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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."

Six of 11 autonomous vehicles finish 90-kilometer course with no major accidents

Algae require only sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to grow. They can quadruple in biomass in just one day. And, what's more, they suck up harmful pollutants such as nitrogen from waste water and carbon dioxide from power plants as they grow.  Some strains of algae contain over 50% oil and an average acre of algae grown today for food and pharmaceutical industries can yield around 19,000 litres of biodiesel, compared to just 265 litres for one acre of soya beans or 1,600 litres of ethanol for an acre of corn.

Setting binding targets for the use of other kinds of renewable energies in electricity, transport and heating/cooling is contrary to the preferences of some member states, who argue that differing climatic and geographical conditions across the EU mean that some states will be at a disadvantage in terms of meeting the targets.  Italy, for example, recently sent a letter to EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, stating that the country will be unable to produce more than 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

With very ambitious EU targets (5.75% biofuels to be used for transport by 2010 and 10% by 2020), Hodson and his colleagues are trying hard to keep up the credibility of the EU’s biofuels action by defining sustainability certification criteria for the use of the alternative fuels.

Based on a Volvo C30, the ReCharge supports a 100 km (62 mile) battery-powered range before the four-cylinder 1.6-liter flex-fuel engine kicks in to power the car and recharge the battery. When driving beyond the 100 km battery range, fuel consumption may vary from 0 to 5.5 liters per 100 km (43 mpg US at full liquid fuel consumption) depending on the distance driven using the engine.

This first plug-in hybrid in the country will be able to run over 100 kilometers on electricity alone

A new process for using aluminum alloys to generate hydrogen from water could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical, says Jerry Woodall, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

I suspect many people here have already written off hydrogen as a near-term transportation fuel, but I wanted to recommend Joseph J. Romm’s The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate anyway. (Note that I read the 2005 edition of the book.)

CVT Corp. has developed a high efficiency toroidal CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) suitable for the heavy-duty vehicle market. The company claims that their product dramatically reduces fuel consumption (as much as 25%).

IBM calls the research initiative collaborative driving, and the company says it's designed to prevent accidents and reduce traffic congestion.

Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have created a device that uses sunlight to transform harmful CO2 gas into fuel that could replace all the gasoline used in transportation.