 When you build your next home (like who's doing much of that these days?) you may be putting aerogel into the walls as insulation, rather than that pretty pink, but very itchy fiberglass. Green Tech reports that the company Aspen Aerogels had been able to bring down the price of these materials that were previously only used in spacecraft, significantly. Enough so that we may be able to put the stuff in our homes. |
This month we had a chance to interview Vikram M. Pattarkine, PhD, OriginOil’s chief technology officer, on the subject of oil from algae.
OriginOil works on getting algae to generate oil, in an industrial process using what they call a Helix BioReactor. |
Fuel production is one step closer to becoming not only green, but sweet.
Virent Energy Systems, Inc. will commission a demonstration plant in fall of 2009 that will produce 10,000 gallons of biogasoline per year, said Mary Blanchard, director of Marketing for Virent Energy Systems. The machine will convert water, sugar cane, sugar beets, and other plants into gasoline, jet fuel, or diesel. |
|
What happens if, all of a sudden, you need to change the entire energy infrastructure on which California’s transportation system runs?
Story by Alexis Madrigal
Most Californians probably haven’t noticed, but that’s exactly what a combination of Midwestern farmers, Big Oil companies, railroad operators, and fuel terminal owners have done over the last decade. |
|
Architects make choices - a lot of choices, applying a sort of precise creativity that balances environmental sustainability and asthetics with engineering principles and cost. So it seems natural that architects are taking a lead role in the Green Building movement, which addresses factors from energy conservation to recycled building materials, to toxicity of chemicals, to native plantings and more. The relative importance of the various factors - that "How Green is Green?" question - is addressed by a point system published by the US Green Building Council. Its called LEED, standing for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and encompasses a growing suite of standards updated regularly by committee with an open public approval process. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1 of 4 |
