energi

There are many online calculators for assessing how your lifestyle pollutes the planet; environmental nonprofits sponsor most of them, such as the Earth Day Network's Ecological Footprint Quiz. But learning about the downstream effects of your driving, computing, and shopping can give you guilt to last. Once you feel like the sky is falling, what are you supposed to do about it?

Entrepreneurs bent on spreading sustainability have created Web sites to capitalize on either your guilt, survival instinct, or nobility--whatever the personal motivation may be--by letting you examine the ecological impact of your way of life. Then, you … Read more

In the market for a laptop bag made of recycled soda bottles or a solar-powered iPod charger? You could spend hours searching online for boutiques that stock those green goods. Or you could go straight to Five Limes, a social-shopping site linking to stores that hawk ecofriendly products, such as Green Home for nontoxic bedding, BTC Elements for organic blue jeans, and Green Office for recycled-paper Post-Its. Five Limes is "something like an Angie's List for green products," as Sustainablog puts it. Five Limes saves a history of your activities to tailor search results accordingly and to … Read more

I'm one of those wannabe Luddites who doesn't even own an iPod. I nearly scoff whenever I spy those telltale white strings dangling from ADHD-afflicted ears around town. Nor do I use any other MP3 player in public; the ambient sounds of belching engines and Super Mario Bros ring tones are street music to these ears. But if I did have an iPod Nano 1.0, I'd probably get one of these $15 recycled plastic Jimi cases. The U.S.-made, polypropylene and polycarbonate Jimis come in red, blue, clear, and orange flavors. You can keep … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The biggest battery hog in your mobile phone is the screen, especially if it's a thin-film transistor liquid crystal display. (That's TFT-LCD, for the acronym loyalists out there.) Many of the companies gathered for iSuppli's Flat Information Displays Conference 2006 here are looking for ways around this. Some say that means using a different technology for the screen; others say there's no need to do so.

A company called Clairvoyante has come up with a different way to render pixels to save power, increase brightness and resolution and be able to show video … Read more

I was psyched when a reader said this little box can show in dollars and kilowatt-hours just how much every last lightbulb, TV, and forgotten camera charger in your house costs you. The Energy Detective, or TED, will flash an alarm when your hourly or monthly power consumption reaches painfully expensive levels, and when spells of high or low voltage might damage connected gear.

At $150, TED costs the same as the Kill-a-Watt and its ilk, which can measure only one gadget's power hunger at a time. You could recoup that cost in a tax refund and then some, … Read more

Suzuki knows that alternative fuels aren't just for cars. So the Japanese company is turning its eco-friendly eye toward a new market: wheelchairs.

Gizmag says a prototype "fuel cell wheelchair" is in the works, using methanol to generate hydrogen and then electricity. It adds that, with a range of up to 25 miles, the wheelchair would help allay fears of getting stranded.

It's good to see that alternative energy research is going toward vehicles other than golf carts.

(Photo: Gizmag)

No, you don't see news from Rheem, the vacuum and household appliance people, too much on our site. But you may in the future, as the company emerges as one of a growing number of advocates for solar water heaters.

In these systems, water is heated by solar rays directly from a tank on the roof--a common practice in Spain or Israel--or panels on the roof can conduct energy to a basement heater, as in Rheem's products. (See photo of jolly salesman.)

The basement versions are less obtrusive because the panels fit into the roofline of a house. … Read more

Maybe we're just superficial (OK, probably), but we've often suspected that appearances are a key reason that solar products haven't taken off with the masses. Too often they look like something you'd find listed under "contractor's special" than, say, at Bang & Olufsen. So leave it up to the marketing-obsessed electronics business to come up with some effective packaging. Case in point: Sanyo's new Eneloop device, whose solar-powered batteries can recharge products through a USB connection while looking decent enough to display in the open. Now the marketing department just needs to … Read more

Being of the 24-hour room-service ilk, we don't exactly find that building a solar iPod charger is our idea of a good time. Especially when you can already buy products like this. But hey, that's just us.

The rugged DIY individuals out there might be interested in taking a shot at this homemade charger posted on Yosemite Outside, which includes a solar panel that can be affixed to a backpack. We have no doubt that it works, but the duct tape probably won't win any design awards.

(Photo: Yosemite Outside)