It doesn't look like much from the outside—just a drab, 10-story building on the campus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about an hour's drive east of San Francisco. But as I'm walking across the parking lot on a sunny day in October I can't help thinking that someday I might be telling my grandchildren about the time I came to this lab and met Edward Moses and saw the technology that was about to change the world.
LONDON - The British government unveiled plans Monday to launch one of the world's most ambitious expansions of nuclear-power capacity, calling for the construction of 10 plants to help meet surging energy demands in the era of global warming.
After years of resistance to construction of nuclear-power plants, the British plan underscored how nations around the world are scrambling to find ways to generate more energy while slashing the emissions that cause climate change.
ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.
Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas.
The Paper Battery Company: The Paper Battery Company is developing what you might imagine: paper-thin sheets of material that can store energy. The sheets can be molded into different shapes and layers, and since they’re made of cellulose, they are biodegradable and non-toxic. Right now the technology is more expensive than conventional batteries but the researchers are working on lower cost manufacturing techniques. Check out the video of the paper battery below.
At ground level, electric cars like GM's Chevrolet Volt -- due to be launched in November 2010 -- are pretty much everything the U.S. economy is banking on. The cars promise innovative engineering and a resurgence of the American auto industry. They mean an America that is manufacturing things rather than just bundling financial instruments. Cosmically, electric cars mean green technologies that will migrate to China, India, and Brazil, where they will allow for Western styles of personal freedom yet not threaten to overheat the earth.
TreeHugger has shown a couple of toilets with sinks built into their tanks, which make you reach over the bowl to get at the sink. There have also been gray water collection tanks that go under the sink. But this is the first time I have seen an elegant, properly integrated sink and gray water system integrated so elegantly with a toilet.
A group of architects from Argentina have come up with a project called Orchard House, which proposes the implementation of vertical gardens in shanty towns to provide local people with food and improve the visuals of these villages.
The idea is to teach people how to build a series of 'productive modules', with metal structures and different types of coverage that allow the growing of small vegetables. By providing them with the tools and knowledge, people could then build their own houses or structures on their own.
With a name like Pop-Up House, we were envisioning some kind of 3D greeting card. But it turns out that House Port's design for an affordable home is a "cost–effective, energy-efficient package that can be finished and upgraded to one’s personal taste, on any budget, large or small."
The Pop-Up House is cheaper than your average pre-fab home and it's also easier and faster to assemble. The best part: You only need screws and glue to put it together. It ships flat–packed, ready–to–assemble, which translates into substantial savings on labor, shipping costs, and waste.
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