Sustainable design ideas from nature

Janine Benyus gave this speech at the TED Conference in Monterey, Calif. She talks about "biomimicry," or learning from examples in nature, and applying that to the human experience. Benyus is a natural sciences writer who actually coined the term.

Be forewarned this is a long video.

Some pretty cool stuff, though.

Does your car run on fish and chips? Fried appetizer plates?

This New York Times story details how the United Kingdom is setting up stations to collect used cooking oil, which will be turned into biodiesel fuel.

Just think if the United States turned to such a project. All the fried food we eat surely should be put to a better use.

Ride the wave

The bulk of the U.S. population lives on the coasts. We really should be investigating more wave-power projects such as the one above.

The video is of a Pelamis wave generator. The first commercial wave farm was started in September 2008 off the coast of Portugal. It can generate up to 2.25 megawatts, or enough to power 1,500 Portuguese homes.

Wind turbines old and new - an insider's view

The view from the top is amazing. Installing these would not be a job for the faint-of-heart.

Time-lapse video of wind turbine construction

If only they all went up in less than a minute! Very cool video.

Electric vehicles that give back to the grid

Plug-in electric cars obviously will be a draw on the electrical grid.

Now, Willett Kempton, a renewable-energy professor at the University of Delaware, is developing a car that adds electricity back to the grid when it contains a surplus.

For electric cars to be the most energy efficient, it will take innovative ideas like this.

Making electricity from potholes - the shocking truth

It's possible to build a regenerative apparatus on a car that takes advantage of the power absorbed when a car's wheel goes over a pothole.

A team of MIT undergraduates came up with a prototype that gains a boost of 10 percent in overall vehicle fuel efficiency through regenerative shock absorbers.

To make our cars go longer per unit of energy, we're going to have to be more inventive, which these MIT students obviously are.

Now, we should put the concepts to work in buildings. Elevators, for instance, are a prime candidate to regenerate electricity on the downward haul. Buildings with rotating doorways could generate modest amounts of electricity.

Even floors could be designed to absorb the impact of footsteps and transfer the energy into electricity. Think about the foot traffic in a mall or other public spots.

So that's how it works

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Well, for months now we've had a pretty good idea how we got ourselves into this awful economic mess.

This clever video does a pretty good job explaining it. It would almost be enjoyable if it wasn't so depressing.

From behind bars to the rooftop

California has an innovative program to train ex-convicts to install solar panels, which is a booming market in the state.

Some solar-installation companies say these new employees are among their most productive and trustworthy, according to this WSJ article.

It would be great if more states had programs like this. And prison inmates should be put to work fabricating rooftop wind turbines, in addition to license plates. The turbines could be installed on government buildings, saving taxpayer money.

It's about time for a German electric car

When it comes to cars, I have a soft spot for German makes. If you've ever driven a good Audi, BMW, Mercedes or Volkswagen, you know that they are well-engineered and a blast to drive.

Now, it looks like Volkswagen is teaming up with Toshiba to develop an electric car.

They aim to have one on the market by 2012.

Towers of power

A California utility plans to power more than 800,000 homes with solar electricity in a new project.

Southern California Edison plans to puchase electricity from a series of solar towers to be operated by BrightSource Energy.

Drawing from the design of a BrightSource "power tower" in Israel’s Negev Desert, the California towers will use heliostats or moving mirrors to concentrate light onto a tower. This concentrated energy will be used to make steam. The first project will be completed in 2013, according to this article.

Aiming to generate 100-megawatts of power in Ivanpah, Calif., Brightsource says it can power 65,000 homes via 286,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year.

Financial details of the deal are not being revealed, but some are calling this one of the biggest solar power contracts in the United States.

This is the kind of project that can be replicated in many areas of the United States.

Here's a video from Brightsource.