Struggling Japanese Automaker Suzuki hopes it will fare better in India than it has in the US. To help make sure it does, Suzuki introduced Indian press to a full line-up of clean-burning CNG vehicles earlier this week.

The company has a thin film assembly line with an annual capacity of 40 MW. The company also has several manufacturing facilities around the country and exports solar panels to Germany, Italy in addition to setting up solar installations within the country.

"This is the first demonstration of a new class of biofuel cells," said Shelley Minteer, Ph.D., who presented the report. "When further developed, these devices have the potential for replacing disposable and rechargeable batteriesin a wide variety of consumer electronics and other products. It is the first such device based on one of the microscopic parts of the billions upon billions of cells that make up the body."

"Our research could pave the way for turning electricity from the atmosphere into an alternative energy source for the future," said study leader Fernando Galembeck, Ph.D. His research may help explain a 200-year-old scientific riddle about how electricity is produced and discharged in the atmosphere. "Just as solar energy could free some households from paying electric bills, this promising new energy source could have a similar effect," he maintained.

The left side of the chart shows the different sources of energy and the amounts produced. Following the flow of energy from left to right, the pink boxes show where the energy is consumed (electrical generation, residential, commercial, industrial and transportation) while the shades of gray show the amount of energy lost or rejected – often through heat loss. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

A new joint venture research work at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, supported by Department of Energy and DARPA has come up with a new solar energy conversion process that can potentially double the efficiency of solar cells. Stanford engineers have discovered this new and totally different process to harvest energy from sun.

Even though wind energy is a clean and cost-effective source of energy, it does have one slight drawback: no one can control when the wind blows. This occasionally leads to difficulties in matching consumers’ demand for energy with the available supply.

A group of engineers at Bridgestone America’s Technical Center in Akron, along with students from DeLaSalle School in Kansas City have recently developed a new all-electric car which has been successfully tested on Bridgestone’s Texas Proving Grounds.

Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC), an industry leader in tidal, river and deep-water ocean current energy technology and projects, announced today that its Beta Power System, the largest ocean energy "power plant" ever installed in U.S. waters, has successfully generated grid-compatible power from tidal currents at its Cobscook Bay site in Eastport, Maine.

One of the largest orchards in Massachusetts has just cut its utility bill 80% with a $1.1 million 220 KW solar power plant. The state of Massachusetts helped Carlson Orchards with grants totaling $595,000 to help in the installation of the 1,050 solar photovoltaic panels.

Who would have imagined that teabags can be used for purposes other than those of packaging tea leaves, and filtering their flavors? No one else except South Africa’s Stellenbosch University scientists led by Eugene Cloete, who invented a kind of teabag which, instead of filtering tea impurities, purifies water at the lowest price and energy consumption possible.

According to the researchers at Edinburgh Napier University, whisky is being used to develop a new biofuel, which could power cars and even airplanes in a few years. They found a new way to produce biofuel from two main byproducts of the whisky distilling process: “draff”, the spent grains and “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills.

When you think of electric cars, you generally mean two terms in which they exist: autonomy vs charging infrastructure. These two words compete with each other to a certain point, because higher autonomy means less infrastructure needed, hence faster adoption by the market.

Finns get almost one third of their electricity second-hand, after industrial users have had first dibs at it. Vesa Koivisto of Fortum (the largest utility in Scandinavia) told me that paper mills actually supply about one third of the electricity on the grid. Why?

This has led to the increased production of PV cells not only in Europe but also in Taiwan and china. China alone produces 2GW solar cells annually. In February 2010 the price of electricity using PV panel is $4.27 per watt. Today the price of photovoltaic cells of different companies is different. The General electric solar panel costs $ 228 to $385. This trend would decline with more competition.

In the under developed countries like India and Bangladesh masses ride bicycle rickshaw to carry commuters. This practice has been in use from centuries and this has become their culture now. In India the pedal power industry still accounts for 18 percent of the total industry. India has the largest bicycle industry after china. Along with the energy benefits that pedal power offers, bicycle has proved to be the great ride.

An innovative clean energy collaboration between auto manufacturer Ford, utility Detroit Edison and energy storage systems builder Xtreme Power plans to bring to Michigan one of its largest solar energy systems, which will be used to help in the production and usage of electric vehicles. The system will be installed at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant.

The federal government has turned to a 130-year-old Hawaii sugar grower for help in powering the Navy and weaning the nation off a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. It will spend at least $10 million over the next five years to fund research and development at Maui cane fields for crops capable of fueling Navy fighter jets and ships. The project also may provide farmers in other warm climates with a model for harvesting their biofuel crops.

There are two types of CFLs in use. One is the integrated and the other is non-integrated. The two main parts of a non-integrated CFL are a gas filled tube called bulb or burner and magnetic or electronic ballasts. An electric current from the ballast flows through the gas filled tube (mercury vapour) causing it to emit UV light.

Two heavy-duty manufacturing powerhouses, Peterbilt and Eaton Corporation, have teamed up to give garbage trucks a fuel saving green twist. This spring, Peterbilt announced its new Model 320 Hybrid which uses Eaton’s new hydraulic hybrid system to achieve up to 30% in fuel conservation, along with a consequent reduction in emissions and greatly reduced maintenance costs, too. Now four of the sustainable behemoths are set for their first run in Michigan, in the green-minded city of Anne Arbor.

A forty acre, six megawatt solar power plant is providing the energy to run a water treatment operation at a Superfund site in California, and the U.S. EPA is so pleased with the results that they’ve produced a detailed case study to help promote similar projects across the country.

The new bus shelter was designed and installed by Solade Concepts based in Corona, CA. The solar structure consists of products and solutions proposed by Go Green Solar, based in Los Angeles, CA, which include six SANYO HIT-210NKHA6 210-watt HIT Power® solar panels with six Enphase Energy M210-84-240-S12 micro inverters and a LED lighting solution in an on-grid solar system.

Some of the major companies submitting bids for this project are Reliance Industries’ Solar Energy Group, Wipro Ecoenergy and construction giant Punj Lloyd. This is a novel initiative by the Indian government which is trying to initiate a massive country-wide solar energy revolution which could eventually result in ballooning of the total installed capacity to 20,000 MW in the next 12 years.

A newly developed A/C refrigerant developed by Honeywell for the European market to have 99.7% lower global warming potential (GWP) will be used by GM to cool its entire fleet of 2013 models. The new low emission coolant was developed by Honeywell initially to meet EU standards which have long been much more strict than US NHTSA standards governing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

DuPont, a science-based products and services company has created a new polymer-based separator for lithium-ion batteries that will improve their life and power and make them perfectly suited for electric and hybrid vehicles.

One relatively new player in the U.S. solar parking lot field is EEPro, an offshoot of the German company EEPro GmbH, which started up operations in North Carolina last year. Its main product consists of photovoltaic units mounted on steel frames, which dovetails neatly with support for renewable energy by the United Steelworkers and other labor groups that see a rich trove of new green jobs in the emerging green economy.