photo: Teanaway Solar Reserve The Pacific Northwest may be famous for a lot of things, but overly abundant sunshine probably isn't on the top of most people's lists. But never mind that. Just announced is a solar power project which, when completed in 2011, could well be the largest in Washington. Enter the 75 MW Teanaway Solar Reserve: ... ...

a map of the US rendered using both normal colors on the lower half, and energy-minimizing colorson the upper half; Image via OLED Display Cell phone companies have been looking at the transition to OLED technology for mobile screens in no small part because of the energy-saving possibilities. Samsung has been leading the way with LG and others no...

In tropical forests across South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, over a million hardwood trees have had plastic barcodes hammered into them, with the hope that IDing the trees will help with sustainable forestry practices and importation to countries like the US, as well as prevent illegal logging of the coveted hardwoods. Could going the groc...

The city of Milan will soon be home to a 2.9 million-square-foot, 18-MW solar array atop the Milan Trade Fair.  The array will become the largest rooftop array in the world, surpassing the current record-holder, a 12-MW array on the General Motors factory in Zaragoza, Spain. In comparison, the largest rooftop array in the U.S. is the 2.37-MW array...

Fisker has established their timeline for delivering the Karma plug-in hybrid to customers.  Originally, the company planned to start production sometime in 2009, but didn't have a set delivery window, but now they've set a schedule to begin production at the end of the year and start delivering the cars in May or June 2010. That is, of course, if...

With computers taking on more entertainment roles where user interaction is not as frequent, typical activity sensing power management sometimes becomes an annoyance rather than a helpful tool. A new webcam application called PecoBOO (with an emphasis on the 'eco') developed by the UK-based environmental computer manufacturer VeryPC uses facia...

Tire maker Yokohama has begun selling a new type of tire made mainly from orange oil instead of petroleum.  The substitution plus the use of natural rubber allows the tires to be 80 percent petroleum-free. The concept for the Super E-spec was introduced by the company a year ago and won the Popular Mechanics Editor's Choice Award in 2008.  Beyond...

Photo via Drew Wheeler The Pacific Garbage Patch is drawing in quite the rush of explorers and scientists, from David de Rothschild to Project Kaisei and the research team's efforts to explore clean-up options. It's also drawing in Algalita Marine Research Foundation's research vessel the Alguita. The crew is ... ...

Photo: New Energy Foundation Small towns and communities all over the world are looking for solutions to their energy needs. Going off-grid is not just a choice for individuals, the way it sometimes seems here at Treehugger. No, you will never be able to live totally away from anyone else. Off-grid doesn't mean you are on your own, out there in th...

Photo: Stirling Energy Systems New and Improved Solar Thermal Collection Dish While a lot of people think about photovoltaic panels when "solar power" is mentioned, solar thermal must not be underestimated. One of the players in that field is Stirling Energy Systems (SES), who we've written about before when they set a new world re... ...

Photo via stock.xchng by bouwm019 Should we be eating more beef in order to slow global warming? It sounds counterintuitive, but it may be so: Cattle could be part of the whole ecological equation to solving climate change and restoring healthy, bio-diverse ecosystems. I am a vegetarian, but I maintain there is a place for grass-fed beef on family...

The above video shows what augmented reality - taking in the real world on a device and layering computer generated data over it - could mean. Essentially, you can point your phone at something and the data for whatever it's seeing pops up on your screen. Here... ...

photo: Cliff via flickr Brazil's widely know for running a whole heck of a lot of cars on sugarcane-based ethanol. There are lot's of problems to be pointed out in growing it, but sugarcane is one thing that the country definitely has in spades. Which is why Colorado-based Amyris Biotechnologies is opening up a demonstration plant in Campinas whic...

Images via JDF International Design Competition What might happen with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch if we were to sic an army of robot ocean scrubbers on them? This concept by Chinese industrial designer Ye Yao just might be the start of that very possibility. It's a robot that could detect the difference between trash, fish and oil, and clean ...

In the computer generated waste land of Wall-E, a garbage-collecting robot is the last survivor on Earth, hoarding quaint treasures from the trash in a dogged attempt to find some slice of happiness amidst the ecological devastation left behind by consumerism. In real-life Italy, where a noxious mafia-run waste industry has turned some landscapes ...

Images via A+R The mantra of green is "Less is More" and that includes kitchen devices. Which is why this special designer spaghetti measurer is one of those things that makes me stop and ask, "Seriously? One more kitchen device that does something pointless?"... ...

Photos via Sandia National Laboratories Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Pittsburgh have found that salt can be stretchy, and not as brittle as previously thought, in the absence of water. This can affect not only our current desalination processes, but also how we look at cloud formation and ozone destruction.... ...

Image credit: NextLight Solar 407MW Solar PV Plants to be Followed by Many More The idea of utilizing deserts to generate solar power is an attractive one. Of course, they would come with their own ecological price, but some claim that solar power stations in a few deserts could power the entire world - and that's got to be an improvement on mount...

A report compiled for Australia’s peak scientific research body, the CSIRO, has come up with the startling conclusion that contrary to the common view, electricity costs to Australia’s most populated city, Sydney, may work out less, if more renewable energy was deployed, instead of building traditional coal-fired power stations. Picking up on ...

Photos from Agua y Tierra Network in Kochi prefecture, Japan Many rural towns and communities can benefit from hydroelectric power solutions, especially small scale projects that don't require massive investments. In Kochi prefecture, one town decided to go micro-hydro and install small power plants. They found that it took some effort, but after ...