate it completely! With the ever increasing costs of living, there is no better time than right now to stop throwing money out the window and start generating your own electricity.

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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.