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Green technology was hot in 2008. Barack Obama won the presidential election promising green jobs to Rust Belt workers. Investors poured $5 billion into the sector just through the first nine months of the year. And even Texas oilmen like T. Boone Pickens started pushing alternative energy as a replacement for fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and natural gas.

But there’s trouble on the horizon. The economy is hovering somewhere between catatonic and hebephrenic, and funding for the big plans that green tech companies laid in 2008 might be a lot harder to come by in 2009. Recessions haven’t always been the best times for environmentally friendly technologies as consumers and corporations cut discretionary spending on ethical premiums.

Still, green technology and its attendant infrastructure are probably the best bet to drag the American economy out of the doldrums. So, with the optimism endemic to the Silicon Valley region, we present you with the Top 10 Green Tech Breakthroughs of 2008, alternatively titled, The Great Green Hope.

1. Calera’s Green Cement Demo Plant Opens
2. Project Better Place Finds Homes
3. Solar Cell Production Gets Big, GIGA (watt) Big
4. Obama Picks A Green Tech Expert To Head DOE
5. Solar Thermal Plants Return To The Deserts
6. Pickens Plan Pushes Power Plays Into American Mainstream
7. The Catalyst That Could Enable Solar
8. Green Tech Legislation Gets Real
9. New Materials Cage Carbon
10. The Island of The Solar

Read more: Wired

Who says water and electricity don’t mix? The world’s first solar-electric-diesel hybrid yacht will have you impressing the greenies at the Yacht Club and sailing the seas in style.

The Island Pilot DSe Hybrid catches rays with a 6.8 kW solar array that’ll get you to Margaritaville and back at 6 knots with zero emissions. But if the sun ain’t shining in Cocomo, you can crank up the Steyer Motors parallel hybrid system that mates a 75-horsepower diesel engine and a pair of 36-horsepower electric motors powered by a 20-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

The 40-footer was a hit at the recent Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, where it was one of several green vessels and gadgets that ranged from the Epower Marine Calypso Classic electric fishing boat to the 100 percent recyclable propellers made by Piranha Propeller.

But it was the $600,000 DSe that really wowed the crowd.

The DSe can run for as long as two hours on battery power. Kick on the diesels and she’ll cruise at 13 knots while charging the battery pack through a pair of 25-kW generators. Run the diesel engine and electric motor in tandem and she’ll hit 15 knots. (more…)

Italian scooter-maker Piaggio has unveiled a plug-in hybrid three-wheeler it says will get up to 141 mpg and could be on the road as early as next year.

The gas-electric version of Piaggio’s funky but fun MP3 scooter uses a parallel hybrid system much like that in the Toyota Prius but advances the technology by adding an electrical cord. Although Toyota, General Motors and several other automakers are developing cars that can be charged from a wall socket, Piaggio’s timeline, if met, would make it the first in the world to mass-produce a plug-in hybrid. (more…)

The transport ministry aims to introduce a system in fiscal 2010 to provide 30% of the cooling energy at New Chitose Airport terminal building in summer from snow collected in winter, ministry officials said Tuesday.

A regional office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism collected snow last winter at the airport and confirmed that it could retain up to 45% of it by September by covering it with heat-insulating materials. It has concluded that the snow could be used to chill the liquid used in the airport’s cooling system in summer and that doing so would lead to a cut of some 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to the officials.

Links: Japan Today, Ecogeek, SnowPower

Tesla Motors has released the much-awaited upgrade to the gearbox in the all-electric Roadster, and in typical Silicon Valley fashion calls it Powertrain 1.5 — even though it’s a different transmission and so ought to be called v2.0.

Nomenclature aside, the slick one-speed Borg-Warner transmission joins a stouter power inverter and revised engine in a package said to deliver 30 percent more torque and 10 percent more range. That lets the Roadster make good on its promised zero to 60 time of 4.0 seconds while squeezing 244 miles from the battery. “The new setup is superior in almost every way,” says J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technology officer.

Tesla says it’s already putting Powertrain 2.0, er, 1.5, in Roadsters that have made the trip from the factory in Hethel, England to San Carlos, California, for final assembly. So what’s different about Powertrain 1.5, and what happens to the 27 people driving Roadsters with Powertrain 1.0?

The new one-speed transmission weighs 17 pounds less and creates less drag on the motor, increasing efficiency and bumping the car’s range. A revised power inverter puts out 850 amps, up from 650, and the motor had redesigned terminals to reduce resistance. It’s beefier, too, and torque rises from 211 foot-pounds to 280.

Tesla started developing Powertrain 1.5 after realizing the two-speed transmission it planned to use “had many durability, efficiency and cost challenges,” Straubel wrote on the Tesla blog. Eager to start building cars, Tesla slapped an interim one-speed transmission in the Roadster when it fired up the assembly line at the Lotus plant in Hethel, and although early reviews of those cars were positive, the stop-gap tranny significantly cut into its performance. Early adopters got a car that did zero to 60 in 5.7 seconds — about as fast as the Toyota Tundra pickup. Powertrain 1.5 cuts that to the promised 4.0 seconds, putting the Roadster on par with the Porsche 911 GT3.

Tesla’s put 27 Roadsters in driveways since production started March 17, and will retrofit every one with the new drivetrain at no charge beginning next month. Darryl Siry, vice president of sales and marketing, tells us the modular design of the Roadster’s drivetrain makes it a plug-and-play operation. “It’s a four-hour swap,” he says. “It’s not a complicated thing.”

With the drivetrain finally sorted out and the assembly line running smoothly, Tesla’s increased production from four cars a week to 10. That’s expected to double before the end of the year, then double again to 40 a week early in 2009.

“Now that we have a final powertrain design, in a matter of months there will be hundreds of Tesla Roadsters across the country,” says CEO Ze’ev Drori. “We’re heralding nothing less than a new era of the automobile.”

But what about that nomenclature? Siry says Powertrain 1.0 was the internal designation for the air-cooled motor in the Roadster, while Powertrain 2.0 refers to the liquid-cooled motor being developed for the all-electric sedan that was codenamed Whitestar (the Roadster was Blackstar) but is now called Model S.

Glad that’s cleared up.

Photo by Tesla Motors.
source: wired

Amazing how just last year, Toyota thought the need for a PHEV was not needed and was very miffed at those third party vendors waiting to do PHEV conversion on existing Prius’s. They also did not believe Li-Ion batteries had the stamina of Nimh and had no plans for those. As for being the #1 green auto manufacturer, you should take into account the entire product line-up, not just one car. Read more on this article.

Giant whirlpools, 100-knot winds, some of Europe’s mightiest tides: The icy waters off Scotland’s northern tip are no place for pleasure craft. But they’re ideal for power-generation systems that harness the restless fury of the sea — which is why the European Marine Energy Centre has set up shop in the Orkney Islands.

Think of it as the Bonneville Salt Flats of hydrokinetics: EMEC offers companies a place to try out their clean tech. The center’s remotely operated vehicles film underwater, and microphones will eventually monitor for noise pollution. First in was Dublin-based OpenHydro, which recently began trials on its second turbine (shown here raised for inspection).

Carbon-free hydrokinetic power could ultimately provide up to 20 percent of the UK’s electricity needs. But environmental concerns may still sink the effort: Critics warn of industrialized coastlines and harm to sea life.

The US faces similar challenges — without a testing facility. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has okayed a pilot marine-power project for Makah Bay, off the Washington coast, but environmental approval is still pending. By the time the inevitable court battles are resolved, the waves may be lapping at our doorsteps.

Source: Wired

People were making ethanol at home long before there were cars. They called it moonshine. With gas prices going through the roof and everyone worried about global warming, a California company is betting people will jump at the chance to use the same technology to turn sugar into fuel for less than a buck a gallon.

E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler, a device about the size of a stacking washer-dryer that uses sugar, yeast and water to make 100 percent ethanol at the push of a button.

“You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button,” company founder Tom Quinn told us. “A few days later, you’ve got ethanol.”

Is it really that easy? Read the rest of this article