Crisp doesn’t have to mean battery operated. In fact, we think you can’t get any more crisp and any more green than a good bike — and that is especially true for a bike that is designed to get people out of their car and back on a bike.

Introduced as the answer to the millions of American adults who don’t really ride a bike any more, the Trek Lime screams out “ride me” to those folks who might be a little intimated by today’s highly engineered, full-suspension bikes with multi-bracket gear systems, disk brakes and 27-speed grip shifters.

With its big, comfortable spring-loaded seat, curved, adjustable handlebars, three-speed automatic transmission and pedal brakes, the Trek Lime is designed to make riding a bike as enjoyable today as it was when you were a kid.

And at $580, the The Trek Lime, which was recently awarded the “People’s Design Award” at the 10th annual National Design Awards, is a real value for an every-day commuter.

Shimano market research showed that many people find shifting and braking controls on traditional bikes too complex. That’s why Shimano invented its new ‘Coasting’ platform — an automatic-shifting three-speed drivetrain tucked into a sleek housing with few visible moving parts.

All tucked away under the Lime’s bottom bracket are the guts of Coasting:  an electric control box, that measures speed, and a dynamo front hub that powers the control unit and shifts up or down.

Coasting, available on bikes from just three brands right now, takes the guesswork out of shifting and braking. And together with the other technology-softening features, it helps make Lime the kind of bike people can just sit back and ride.

via arch1design: Bicycling

The ASUS U6V and U2E Bamboo Series Notebook computers use industrial-strength two-year-old Moso bamboo for virtually the entire casing of the product. “We spent the last couple of years perfecting and working with bamboo,” said Jonney Shih, Chairmen of ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated. “It is trendy yet responsible.”

Pound-for-pound, bamboo also has a regeneration rate that is simply unmatched in nature. It has been known to grow two feet in just 24 hours and using less energy in to manufacture than those made out of metal alloys from refined petroleum.

While I know the company is in the business of making and selling things, I don’t think they should be trying to sell the notion that being green is only about buying stuff. According to ASUS’s micro-site for the bamboo notebooks, “Being green is a simple matter of making smart, environmentally-conscious purchasing decisions.”

Sometimes being green is a simple matter of making no purchase is no purchase at all.

The Windflip is designed to transport and install floating wind turbines. (Image: Windflip)

Windflip vessel designed to deliver floating wind turbines to their deepwater moorings easily and efficiently.

The Hywind floating turbine–as well as a handful of other potentially-viable commercial floating wind turbine designs–has received loads of attention from renewable energy enthusiasts for good reason: floating turbines can be placed further offshore, in deeper water. Deep-water wind turbines tap stronger, more consistent wind resources and reduce the likelihood of NIMBY opposition.

But if floating wind turbines are to become cost competitive, certain manufacturing and delivery processes will need to be perfected to facilitate and hasten their adoption.

One such breakthrough design in floating wind turbine delivery and installation was developed by a team of graduate students at the institute of Marine Technology at the Norwegian School of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The Windflip is a vessel designed to take technologies like Hywind’s floating turbine out to sea from their construction or assembly point out to the location where they will be moored. To launch the wind turbines the entire vessel flips 90 degrees and releases the wind turbines in upright position. The Windflip vessel can take one or two floating turbines at a time.

Here’s a short animation of how the Windflip does its highly specialized work. Very cool stuff:

The Energy Collective

The Solar Impulse Foundation's airplane taking its first motorized voyage in Switzerland.

Solar Impulse takes successful solar-powered spin, engineers ready plane for February flight.

At the Dübendorf airfield in Switzerland on Thursday, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA taxied down the runway powered by its own engines for the very first time.  The solar-powered plane was built by The Solar Impulse Foundation and is designed to fly with its power generated by solar panels–both day and night.
Not quite ready for prime time? Maybe. During the test trip for the HB-SIA on Friday, the plane never left the ground, nor was it ever supposed to.

“The runway tests are necessary and involve a certain amount of risk for the landing gear. The chances of damaging the plane are greatest during low-speed ground manoeuvres. The faster the plane goes the more lift it gets from its wings, meaning that there is less load on the wheels,” explains André Borschberg, co-founder and CEO of Solar Impulse.

With the wingspan of a Boeing 747-400 and weighing a little less than a Toyota Camry, the craft has a tremendous amount of surface area for generating both upward lift and solar energy.

After making its first public appearance in June, the solar-powered HB-SIA appears to be on track for manned flight by early 2010.

“We just can’t wait to see it fly, culminating 6 years of work”, said Bertrand Piccard, the initiator of Solar Impulse. But Piccard and others also realize they still have some work cut out for them.

The next stage in development for the plane will involve taking the prototype up to its 35 km/h take-off speed and performing several “flea hops”. According to Solar Impulse, the next step is critical because they will be collecting data that has been completely unexplored thus far.

If all goes well with the flea hops, the Solar Impulse team will prepare the plane to for its two-hour maiden voyage in February. Pending a successful trip, the team will likely build a new craft for a trip across the Atlantic in 2012.

All images courtesy of the Solar Impulse Foundation

Nissan's all-electric LEAF.

While Toyota, Ford, and other car companies are focusing much of their efforts on hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, Nissan is making a big bet on the future of electric cars. The company’s first all-electric car, the LEAF, made its North American debut on Friday in Los Angeles, well in advance of its availability to the general public in 2012.

“The LEAF is a new paradigm of the car,” said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn at the LEAF unveiling event at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles on Friday. “LEAF represents a totally new transformational technology that will change the way people drive, use, and power their vehicles. And the time is right for this breakthrough.”

Nissan said the Nissan LEAF and its 100-mile range will first be available to fleets in 2011 and made available to the general public in 2012, focusing in particular on five or six geographic regions where EV-charging networks are in development.

The Cyprus wood case ads a unique look to the phone while potentially offering a  more environmentally sound case than traditional plastic encased phones.  Unlike petroleum based plastics, wood is a low energy, natural and renewable material.

Rather than pillaging dwindling forests, the Touch Wood makes use of surplus wood left over from forest thinning operations.  There are no artificial paints or colors added to the wood, however, this phone is not hand carved.  It’s made in a proprietary compression molding process and their press release doesn’t mention what (if any) chemicals are used in this process.

Its difficult to say at such an early stage how environmentally friendly the Touch Wood actually is, however it is on the right path and will hopefully become more than just a questionably named prototype.

Best Buy was the first retailer to begin selling the “green” portable fuel cell for smart phones and PDAs. Now T-Mobile has bought-in to Medis Technologies’ greenwash campaign by beginning to sell the environmental train-wreck that is the Xtreme Portable Power Solution.

Cell-phone manufacturers are doing all kinds of things to both make their products a little greener and to make their products appear greener. Now, cellphone accessory manufacturers are trying to get in the game as Medis Technologies Ltd. has begun selling the world’s first personal, portable, fuel cell power system designed for smart phones.

Medis claims that the $40 unit delivers “20 watt-hours of power to charge a phone multiple times or an advanced flashlight for up to 100 hours before the energy is consumed.”

Fuel cells work by producing electricity through a chemical reaction arising from the combination of a fuel (hydrogen, for instance) with oxygen. And while fuel cells show some promise for larger applications, it is not entirely clear whether smaller units like these are any “greener” than regular batteries.

Medis CEO Jose Mejia claims that the electricity produced by the fuel cell “is generated without emitting elements harmful to the environment, such as carbon or carbon dioxide, and without any heavy metals.” The company also says the Xtreme products are easily recyclable (meaning you can mail the unit back once it is spent), but the real question is, how often will this actually happen?

“Fresh green electricity can be made available when and where you need it – under any climatic conditions,” says Mejia, who added that the gadget is “probably the greenest energy source on Planet Earth.”

But the “green-ness” of the new portable fuel cell is being challenged by some who claim it’s no better (or even worse) than keeping an extra battery for your cell phone.

“The device not only contains lots more heavy metals than lithium batteries, this device is huge!” writes one commenter at Inhabitat. The fuel cell, the commenter says, is “About 10 to 20 times the size of a typical cell phone battery with a huge amount of plastic and other materials with half lives of thousands of years as well. Green? Not yet.”

No, not yet.

Canadian farm uses biogas from potatoes for power. (Photo: net_efekt)

Cavendish Farms, a Canadian potato product producer has finished construction of its anaerobic digestion facility in Prince Edward Island that will generate biogas from potato waste. The ‘potato-gas’ project is believed to be the first of its kind in the world.

Cavendish has used anaerobic sludge from the treatment of its wastewater as a soil conditioner for more than ten years, but in 2004 began evaluating the possibility of using converted biogas from the anaerobic digester to power the boilers for two on-site processing plants. Two years later, construction began on the addition.

The company expects the biogas generated from 360 tons of feedstock per day from potato plant residues, starch, frying oil and aerobic sludge from the wastewater treatment process to reduce its fossil fuel needs by 2.6 million gallons per year and eliminate the need for trucking the potato waste from the processing plant, cutting the need for 900 miles of trucking per day.

Source: Biomass Magazine
Image: net_efekt

LG's prototype solar e-book. Photo: LG Display

LG Display has developed a prototype thin-film solar cell designed to bring another kind of charge to the burgeoning e-book market. The specially-designed thin film cell was developed in-house by LG Display for the standard 6″ electronic book interface and recently showcased in Sony’s e-book at an event in Seoul.

The cell is thinner than a credit card and weighs just 20 grams so it won’t significantly increase the weight of an electronic book reader. Engineers at LG Display say the cell is also flexible and relatively stable against changes in the external environment.

Head of the Solar Cell Office at LG Display, Mr. Ki Yong Kim, noted that “The idea of e-book combined with solar cell will offer users the added benefit of longer usage. We will continue to provide users with enhanced convenience and value to solidify our lead in next-generation, environmentally friendly products.”

But how much time does it take to charge the e-book? Engineers say about four to five hours of sunlight would extend the running time of the e-book’s battery a full day without the need for additional charging. But most electronic books already exhibit a long battery life because the units only draw power while the page is being turned. And with expected increases in solar energy conversion, people who spend time reading outdoors may rarely, if ever, need to charge their e-books.

While the addition of a solar panel could mean regular readers never have to worry about charging the devices again, they shouldn’t expect that anytime soon. LG Display says the products will not be ready for full commercial roll-out until 2014 - but by that time, engineers plan to have increased the energy conversion efficiency rate to 14%, almost one and a half times the efficiency of the current prototype.

Image via LG Display

Company hopes to build 4MW floating wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts—the first of its kind in the world.

Boston-based Blue H USA has submitted a permit to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to test a structure that would be used for floating offshore wind turbines.

Blue H USA is applying to test a demonstration unit on the outer continental shelf approximately 23 miles off the Island of Martha’s Vineyard and about 32 miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island.

If all goes well with the test platform, Blue H hopes to develop a 120-turbine, 420-megawatt wind farm in a 40 square mile area near the test site.

Currently, only two floating wind turbine projects exist in the world. StatoilHydro’s HyWind project in Norway and a two-turbine pilot project operated by SeaEnergy Renewables, is located off the east coast of Scotland.

The plan

The location of the proposed test site is just 30 miles southwest of the proposed location of the embattled Cape Wind offshore project in Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind would be located in what is probably one of the best places on the East Coast to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm: in the near-shore, protected and shallow waters of Handkerchief Shoals. But that very proximity to land is what also has made it a very difficult place to build a wind farm — NIMBY opposition to Cape Wind has made the permitting process messy, expensive and long.

But floating turbines can be placed in much deeper waters, where the winds are stronger and more consistent—and the turbines can be virtually invisible from shore, alleviating some of the NIMBY pressure likely to bubble up from near-shore projects.

The technology

Blue H’s Submerged Deepwater Platform technology has been adapted from technology used on offshore drilling platforms and is now being applied to offshore wind power.

Each of Blue H’s units consists of a buoyant steel body, which is held ‘semi-submerged’ under water by chains. The chains connect the buoyant body to a counterweight on the sea bottom, keeping the buoyant body constantly tensioned.

Unlike a conventional wind turbine that rests on a monopole or tripod driven into the sea floor, Blue H utilizes a submerged deepwater platform anchored to the sea floor with pilings driven into the seabed. Blue H’s technology can be deployed in water depths from 30 to 300 meters and the proposed test will be conducted at a water depth of 51 meters (167 ft).

The unit will be constructed in a shipyard and will be towed to the proposed deployment site. On arrival at the site, the structure will be sunk into place.

This particular platform will be submerged 66 feet below mean sea level and anchored with a counterweight. A tower with monitoring equipment will be mounted on the platform and will stand approximately 197 feet above the ocean’s surface.

The demonstration unit will remain in place for one year, gathering engineering and environmental data and transmitting it to a shore station via satellite using a combination of photovoltaic cells and battery packs.

The Martha’s Vineyard Times