Hydrogen Powered Boat??

Some graduate students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have renewed a 40 year old sailboat and made it run on hydrogen fuel. The boat is 22 feet long and manned by three people. The three students sailed it down the Hudson River in late September.


Read the full story here:
http://green.rpi.edu/

-Leslie

Mass-Marketing Wind Turbines

This Autumn you should be able to buy your own personal wind turbine from Ace Hardware. The turbine is made by Honeywell (look familiar? Look at your thermostat), who claims that this turbine can be efficient enough to power about 18% of the average home. While not quite as cheap as some of us would like (MSRP at a steep $4500 for one turbine), Honeywell and Ace Hardware are taking a big step in helping America become a little more green.

Note: You can also make your own small turbine from recycled parts on our website. The link is at the top of the page. Great project for kids this summer!


Read the whole story:
http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2009/20090047.html

-Leslie

Solar Powered Bus Stops

San Francisco has started to build solar powered bus stops. These bus stops will use solar panels located on the roof to power LED lights, the intercom, and Wi-Fi for the people waiting. San Francisco plans to have 1100 of these bus stops built by 2013.

Read more here:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-powered-wi-fi-bus-stops/#comments

-Leslie

New kind of solar energy plant.

Sunlight + molten salt = energy for 100,000 homes. There is only one plant, which won't be completed until 2013, near Las Vegas. These plants are meant to be used in the desert.

Read more:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/molten-salt-solar-plant/#comment-6631

-Leslie

Eastern Hemisphere Powers Up Stadiums

Taiwan is now home to the first completely solar powered sports stadium. There are 8,844 solar panels that can produce about 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year. As an added bonus, the World Games 2009 will be hosted here in July. Maybe the word about solar energy will be spread and this will inspire more stadiums or similar buildings.

Read the whole article here:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/new-solar-stadium-in-taiwan/#comments


-Leslie

Fun and Games

I'm going to bring you back from the Memorial Day weekend nice and easy... Thedailygreen.com made a nice little flash quiz called "How Green Do you Want to Be?" Its a fairly short and easy quiz. I liked it, its kinda fun.

Here's the link:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/how-green-are-you

Comment and tell us what you got!

-Leslie

Kites: No longer kids' toys

Well, they've figured out a way to harvest wind power using kites. The power harvested from one kite can apparently power about 10 houses (by the way, these kites are the size of parachutes). Scientists are now working on a kite that will hopefully be able to power about 50 houses.

Read the story and watch the video:
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/harnessing-high-winds-with-giant-kites/#comments


---
I have a comment to make that has no relevance to today's story. Is it just me or does it seem like there is a lack of wind farms in the southeast United States? It seems to me like that would be a hotspot for wind farms because of the Atlantic Ocean and Tropical Storm/Hurricane season in the summer. I know that all the way up by the Great Lakes we feel the effects of hurricanes, and I can't imagine what kind of power a wind farm could create in the aftermath of one of these storms.

If you've read this, you're welcome to leave a comment or discuss. I will try to get back to you.
---

-Leslie

House approves multi-billion dollar bill for green schools

Now, normally I would try to leave politics out of this particular blog, but I feel like we just can't ignore this one. Still being in high school, I realize that most of our nation's schools could use a lot of improvement- like ceilings that don't leak and textbooks that aren't 15 or 20 years old. The House of Representitives has just approved a bill worth billions (about 6.4 billion to be exact) that will not only help improve our nations schools, but do it in a green way.

Read more here:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GREEN_SCHOOLS?SITE=NYSAR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


-Leslie

Good idea or desperation?

Scientists in Europe have announced a race car that runs on chocolate waste and vegetable oil. Now, I don't know if chocolate waste is a huge problem in Europe, or if scientists are using anything they can find to power cars. And who thought of chocolate?

Well, anyway, I guess Willie Wonka has a car now. And its fast.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_CHOCOLATE_RACER?SITE=CAACS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


-Leslie

Solar energy brings hope for India

Solar energy could shortly be improving the lives of India's poor in rural areas of the country. India is looking to replace the mass amount of kerosene lamps in the country with solar lights, which is a safer, more environmentally friendly alternative.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090427102235.htm


-Leslie

Electric....Unicycle?

This new "bike" is the brainchild of 18-year old Canadian Ben Gulak. I can't even begin to explain this, you're going to have to look for yourself:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2837829.html

http://dantcer.multiply.com/journal/item/492 (no pictures)

Note: Its hard to find an article with a lot of information on this subject. If you want to find more out, please search in Google or your favorite search engine.

-Leslie

Plug-In Motors

Plug-In Motors in Missouri is a company that will take your gasoline vehicle and completely convert it into an electric vehicle (EV). While not cheap (between $75,000 to $200,000 per vehicle), you may just have the only completely electric Ford or Toyota in town, while saving the environment.


http://cleantech.com/news/4433/ev-conversion-startup-focus-ford


-Leslie

Eco-Friendly Resort????

Catalyx and the Ramona Indian Reservation in California plan on building an environmentally friendly tourist resort in Anza Valley, which is on the reservation. The resort is planned to be run almost entirely on renewable energy and will recycle what it can, like water, sewage, and restaurant food waste.


Read the full story here:
http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/04-29-2009/0005015557&EDATE=


-Leslie

Blue Earth

Samsung has come out with a prototype for a solar powered, touch screen cell phone, called the Blue Earth. The phone is made from recycled plastic and the battery will charge when the phone is left in the sun.

Click for the actual news story:
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/22198/23222/samsung-blue-earth-solar-phone.phtml

-Leslie

Greensburg, Kansas

Appropriately named, Greensburg, Kansas is officially going green. After being destroyed by a tornado, the town has decided to rebuild using green technology, utilizing solar and wind power. They've also decided to build a series of "Eco-Homes", which are extremely energy efficient. We should look up to this community and use them as role models.

Read more:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/29/green.kansas.town/index.html


-Leslie

Jones Soda Goes Green for Earth Day

Employees at Jones Soda headquarters go green for a day by shutting off the electricity and using pedal bikes to power parts of the building.

Read the print story here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30369223/

-Leslie

Our first blog!

Well, I thought I would kick things off with a blog about Daniel Burd, a 16-year old student from Ontario. Daniel won the national science fair competition in Canada with an experiment in which he can significantly increase the decay rate of plastic bags- and by "significantly" I mean "by hundreds of years".

Read more here:
http://news.therecord.com/article/354044


-Leslie