Bill Joy, one of the founders of Silicon Valley giant Sun Microsysetms, was recently asked if there were going to be any more Googles.

His answer, "yes," and they will come from green technology.  Oh man!  That's just about the most exciting thing we've heard since we started this magazine!  Bill Joy, someone who has proven himself to have the ability to see when something new and amazing is on the horizon thinks that green technology will give birth to the next Google.  

Anyhow, Joy continues:
"John [Doerr] used to say Google is the greatest legal creation of wealth, and I think the greatest legal creation of wealth today is in the green area -- not just in the U.S. but in the developed world. We have been looking at a lot of things related to new fuels, such as ethanol, fuel cells, advanced battery technology, and new ways of using biotech to make fuels.... There will be an enormous amount of new [green] technology, new wealth, and we are trying to create the Googles, the Microsoft's of the new era."

Oh yeah!  You create those Google's of the next era!  As soon as I get a few million dollars I am SO joining your Venture Capital Firm. 

Via Business Week, Spotted at The Sustainable Future

Some of us here at Ecogeek have chosen to spend our summers in the thick of the Adirondacks, and while New York's finest foggy mountains are quite pretty, some of their accomodations are well ... er... a bit rustic. While I've managed to find a way to power my clunker of a desktop computer, every time I so much as try to plug in my socket-charged flashlight my entire cabin gives a disappointing flicker and fades into darkness.

 

Needless to say, I've been desperately searching for battery-powered anything. 

 

Thanks to Treehugger , I found the following round-up:

 

The fan is boasted to be the longest-running battery-powered fan on the market, but we're also enamored with its versatility. Our cabin has a square footage that rivals a tool shed, so we're happy to know it can be mounted on the wall, can stand on the floor or a table, and also has a handle that can be used on a wire or clothesline.

 

On the left is the gadget that's going to make me very popular with the other folks around me up here -- a Coolmatic cooler that runs on a 12V battery. You can set the cooling temperature you want, and boasts that your food and drink will stay cold for two days.

 

Finally, since plugging in our flashlight doesn't seem to be an option, we might be checking out the little gadget in the middle, the 20-LED Pivot Lantern . It has a couple levels of lighting to choose from, runs on 8 D-sized batteries, and lasts about 24 hours.

 

 

When we say Complete Burn, we mean that all of the fuel is being turned into carbon dioxide.  While no one is ready to get excited about CO2 anymore, it is the desired product of combustion and it is not deadly like carbon monoxide and the various nitrous oxides that spew forth from tail pipes and power plants as a result of improper combustion.  We breathe carbon dioxide every day, it's pleasant.  Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, we only breathe right before we die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

A new type of combustion chamber created by researchers at Georgia Tech. has reduced the amount of CO and NOX gasses created by combustion to below anything seen in tradtional combustion (> 10ppm and > 1ppm respectively.)  The new chamber might almost be called emissionless, if it weren't for all that pesky CO2 that it's still emitting. 

 

This ultra-low emission combustion chamber alters one simple precept of combustion.  Instead of mixing the fuel and the air before injecting them into the chamber, it injects the fuel and the air separately.  The flow of air and fuel into the chamber can be directed and altered in order to ensure a more complete and proper burn of the fuel.  The design is much more simple than other high-tech emissions reducing chambers and it could be cost effective for anything from power plants to household water heaters. 

We can also go ahead and add this to innovations that will be making flight more environmentally friendly as putting one of these in an single airplane engine could prevent literally tons of nitrogen oxides from being released into the environment.

 

 Via Georgia Tech.  Spotted at Hugg

The Vice Chairman of GM wanted us to know exactly why the auto-giant is headed for the dirt.  In a recent interview with Just-Auto, Lutz implied that hybrid vehicles are a useless technology that the American people have been duped into desiring.  And the Hummer is...I don't know, a very sound financial decision?

 

"[Hybrids are] the popular thing to do, many people believe that if we all drove hybrids the world would suddenly get cooler again and then it's the patriotic thing to do because if you drive a hybrid you will no longer be funding the Arab terrorists, and so forth."

Many people believe also that the internal combustion engine is a hundred-year-old, dangerous, outdated technology that our society is deeply dependent on and needs to be phased out.  No...he didn't say that. 

Lutz continued, "so, with all those beliefs out there, you have to do a hybrid for public policy reasons."

Right, apparently you don't have to have a hybrid because they're selling well.  Because selling cars has nothing to do with what GM does.

 

via LeftLane News 

 

Engadget seems to have some insider information concerning the next generation iPod.  There's already been discussion about the magnificently increased screen real estate, but so far, we just thought it was for watching movies.

Well, just in case you'd rather read the Homer's Iliad than watch Pitt's Troy, it is very likely that this fancy new iPod will come with eBook functionality, allowing the device to drop into a monochrome, high-contrast, low-power mode.  But, must important, Apple's iTunes store will very likely be carrying eBooks with basically the same DRM as the iTunes MP3s.

This juicy tidbit comes from someone at a major publishing house who was just ordered to send ALL of their manuscripts to Apple's Cuptertino headquarters.  Once again, that's ALL of their manuscripts. 

We've been waiting for something that might take eBooks into the mainstream.  If Apple manages to get every book published by a major publishing house for sale on line, we would definitely call that mainstream. 

 

via Engadget

 

USA Today has a short article this week about the Serpentine Solar Shuttle, an all-stainless-steel passenger ferry powered entirely by the sun.  The Shuttle is equipped with 27solar panels and two electrical engines allowing it to reach a maximum distance of 82 miles loaded with 42 passengers. 

It's not fast, but it is clean and, according to it's designer, Christoph Behling, it's the "most technologically advanced shuttle in the world."  The boat cost 20% more than a diesel boat of the same size and goes about 20% as fast, but it produces 100% less pollution.  Behling hopes that this boat will help spur development of further solar-powered transport.

The Shuttle is also designed to be plugged into Brittain's power grid when not in operation, turning the boat into a miniature power plant. 

The next step for Behling is a 300 passenger ferry designed to run on the Thames scheduled for launch in 2008.

The iRex iLiad is the most recent and also most expensive contribution to the e-book market.  The device comes equipped with a gorgeous high-res e-ink display and an internal wireless card.  The wireless card, theoretically, will only connect to the iLiad news service, which will send you whatever news you have subscribed to (some free content, some not.)

Well Ali, Arivero and R2D2 have created some pretty user-friendly hacks for the iLiad that, when used together, allow web browsing.  This is officially the only device on which you can browse the web online with an e-ink display.  iRex didn't do it on purpose, but you can do it.  The hack is simple and non-intrusive, but it does require the iLiad network card to be constantly on which will drain the batteries a bit.

Via MobileRead

This is what 40 million dollars in venture capital can do for the electric car. We at EcoGeek will never tire of small goofy-looking electric cars that work wonderfully in the city. But sometimes, it's nice to see things mixed up a bit...and mixed up with some spice!

• 0-60 in four seconds
• regenerative breaking
• 250 miles a charge
• $100,000 sticker price
• 248 HP
• 125 MPH top speed
• 6,831 Lithium Ion cells
• 53 kW-h of storage
• Two Seats
• Convertible
• 2352 mm wheel base
• Based on the Lotus Elise

I don't care who killed the electric car, this is what'll bring it back to life. Why market a new idea to the masses when they obviously don't want it. Market it to the rich, and then, eventually, everyone else will get one when they're affordable. Or, at least, that seems to be Tesla's philisophy. We certainly can't argue with all the pretty pictures.

While I'm waiting for the last half an hour before the Tesla Roadster is officially released, I figured I'd blog about a very different electric vehicle hitting the streets of London.  The brand new Mega-City is a two seater from the NICE Car Company (No Internal Combustion Engine, which I agree is nice.) 

Everything about the car is lower than the Tesla Roadster, so it's hard to be excited about the Mega-City on this particular evening.  The range is less than 50 miles and the top speed is around 45 mpg.  I imagine the pricetag is about a tenth that of the Roadster, but I'm not in the market for any kind of new car right now, so (since it's all just dreams anyways) I'm leaning away from the Mega-City. 

Of course, as the name implies, this car is for city driving, specifically for London driving, as that's the only place it's being marketed.  Either way, today sees two completely different approaches to a darned good idea and that's enough to get an EcoGeek downright excited. 

Excited enough to stay up for 20 more minutes until the Tesla Roadster is unveiled.

 

Josh Davis of Wired (the lucky bastard) was the first journalist to strap in to the long-awaited, top-secret Tesla Roadster.  There was supposed to be an embargo on press for another day or so, but Wired couldn't hold back and published a story and pictures a few hours ago.  And man...is it worth a look!

 

If you don't know about Tesla motors, it's a car company backed by the likes of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as well as a former head of Ebay and a founder of PayPal.  It's Silicon Valley's first car company and they aren't messing around.  The Roadster hits 60 in 3 seconds and is powered by around 7,000 small Li-ion batteries.  

 

So, yes, I want one.  And apparently it's going to be 'comparatively cheap' when it hits markets.  No word on the price.  Anyhow, feast your eyes and check out the excellent article and see-through image at Wired.  And keep your eyes open, a video and more pictures will be released at AutoBlog later tonight.

 

 

 

For hundreds of years intercontinental shipping was a wind-powered apparatus.  Those were the days, right?  So, I guess we can’t really file this under ‘innovation…’  Sails for ships, it’s a darn good idea, one whose time has come…again.   SkySails, a German company, has developed a retrofit package that will give any ship larger than 80 feet the ability to harness the power of the wind in order to travel more quickly and fuel-efficiently. 

 

The retrofit package, which includes sails as well as software for plotting efficient routes, costs from 300,000 to 3 million dollars and the first one was just purchased by Beluga Shipping who says the sail will help the company meet environmental goals. 

SkySails says their system can reduce fuel use by as much as one third and, as global shipping is such a ridiculously inefficient system, we hope they’re right.  We also hope that their estimate of 300 sales on the open ocean by 2011 is accurate.  

Via EcoFriend

OK, I'm having a hard time deciphering exactly how this works, but it is very cool.

 

I was browsing Cellular News when I found this tidbit:  Two Japanese firms with ridiculous names (DoCoMo and Aquafairy,) are joining their techy powers to create a mirco-fuel-cell, water-powered cell-phone charger. 

I'm having a hard time believing what I'm reading, but the story seems to be that a catalyst splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen without the need for additional energy, and the pure hydrogen is used in a thin film fuel cell producing two watts, enough to charge a cell-phone in 120 minutes.  It is probable that this isn't a true catalyst and must be occasionally replaced. 

 

If it's a true catalyst, it would seem we have more than a cell phone charger on our hands. 

 

The hydrogen fuel cell charger has a much greater power density than DoCoMo's recently-released methanol fuel cell charger.  This device has twice the wattage of the methanol fuel cells and is one fourth the size.  Also, water is easier to come across and more environmentally benign than methanol.  This leaves us wondering...what exactly is in that catalyst.  How does it work...where can I get some!

It's good to see the world moving away from traditional batteries.  If this device is any indication, the future of fuel cells is getting a lot brighter.

 

DoCoMo press release