Lithium-ion batteries could store ten times as much energy per kg of batteries if they were constructed with silicon anodes (compared to traditional li-ion batteries). That is a gravimetric energy density of 1,000 watt-hours per kg. This could almost eliminate the range issue that electric vehicles have, but there is one problem:

That solar powered wireless keyboard for Mac from Logitech sure would have come in handy last weekend when Hurricane Irene hit my state.

Solar energy is a common method of clothes-drying in many parts of the world. However, hanging clothes on a line costs time, rather than money, and depends on the weather. The German company Miele has removed the weather and the extra time from the equation altogether by designing the world’s first solar-heated dryer.

It is not your typical cigar but, in its decidedly feminine form (complete with a double helium bag, flat bottom and skirts), this hybrid dirigible is buoyed by both military and civilian contracts. There are hybrid structural designs that cross a rigid frame and an inflated blimp but this Hybrid Air Vehicle also combines properties of an aircraft and a hovercraft

Professor Prof. Yuji Ohya of the Kyushu University research institute for applied mechanics (RIAM) has been working with a team to improve the efficiency of wind turbines. Combining an inlet shroud, a diffuser, and a brim into a wind lens, power output has been improved by a factor of 2 to 5 times in several experiments. Turbine noise is also decreased.

The Macondo Prospect, where British Petroleum’s ill fated offshore drill rig exploded and sank last year killing eleven men is a reservoir of oil in the Mississippi Canyon area of the northern Gulf of Mexico about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Not long ago, we saw the development of salt-tolerant crops in areas that couldn’t be irrigated or were damaged by a flood of salt-water. And then came the massive wave swamping northern Japan last March — it would seem like good timing, but it’s difficult to grow even salt-tolerant strains of anything in the wake of that mess.

Methane is a naturally formed fuel, and if left untended, an explosive substance or a dangerous greenhouse gas.

Today’s fishwrap is tomorrow’s biofuel: a research team from Tulane University has found a low cost, energy efficient way to recycle ordinary newspapers into butanol biofuel, which can be used as a drop-in replacement for gasoline. The secret ingredient is a bacteria found in animal droppings, which naturally produces butanol as it digests the news. That’s not as far-fetched as it may seem, because the animal waste-to-biofuel connection is being explored on a number of different fronts, and bacteria are emerging front and center in the new world of low cost biofuel.

Nikola Tesla created a device for wireless energy transfer using high frequency electromagnetic radio waves over 100 years ago. Ultimately, we will be using wireless transfer of energy to at least charge electric vehicles.

There was more than one new product announcement at Mercedes’ captive Smart brand this week, but even though this one rides the (literal?) coattails of its new-and-improved Electric Drive brother, it may still be the smartest Smart yet!

A recent column in the New York Times suggested that land use is the greatest environmental problem facing new renewable energy.  While getting the facts terribly wrong, it opens a door to talk about the advantages of distributed generation rather than large, central-station power generation.  A prime example is a unique proposal by Republic Solar Highways to put solar PV on highway right-of-way in California.