January 1, 2013 in Efficiency, Transportation
Are you worried about your car having a low gas mileage? Now think about a freight truck – which weighs about 10x a normal car, hovers at about 4-7 mpg and clocks in 80,000-100,000 miles. Per year. That truck’s fuel budget is about $58k per year, and its carbon footprint is 148 metric tons of [...]
December 5, 2012 in Efficiency, Random Cool
Loochi, brought to you by TBIdeas based in Santa Cruz, CA, is the first Bluetooth4 smart lamp that allows the user to control and animate lighting wirelessly from a smartphone. Moreover, Loochi is open-source for hardware, software, AND design, allowing for endless lighting creativity to evolve. Did someone say Loochi-based building-size Tetris? While the LeWeb [...]
September 20, 2012 in Efficiency, Solar
I will be at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2012 tomorrow, supporting the Canopea project which has integrated DualSun’s hybrid solar panels onto their “nanotowers”. The Solar Decathlon is an international competition among universities from around the world to promote research in the development of efficient houses with a specific focus on the use of solar energy. [...]
August 6, 2012 in Distributed Power, Efficiency, Energy Storage, Random Cool
London-based Pavegen builds energy-harvesting tiles based on a hybrid piezoelectric technology that transform footsteps into electricity. The technology is featured at the London Olympics, where 12 tiles have been installed at the West Ham tube station connecting to the Olympic Park. These tiles generate and store electricity (each has a small battery) in order to power [...]
June 6, 2012 in Efficiency, Transportation
Marché sur l’eau (“Market on the Water”, or “Walk on Water” cleverly playing on the double meaning of “marché” in French), is a Paris-based non-profit organization delivering fresh produce baskets from local producers via canalway transport. It’s no Venice, but Paris has quite a developed canal system dating back to early 19th century when Napoleon I ordered [...]
May 14, 2012 in Efficiency, Random Cool
Belgium-based WeWatt is developing the WeBike, a pedal-powered table that generates electricity for devices such as laptops and cell phones — to be installed in offices, restaurants, or even at home. Human power is not an efficient means for generating electricity. But the WeBike is not solely about generating electricity. The objective of the WeBike is [...]
March 12, 2012 in Efficiency
ideabox, based in Salem, Oregon, is a prefab housing design studio that builds modular homes that are energy efficient and affordable, and designed to be “lively yet relaxing, small yet big, warm yet cool and most of all simply fun”. Where Project Frog, another prefab design studio, designs for larger buildings like schools and stores, [...]
February 29, 2012 in Efficiency
South African-based Natural Balance has produced the Wonderbag, an insulated (and funky) “cooking bag” that greatly reduces energy use in the kitchen. Wonderbag targets populations that depend on polluting fossil fuels for cooking (re. 3 billion people), where a family using a Wonderbag can reduce its fuel usage by 30% — and in effect, minimize [...]
February 24, 2012 in Efficiency
Voltalis is small French startup installing smart “Bluepods” in French homes for free that 1) provide information to consumers about their energy consumption and 2) will cut off electricity in order to curb peak needs on the grid, generating demand response capacity. Don’t worry, your tv won’t shut off abruptly as you’re watching the last five [...]
February 22, 2012 in Efficiency, Solar
The ReVolt House is a rotating and floating solar home, designed by a team from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The Revolt House is part of the 2012 Solar Decathlon, the “world cup” for sustainable solar houses. The name ReVolt has a tri-fold reference to the essence of the house: REVolving, VOLTage (referring to its self-powered [...]
February 17, 2012 in Efficiency
WattValue, based in Paris, France, is a small startup with offices at La Ruche, the inspiring and earthy co-working space I recently wrote about. WattValue has developed WattImpact, a green IT solution for websites – which evaluates the ecological impact of a website and then engages the website to run on renewable energies and eventually provides [...]
February 13, 2012 in Efficiency
Based in New York City, ThinkEco has developed the patent-pending Modlet (“modern outlet”), an intelligent outlet that optimizes energy use of electronic appliances. Standby power is wasted electricity consumed by electronic appliances when they are switched off, amounting to about 5-10% of residential electricity use. Think about your television. Or your desktop computer. Or your coffee machine. [...]
