Green Tech

The cleanest city in the entire world will take root next month in Abu Dhabi, a place best known for its oil.

At the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, a model of Masdar City is scheduled to be unveiled on Monday. The three-day conference is hosted by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co.'s Masdar Initiative, which is investing in a range of ventures, including clean-tech start-ups.

In February, Masdar (which means "the source" in Arabic) will break ground on the six-square-kilometer city that its backers say will be the first zero-pollution, zero-waste city. The city … Read more

It's sort of like an organ transplant for cars.

Transonic Combustion, which has been relatively secretive until now, has created a fuel injection system that will let diesel engines run on regular gasoline. Diesel engines get better mileage than regular gas engines, explained CEO Mike Cheiky in an interview. However, diesels typically emit more particulates. Gas is also far more readily available than diesel in the U.S. Insert Transonic's components into a diesel engine and you get the best of both worlds.

Additionally, the company's fuel injection system dramatically increases the internal compression in an engine, … Read more

Although it's on the fringe of Europe geographically, Finland has for years been at the center of the continent's tech industry.

The country gave birth to cell phone leader Nokia and has emerged as a place where multinationals like to recruit and erect labs. The government and local entrepreneurs are now moving into clean technology.

It can be traced back to policies set up in the early 1980s, said Matti Vanhanen, the country's prime minister, during an interview with CNET News.com on Wednesday afternoon. The country saw the dawning of globalization and realized it would have … Read more

Venture capital investment in green-tech companies topped $5 billion in North America and Europe last year and shows no signs of slowing down.

The Cleantech Group on Thursday published results of its quarterly numbers that show investment in the sector was stronger than expected.

Investment leaped from $3.6 billion in 2006 to $5.18 billion in 2007.

Energy generation was the most active sector with 172 deals, totaling $2.75 billion.

Behind that was energy storage at $471 million, transportation at $445 million, energy efficiency at $356 million, and recycling and waste with $291 million.

Cleantech Group said that … Read more

Cheap, clean hydrogen is the holy grail in the green-technology world, and Nanoptek says it could have part of the answer.

The Maynard, Mass.-based company, which Wednesday announced that it has raised $4.7 million, has come up with a low-cost, durable titania electrode that can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Sunlight hits the electrode, and the electrode splits the light into a positive charge (called a hole) and an electron. Before the two charges can rejoin, the electron gets captured by the electrode and then is exploited to split water. Silicon solar cells operate on the … Read more

The biodiesel industry in Germany is nearing a state of collapse because of a tax increase that kicked in at the first of the year, according to a report on Reuters.

Biodiesel refiners in Germany are only producing at 10 percent capacity, according to the Reuters story from a European biodiesel conference. That's down from 20 percent the year before. Because of the downturn, some biodiesel manufacturers are taking apart their factories and selling the equipment to manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada.

The problem? Like solar energy, biofuels still largely depend upon government support and subsidies. Biodiesel … Read more

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have devised a technique for turning some of the harder parts of a plant into fuel, a breakthrough that could further bring down the cost of biofuels.

Two of the major components of plant material are cellulose and lignin. Lignin essentially turns fibers into wood. It hardens cell walls and binds cellulose fibers together. It's the reason we have coal. If ancient plants hadn't had lignin, microorganisms would have eaten them and thus, the plants would never have been transformed into rock. (There's your fun primordial fact for the day.) … Read more

Rice University and the University of Texas, in conjunction with some of the world's largest energy companies, have banded together to form the Advanced Energy Consortium, which will try to exploit material science and natural gas to expand oil and gas production.

One of the decades-long problems in the oil industry has been getting the stuff out of the ground. The underground pressure is relieved relatively quickly; although oil drillers can artificially increase pressure by injecting gases underground and other techniques, it only improves yields incrementally. Typically, more than 60 percent of the oil in a given deposit stays … Read more

With green issues dominating the headlines at this week's Detroit auto show, you may find yourself wondering how much it costs to assuage the gas-guzzling guilt you feel when picking up your next rental car. The convenient answer is $1.25 (plus applicable taxes). That is the price at which Enterprise, National, and Alamo are selling carbon offsets to their customers in a carbon-offset program launching today. According to the companies, the $1.25 offset charge represents the cost of offsetting the CO2 impact of the average rental vehicle operating in the company's fleet. TerraPass, the company responsible … Read more