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A new trinational report gives green building a green light, but who should drive? The industry weighs in.

As you can see, most of the Big Six spend less than a fiver per customer. Of the small independents, Good Energy and Green Energy spent nothing.

But no. In fact, we are usually subsidising the power companies to do what they are required by law to do already. Worse, despite us paying through our green noses, they still can't meet their targets. Then they rub our noses in it by selling what "green electricity" they do produce over and over again.

Natural Gas and Hybrid Vehicles Lead Annual Green Rankings The natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX is once again the greenest new car sold in the United States, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The ACEEE's Green Book Online, released on February 19, places the Honda Civic GX on top for the second year in a row, followed by the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid. Other hybrids in the top-twelve list include the Nissan Altima Hybrid in sixth place and the Toyota Camry Hybrid in tenth. The ACEEE's annual evaluation of the current model year vehicles ranks them primarily in terms of air emissions and fuel economy.

The second EcoPinion Survey provides further evidence of a green gap between willingness to adopt or purchase green products, services and technologies, and consumer value perceptions around those offerings. While concern for the environment is at an all time high, consumers think that many forms of green technology (renewable, energy efficient or recycled materials) are cost prohibitive, difficult to understand and maintain, and aesthetically unappealing.

As you would expect from a Foster + Partners project, the self-contained city within a city has green energy management at the very heart of the design. Crystal Island will generate low carbon energy from solar arrays and wind turbines located on the building with vast atriums to regulate the internal air temperature during the extremes of the Russian summer and winter.

I was quite surprised this week when I attended a conference organised by the Greens in the European Parliament and saw them do the lobbying for a grand solar industrial project which I think still has a lot of uncertainties and even environmental dangers.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the greenest of them all? Well, if you're in the retail sector the obvious answer to that is Wal-Mart. There was much skepticism initially of Wal-Mart's attempts to go green. Many believed its quest to reduce energy consumption, embrace rooftop solar systems and clean up its transport fleet was yet another attempt at feel-good marketing -- a bid to win over consumers who believed Wal-Mart was an evil retail monster aimed at taking over every small town in America. At the recent Cleantech Forum in Toronto, Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, admitted that the retailer's green strategy was initially adopted from a defensive posture. "We started by saying 'this could be a real problem for us, we need to understand how big of a problem this could be.' Over time, we realized this wasn't a problem, it was a real opportunity for us."

Green Roofs are becoming blase, perhaps, as design moves into living walls. A number of the Solar Decathlon teams have incorporated some form of living wall -- think garden on the walls of the house. These walls help cool the house in the summer (reducing solar gain), water management (reduced storm water runoff as they take water from the roof), and have the potential for helping feed the residents (think tomatoes, grapes, herbs ...). Teams with living walls include, among other