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All newly built homes to produce more energy than they consume by 2020. Renovate all existing buildings to save energy. Ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010. Reduce greenhouse-gas emission by 20% by 2020. Increase renewable energy from 9% to 20-25% of total energy consumption by 2020. Bring transport emissions back to 1990 levels. Reduce vehicle speed limits by 10 kilometres per hour. Taxes and incentives to favour clean cars. Shift half of haulage by road to rail and water within 15 years. Develop rail and public transport. Reduce air pollutants quantitatively. Create a national network of "green" corridors and nature reserves. Increase organic farming from 2% to 6% of total acreage production by 2010 and to 20% by 2020. Ecological groups to be stakeholders, like trade unions, in government negotiations. Create a body to review planting of genetically modified crops on a case-by-case basis.

"Our target is to produce a hydrogen fuel-cell car for $50,000 by 2015," says Peter Froeschle, a senior manager at DaimlerChrysler, which has already spent more than €1bn (£675m) developing its fleet of prototypes, " though we don't expect the operation to be profitable until 2020."

The nighttime experiment is meant to Illuminate the top spire of the mammoth steel structure to demmonstrate the use of the first wireless electricity transfer system in the World. The test is designed to transfer about 1200 watts of power at a range of 100 feet and will be a first of its kind use of a system Japanese scientists are developing to transmit power at distances they hope could reach 300 feet using a science that is based on magnetically coupled resonance.

Hydro energy’s potential may be overlooked because; it is “old” renewable energy, or because like nuclear energy, some hydro electric schemes have been criticized by environmental groups, but most importantly a perception by many, that most hydro electric potential in North America has already been exploited. Hydro electricity deserves more scrutiny because; 1) North America has significant undeveloped potential, 2) the technology is well understood, although technical improvements continue to be made, especially for low head and small hydro, 3) hydro has a very high energy return on energy investment (ERoEI), 4) additional hydro can enable more wind and solar energy capacity to be absorbed by the grid, 5) hydro potential is more geographically dispersed than wind and solar, and finally, 6) the cost of developing additional hydro capacity is moderately low and has very low technical and financial risk.

Elizabeth developed the POWERleap as her senior thesis project at the University of Michigan's School of Art and Design. She wanted to design a project that would educate people about their relationship and dependence on energy. Human bodies generate electricity, about 100 watts at rest, which (according to www.elizabethredmond.net) is enough to power the computer I am writing on.

Although I just blogged on this topic last month, ComEd and Ameren's residential real-time pricing (RRTP) initiative just got a whole lot easier for consumers to use. One of Ameren's customers is also a web developer/electrical utility veteren, and created a handy-dandy web widget application that uses the information the utilities publish.