Green Tech

Contraception would be the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon emissions worldwide between 2010 and 2050, according to a study by the London School of Economics.

The report, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost," (PDF) determined that if contraception was made widely available between 2010 and 2050 to women and men around the world who wished to use it, the reduction in unwanted births could result in saving 34 gigatonnes (one billion tonnes) of carbon emissions. That's roughly 60 years worth of U.K. emissions or 6 years worth of U.S. emissions.

The cost for supplying, and distributing contraception over those 40 years would cost an estimated $220 billion, or $7 for each tonne of carbon emissions avoided. It's cheaper than the next most efficient low-carbon technology, wind power, which would cost $24 per tonne or $1 trillion to prevent the same amount (one billion tonnes) of carbon emissions from being produced, according to the report.

In its per-tonne cost analysis, the report also calculated $51 for solar, $57 to $83 for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, $92 for plug-in hybrid vehicles, and $131 for electric vehicles.

The contraception as carbon reduction conclusion was based on United Nations statistics that 40 percent of worldwide pregnancies are unintentional. If contraception was made available to people who wanted it, those unintentional births could be reduced by as much as 72 percent. Between 2010 and 2050, that would result in curbing the world population growth by half a billion people, according to the UN statistics.

That is a conservative estimate, according to the report, since the UN figures are based solely on the lack of contraception access for married couples, and did not include unintended pregnancy statistics for unmarried women.

The study was funded by the U.K. environmental group Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which has argued that a more responsible attitude toward reproduction could be the answer to many environmental issues such oil, food, and water shortages.

The group has said that family planning programs in poor countries should qualify for environmental aid, since fewer people result in less energy use and fewer emissions.

"It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions--the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up," Roger Martin, chair of OPT, said in a statement.

Is the practical idea too controversial to be considered because of moral reservations, or will countries warm up to it as not only climate change, but world water supplies become an issue?

"The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal. Stabilising (sic) population levels has always been essential ecologically, and this study shows it's economically sensible too," said Martin.

Wal-Mart wants its suppliers to help it get greener.

The retail giant plans to announce on Thursday that it will ask its suppliers to provide environmental information on all products carried in its stores. Wal-Mart Stores will use that information to label each item with an eco rating, designed to measure its environmental friendliness.

"We have to change how we make and sell products," Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart's president and chief executive, plans to tell about 1,500 suppliers and employees on Thursday at a "sustainability meeting," according to a copy of his prepared remarks, quoted in The New York Times. "We have to make consumption itself smarter and sustainable."

To kick off the program, Wal-Mart will ask its suppliers to answer about 12 questions for each item. The questions are designed to determine how the product was made, how it was packaged, and what elements or ingredients were used to manufacture it.

Wal-Mart will then tap into a database and metrics to calculate the "greenness" of a product and translate that information into a ratings system for consumers.

The company will partner with a consortium of about 12 universities to collect the data and set new design standards. Professor Jay Golden of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University will function as co-director of the new consortium.

The universities will work directly with suppliers to determine each product's environmental impact, from how it uses raw materials to if and how it can be recycled.

Talks have already been held in Washington about possible new regulations for environmental labeling. But Golden says having Wal-Mart lead the way will "move it so much faster."

Wal-Mart plans to announce further details about the program on Thursday. But the initiative is clearly important to the company.

The eco-rating system is just the latest effort by Wal-Mart to create a greener landscape. The company has already strived to make its own stores environmentally friendly, including a plan to tap into solar power. Wal-Mart has also driven an effort to create more sustainable electronics devices to reduce the amount of items dumped into landfills.

Going "green" is quickly becoming an important part of our lives, and Web entrepreneurs have taken notice. A variety of green social networks have cropped up that help us live more sustainably. From reducing your carbon footprint to raising money for environmental causes, these social networks will back up your efforts.

Green social networks

BigCarrot BigCarrot is based on the premise of rewarding people for the good deeds they do. After signing up, you can start creating prizes for people to receive if they achieve a goal that helps the environment. So if you want to donate $20 to the first person to plant 20 trees in your area, you can do it. Users who prove that they have completed such tasks will be rewarded in more ways than one.

Unfortunately, BigCarrot is designed poorly. It's difficult to make your way around the site, and creating a new prize is far more difficult than it should be. But its community is relatively active. Finding friends is easy and winning prizes isn't as difficult as you might think. It's not the best social network in this roundup, but it's worth trying out.

Win some cash for completing green tasks on BigCarrot.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Carbonrally Carbonrally tries to get its users to reduce carbon emissions by working together to achieve that goal. After you sign up for the site, you can create your own challenge. To complete that challenge, you'll need to find team members to help you out. You can also sign up for challenges created by other users.

In either case, you'll communicate with your other team members, discuss what you've done to help achieve that goal, and comment on how to tweak the challenge to make it more meaningful. Luckily, the tasks generally aren't hard to complete--one of the more popular challenges is to alter your air-conditioning level by two degrees for a week.

Carbonrally lets you pick a challenge to help the environment.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found that Greenland's melting ice may have a greater effect on sea level rise on the northeastern coasts of the U.S. and Canada than previously hypothesized.

"If Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed," NCAR said in its preliminary report.

Additional sea level rise from Greenland ice melt in centimeters.

(Credit: Graphic courtesy Geophysical Research Letters, modified by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR))

The group of researchers on the project, which was led by NCAR's Aixue Hu, included scientists from NCAR, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Florida State University. The report research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Greenland ice has been melting at a rate of about 7 percent per year within the last few years. But Hu and his group modeled several different scenarios based on different melting rates using NCAR's Community Climate System Model, which simulates global climate change. They did not include overall global sea level rise by other factors such as Arctic ice melt, but sea level rise based on Greenland ice melt alone.

The group wants to educate the public on the misconception that the oceans of the world spread out evenly.

"The oceans will not rise uniformly as the world warms. Ocean dynamics will push water in certain directions, so some locations will experience sea level rise that is larger than the global average," NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

If Greenland's ice melt rate slows to 1 percent per year, northeastern sea levels would, at most, rise 8 inches (20 cm) by 2100.

If Greenland's ice melt rate slows to 3 percent per year, it could raise world sea level by 21 inches (54 cm) by 2100.

Most interesting may be the group's predictions in the unlikely event that Greenland's ice melt rate were to continue its 7 percent increase per year.

In that scenario, the increased drain of freshwater into the North Atlantic would change oceanic circulation of warm water pumping into the Arctic, which would in turn lead to a temporary recovery of Arctic sea ice.

A full report of NCAR's findings will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this Friday.

Kevin Wilhelm

(Credit: Sustainable Business Consulting)

Sustainability may be all the rage but, as the song says, it's not easy being green.

Without widespread standards, companies are struggling with how to properly calculate and disclose their carbon footprint to the public. And many don't have the financial resources to address environmental resource concerns.

Kevin Wilhelm is the chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce Sustainability Committee and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting. His new book, "Return on Sustainability," which got endorsements from environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Laurie David, takes a shot at deciphering the ins and outs of corporate sustainability given the current economic downturn.

The environmental capitalist talked with CNET News about the recession, the next Y2K event, outsourcing, wasteful surprises most companies find, and why comparing carbon footprints can be like comparing apples to oranges.

Q: Are sustainability efforts taking a bad hit with this recession?
Wilhelm: Yes. It's just like so many other initiatives big companies are doing, whether it's IT infrastructure or energy upgrades. Traditionally, sustainability and green efforts are seen as additionals. Because the marketplace hasn't gotten to where it's fully required, it's definitely been hurt by budget cuts. Some current clients have asked to hold work for 2009 because there's no more budget. All that being said, I think everyone was in this panic over the economy. Now that the bottom is somewhat stabilized, I think the fear is gone and people realize sustainability is part of a long-term strategy. And even though they may have to slow down their efforts, they still have to go through with them.

Explain what you mean in your book by "waste equals money."
Wilhelm: Anything that you're throwing out or not using to its full effect becomes waste. People's time when they're not producing is wasted time and wasted money. Materials are a big component. When a company throws out something, they're not only throwing out scrap. They paid for that in the cost of whatever they bought. The most famous example is Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Ben & Jerry's was used to disposing of slop through traditional sanitation methods. They found they could take their waste from dairy production and sell it to pig farmers.

Cascade Designs makes thermal things for backpackers that have this foam (in them). With their cuts there was always left-over foam and they were throwing it out. They turned it into camping pillows, and what was this expensive thing they paid to be hauled to a landfill was turned into a profit center.

How does outsourcing come in to this? I've talked to people from major companies who wonder if competitors could be fudging carbon footprint numbers by eliminating their manufacturing from the U.S. and outsourcing it to China. While our local U.S. air may get cleaner as a result, that company is still contributing to pollution that's going to affect us long-term.
Wilhelm: You're right. It's just like any time when anyone tries to externalize their costs. You look right now at any company polluting the air. Companies pay to recycle or take out garbage, to have wastewater treated, but air goes up and what happens to it? Nothing. We all pay the price. In terms of the carbon footprint, you're dead-on. With companies right now--because they're just now understanding what you have to measure--you may find you're comparing apples to oranges sometimes. What you try to do with companies is get them to say what the boundaries of the company are for the footprint. They can say they're only doing U.S. operations and exclude anything manufactured in China. In terms of what the standard is, companies can include operational control, economical control, or subsidiary control.

Look at all the products being made and shipped from China. Some of the factories are giant and make (products) for four or five brands at a time. You look and say 20 percent (of their production is going) toward our product, so 20 percent of their energy needs to be part of our carbon footprint. There are standards, but people can define it in different ways. Starbucks only looks at energy use and transportation. They don't count their cups, and everyone walks out with at least one of those. But they're very transparent about it. They say it's complicated and they haven't gotten to it yet. It's new for a company and they usually say, "We want to do a carbon footprint for everything." Then they realize, "Oh, I have to go to China to figure this out?"

In your book you say that whether you believe in global warming is beside the point.
Wilhelm: It is. If you're a businessman who doesn't think climate change is manmade, well, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has said it is and they're coming out with climate regulations. The Kyoto Protocol is coming up and they'll have a new treaty in Copenhagen. So whether you believe or not, you're going to have to respond. The trend with consumers is huge and from a global perspective, climate change is like the Y2K event. The Y2K prep is nothing compared to what's coming this December, January, and February in terms of regulation.

You mention in your book how REI was shocked to find that 26 percent of its carbon emissions came from its Adventure Travel division, while it had assumed it would all be from shipping and distribution. Depending on the type of business, what's the likeliest culprit between energy, travel, waste, paper, and freight?
Wilhelm: If you're a manufacturer, energy is your biggest. If you're service-based, electricity is a part but employee travel is a big, big deal. That's the one that always shocks people. I biked an entire year to work, then I took one trip to China and wiped it all out. I could have driven a Hummer to work, used plastic bottles, used virgin paper, and it wouldn't have been as much.

OK, but videoconferencing is not going to replace business travel. There are still those people who believe that you have to meet face-to-face and sometimes a situation does require it.
Wilhelm: When a company looks at the cost of travel, they may only look at the cost of the ticket and hotel, and don't take in the effect of a person's time away from the office, their loss of production, or flight delays. But you're right, the video tech is not going to replace 100 percent the face-to-face because, let's face it, people do business with people. But instead of making four trips you make two: the first impression, then do videoconferencing, then when you need to make that final report or finalize that deal you can shake hands in person.

What are the biggest obstacles for a company in calculating an accurate carbon footprint?
Wilhelm: Getting the data is the first one because a lot of people aren't used to it and have never had to get this data before. Second, they don't know where to go or who's got it, and it may not be in the format they need. If they lease, which most service-based businesses do, they have to get it from the building manager, who may not know or not want to know how to do it. The first time through you get most data but have to make some assumptions. It then helps companies realize they should be tracking things or are overpaying for some things.

Your book has a lot of case studies. The quirkiest one may be how General Mills was able to reduce Hamburger Helper packaging size by changing the shape of their noodles, which not only reduced packaging costs by 10 percent, but resulted in a fuel savings equating to 500 fewer distribution trucks on the road each year. What's an example that surprised even you?
Wilhelm: One of the reasons I threw that out there is because people say, "Oh my God, really?" One that is really obvious was that it used to be, even a year ago, that you could buy those big plastic bins of laundry detergent, and now you see the same brands sold in concentrate. Procter & Gamble originally said, "Sell it in concentrate?! We need the big one for shelf-space advertising, and people think big is more." But Wal-Mart said, "It's too much shelf-space, too pricey to ship." So then Wal-Mart wouldn't have the big ones from them. And soon, you didn't see them at Target and other stores, and now hardly anybody sells them.

Not every company has the resources of a Sun Microsystems, DuPont, or Verizon, which all made some sustainability changes that resulted in savings. Companies are finding it hard right now just to get their usual revolving credit to operate. What's something a small or mid-size company can do to implement sustainability for little or no money?
Wilhelm: With small clients we suggest using our ROS (return on sustainability) chapter, where people can figure out cost savings, brand value, and environmental impact. Then sit down and have a brainstorming session on ways to save money as a company with the potential to be environmentally sustainable but really focus on saving money. Things start popping up where there's inefficiency. A nonprofit did a drawer clean-out day. People could keep what they wanted, and if they had, like, three staplers, they put two back in the supply room. When they were done, they realized they didn't need to order supplies for the next six months and saved $8,000. The other thing I would say is do the carbon footprint assessment. There's a lot of tools out there to do that. Even a small business will find a surprise of "Gee, didn't realize we were spending that on paper."

Usually the problem is there's a resistance to change in an organization--especially if you have a powerful office manager who likes to do things how they've always done them. If you can say you're trying to reduce the carbon footprint and achieve sustainability goals, it's a way to get people to look at it through a new lens. Maybe a small business will only find a couple hundred dollars' worth of savings, but they can report to customers and clients that they did a carbon footprint and are trying to be as green as they possibly can.

Your book is filled with quick charts, tables, and statistics on things like physical water scarcity regions in the U.S., weather-related insurance losses, carbon metrics, and consumer surveys on sustainability. Do you think all this freely available information is empowering or overwhelming?
Wilhelm: It's definitely overwhelming and can be discouraging. You don't even want to think about water scarcity. If we think there was a war over oil, what's going to happen over water? You look for sustainability and a million sites pop up. There's too much info. And whose ideas are political motivated?

OK, but what are some of the tools or standards you would recommend?
Wilhelm: If you're in the U.S., there's no one way on how you have to do the carbon footprint. It's voluntary. Look at carbon offsets. There's no agreement. Sustainability is now where organic food was 10 years ago. People liked it, but there was no certified label. Then there was, but then people thought well, what about if it's local and all these things? Right now, it's the Wild West because for CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting, there's a lack of standardization. And it's funny because I find that people rather be told, "Do it this way." They're always asking which one is the best to go with? What are the pros and cons? I tell them go with the de facto standard, the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), but until it becomes the standard, companies can report it any way they want.

Earth Day happens one day a year. But it should spur us to do our best to reduce our impact on the environment for the other 364.

I've picked five sites that provide a framework for how to live your life in a way that's better for the environment. Whether it's car-pooling or simply eating the right foods, you'll find ways to be a more responsible Earthling.

The tools of the trade

Carbon Diet

When you start using Carbon Diet, you'll be required to input your usage of electricity, natural gas, and vehicle fuel. Simply input your monthly bill amounts and Carbon Diet will do the rest. It then calculates your impact on the environment. You can go back each month to update your usage. As you input more information about your activities, it continuously modifies your impact, displaying graphs and charts to give you a visual outline of what you're doing to the planet.

The best tool on Carbon Diet is its "analysis" feature, which examines your activities and gives you tips toward becoming a more responsible environmentalist. It told me that I need to stop driving so much. I also need to turn the TV off instead of leaving it on for most of the day.

You'll learn a lot from Carbon Diet. It's the best carbon calculator I've seen. Try it out.

The Daily Green

When you first go to The Daily Green, you'll probably have trouble finding what you're looking for simply because there's so much content to consult. If you start with the news, you'll find a host of interesting articles and discussions on topics that relate to the green lifestyle. The section is also filled with articles on political news surrounding environmental concerns.

But the most value you'll get from The Daily Green can be found in the site's "Tips and Advice" tab, which shows you ways to save money with green products. The site also provides advice on how to turn your home green so you become a more responsible environmentalist.

If you want to change the way you eat, The Daily Green also has green recipes. All of the dishes contain organic products, like soy milk and basmati rice. The site claims green food is just as delicious as dishes that don't use organic ingredients. I can't corroborate that claim--the recipes didn't sound all that appetizing to me.

The Daily Green is the perfect destination to immerse yourself in the green lifestyle. It makes you a better inhabitant of Earth.

Earth Day, which will be celebrated on Wednesday, is a good time to look at the way electronics are using and wasting energy.

Among the culprits are devices that suck power while not in use. I'm not sure how they arrived at this figure, but the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that "in the average home, 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off." The government advises unplugging devices or using a power strip to turn them off, but this is sometimes inconvenient as it will disable remote controls and, in some cases, require the device go through a time-consuming start-up.

Some devices are designed to run 24 hours a day. Digital video recorders, for example, are always standing by to record your programs. About 18 months ago, I put an energy meter on some of the devices in my home and discovered that my TiVo was using 30 watts 24/7 and a Motorola Comcast PVR I was using at the time was sucking 40 watts regardless of whether it was recording a program.

Little power bricks also consume electricity even when nothing is connected to them, so it's a good idea to unplug items like cell phone chargers and iPod chargers when not in use.

Many people leave their personal computers on 24 hours a day. If the machine successfully goes into sleep mode, the power drain is relatively low. But it's not uncommon, especially for Windows systems, for the machine to run at full-throttle when it should be sleeping.

If you do leave your machine turned on--even while at lunch--try to configure it to go into sleep or "stand by" mode after say 15 or 20 minutes of inactivity. In theory, it will wake up as soon as you touch the keyboard or move the mouse. Unfortunately, Windows sleep mode doesn't always work properly. Sometimes it fails to go into standby. And if it does fall asleep, it sometimes fails to wake up properly. There are a variety of reasons for this, including some software that demands full power. But often the culprit is one or more device drivers or USB devices that either fails to let the machine sleep or interferes with its ability to wake up.

Screen saver software does not save energy. It's much better to turn off your monitor when you take a break. CO2 Saver, a free program for Windows XP and Vista, can help you manage your PC's sleep behavior.

In my limited experience as a beta tester, Windows 7 seems to do a better job at sleeping and waking than Vista or Windows XP, but this is machine- and software- dependent. So until we see widespread deployment, we won't know if Microsoft has solved the problem. Mac OS X seems to be less prone to insomnia or failing to wake up, but it's not exempt from these problems.

PCs with ultra-fast processors and display adapters tend to use more power than somewhat slower systems. In general, notebook PCs are considerably more energy efficient than desktops, partially because they're designed to run on batteries and also because they have built-in screens that are powered from the same power supply as the rest of the machine. All-in-one desktops are generally more eco-friendly than machines with an external monitor.

Even though it doesn't affect your own power meter, the electrical demands of Internet services also add up. Every time you do something online, a server somewhere might have to access a hard drive while routers throughout the Internet are using energy to transmit the data that you're sending and receiving. I'm not suggesting you cut back on Internet use--just be aware that it's not carbon free.

And speaking of carbon, a McAfee-commissioned report issued last week by ICF International found that 62 trillion pieces of spam sent in 2008 had the same environmental impact as 3.1 million passenger cars or 2.4 million U.S. homes. A single piece of junk e-mail adds 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide, which is like driving three feet.

The ICF report estimates that e-mail from the average business user accounts for 288 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, with 22 percent of that usage related to spam. More than half the energy wasted by spam results from users viewing and deleting it, according to the report.

The process of getting spam from one place to another involves multiple phases--all of which consume energy. First, there is the scraping of Web sites to harvest e-mail addresses, followed by code and copy writing to initiate the spam campaign. Next comes sending the messages via the Internet to an army of infected "zombie PCs," all of which use energy to receive and retransmit the messages. Then there is the impact on servers that store and send the spam, the routers and other Internet infrastructure, and, of course, the PCs that finally receive and display the junk mail.

Add to that the resources used to attempt to filter the spam and it's easy to understand the potential environmental impact. If every in-box had spam filters, according to the report, we could cut energy waste by 75 percent. But eliminating spam at the source would save even more.

Environmental activist and author Van Jones, one of the first to recognize the power of a "green collar" job corps as a tool for social justice, has been tapped by the Obama administration to serve as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Under his new post, which he'll start Monday, Jones will shape and advance the administration's energy and climate initiatives "with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the CEQ, in a statement Tuesday.

Van Jones, founder of Green For All, on Monday will start a new post as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

(Credit: Green For All)

The Yale-trained attorney from Tennessee made a name for himself in the San Francisco Bay Area through his work on youth-violence prevention and police- and youth-justice reform with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which he co-founded 11 years ago in Oakland, Calif.

More recently, however, he's been catapulted to the national stage by his push to get national funding for green jobs training. He also launched Green For All, an organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. And his recent book, "The Green Collar Economy," made The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcover books.

His hope is that low-income, minority communities will be able to share in the potential fortunes of the emerging clean-tech economy.

"We need to be very sure we are not replicating the mistakes from the dot-com days when we set ourselves up for a digital divide," he told CNET News in a 2007 interview. "We should work very hard to avoid having an ecodivide where we have ecological haves and ecological have-nots."

"There's an opportunity here to take a photovoltaic panel and use that not only to push down the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but also begin to push people up out of poverty," he continued in the interview. "I think it would be very smart for Silicon Valley to think about these technologies as social uplift, job-creating technologies as well as global warming solutions."

Taking the reins at Green For All will be Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, the former executive officer at the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council.

Former CNET News staff writer Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report

Kyle Good (left) and Bryan Le (right) receive their $25,000 check from: (top left to right) S. M. Shahed, corporate fellow of Honeywell Turbo Technologies; Neil Blakesley, vice president of strategy and marketing at BT Americas; Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation; Lee Stein, founder of Prize Capital; and Mark Bernstein, managing director of USC's Energy Institute.

(Credit: X Prize Foundation)

The X Prize Foundation announced the winner of its "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?" competition on Thursday.

The first-place winners, which will receive $25,000, were University of California at Irvine students Kyle Good and Bryan Le on the Capacitor Challenge team, for their idea that someone should develop a more efficient energy storage device to replace batteries, for everything from iPods to cars.

Unlike other X Prize competitions, the winners of "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?" were not picked by a panel of educationally pedigreed judges to build an invention for which they submitted plans.

Instead, the creative-idea winners of the "X Prize in Energy and Environment" were chosen through a contest held on Google's YouTube. Competing among 130 submissions, Good and Le's team video garnered about 4,200 votes.

"Capacitors recharge in seconds, survive thousands of recharge cycles, and provide high-efficiency electricity by using environmentally benign materials. But here's the challenge: capacitors are far more expensive (and) provide far less energy than common batteries," Le said in his team's contest pitch video on YouTube (below). "We invite the next generation of inventors and engineers to construct an energy storage device far more advanced, far more environmentally friendly, far more affordable than we have yet to see in our lifetime."

While they are absolutely right about the need for such a device, the idea is quite a hard technological challenge.

For the engineering geniuses game for taking a crack at this, here are the guidelines, as proposed by the Capacitor Challenge team:

• Use only self-contained capacitors.
• Exceed the energy density of average lead acid batteries.
• Fully recharge in less than a minute and up to 500,000 cycles.
• Be completely recyclable and incorporate nontoxic materials.
• Cost less than twice the price of average lead acid batteries.