Examples of green technology subject areas

Energy
Perhaps the most urgent issue for green technology, this includes the development of alternative fuels, new means of generating energy and energy efficiency.

Green building
Green building encompasses everything from the choice of building materials to where a building is located.

Environmentally preferred purchasing
This government innovation involves the search for products whose contents and methods of production have the smallest possible impact on the environment, and mandates that these be the preferred products for government purchasing.

Green chemistry
The invention, design and application of chemical products and processes to reduce or to eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.

Green nanotechnology
Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of materials at the scale of the nanometer, one billionth of a meter. Some scientists believe that mastery of this subject is forthcoming that will transform the way that everything in the world is manufactured. “Green nanotechnology” is the application of green chemistry and green engineering principles to this field.

The Top 10 U.S. Cities with the Most Green Buildings

One convenient way is third party certification. The gold standard has been the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program from the U.S. Green Building Council. Another one increasingly gaining familiarity is the EPA's Energy Star label program, which was extended from appliances and electronics to whole structures fairly recently. According to the EPA, the number of Energy Star-qualified buildings across the U.S. has soared by more than 130% from 2007. What does that really mean? Energy Star buildings use 35% less energy than average buildings and emit 35% less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Of course, it is important to remember that energy use and emissions are not the only factors to consider when asking if a building is green. There are also issues of indoor air quality, water conservation, recycled content, habitat protection, access to transportation, support for bicycles and hybrid vehicles, and impact on local wildlife (no glass walls of death!). Still, energy use is a major consideration

The top ten city rankings based on the number of Energy Star-qualified buildings in 2008 are:

The top ten city rankings based on 1) Los Angeles, CA
2) San Francisco, CA
3) Houston, TX
4) Washington D.C.
5) Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
6) Chicago, IL
7) Denver, CO
8) Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
9) Atlanta, GA
10) Seattle, WA3) Houston, TX
4) Washington D.C.
5) Dallas-Fort Worth, TX  

The Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008

The economy is hovering somewhere between catatonics 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.

10. THE ISLAND OF THE SOLAR

With money flowing like milk and honey in the land of solar technology, all sorts of schemers and dreamers came streaming into the area. One Swiss researcher, Thomas Hinderling, wants to build solar islands several miles across that he claims can produce hundreds of megawatts of relatively inexpensive power. Though most clean tech advocates question the workability of the scheme, earlier this year, Hinderling's company Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique received $5 million from the Ras al Khaimah emirate of the United Arab Emirates to start construction on a prototype facility, shown above, in that country. (Image: Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique)

10. THE ISLAND OF THE SOLAR Carbon capture and sequestration has a seductively simple appeal: We generate carbon dioxide emissions by burning geology — coal and oil — so to fix the problem, we should simply capture it and inject it back into the ground.

It turns out, however, that it's not quite so simple. Aside from finding the right kind of empty spaces in the earth's crust and the risks that the CO2 might leak, the biggest problem with the scheme is finding a material that could selectively snatch the molecule out of the hot mess of gases going up the flues of fossil fuel plants.

That's where two classes of special cage-like molecules come into play, ZIFs and amines. This year, Omar Yaghi, a chemist at UCLA, announced a slough of new CO2-capturing ZIFs and Chris Jones, a chemical engineer at Georgia Tech, reported that he'd made a new amine that seems particularly well-suited to working under real-world condition. Both materials could eventually make capturing CO2 easier -- and therefore, more cost effective.

Perhaps better still, Yaghi's lab's technique also defined a new process for quickly creating new ZIFs with the properties that scientists — and coal-plant operators — want. Some of their crystals are shown in the image above. (Image: Omar Yaghi and Rahul Banerjee/UCLA)

8. GREEN TECH LEGISLATION GETS REAL

On the federal and state levels, several historic actions put the teeth into green tech bills passed over the last few years. A review committee of the EPA effectively froze coal plant construction, a boon to alternative energy (though earlier this month the EPA ignored the committee's ruling and it is unclear how the issue will be settled). In California, the state unveiled and approved its plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, which could be a model for a nationwide system. Combined with the green-energy tax credits in the $700-billion bailout bill, the government did more for green tech in 2008 than in whole decades in the past.

7. THE CATALYST THAT COULD ENABLE SOLAR

In July, MIT chemist Daniel Nocera announced that he'd created a catalyst that could drop the cost of extracting the hydrogen and oxygen from water.

Combined with cheap photovoltaic solar panels (like Nanosolar's), the system could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight. In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.

"You've made your house into a fuel station," Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT told Wired.com. "I've gotten rid of all the goddamn grids."

Combined with cheap photovoltaic solar panels (like Nanosolar's), the system could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight. In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.

"You've made your house into a fuel station," Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT told Wired.com. "I've gotten rid of all the goddamn grids."

The catalyst enables the electrolysis system to function efficiently at room temperature and at ordinary pressure. Like a reverse fuel cell, it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. By recombining the molecules with a standard fuel cell, the O2 and H2 could then be used to generate energy on demand

6. PICKENS PLAN PUSHES POWER PLAYS INTO AMERICAN MAINSTREAM

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens might be a lot of things, but environmentalist he is not. That's why his support for a nationwide network of wind farms generated so much excitement. While his solution for transportation, natural gas vehicles, may not pan out, his Pickens Plan is the most visible alternative energy plan out there and it began to channel support from outside coastal cities for finding new sources of energy

Of course, no one said Pickens is stupid. If his plan was adopted and major investments in transmission infrastructure were made, his wind energy investments would stand to benefit.

5. SOLAR THERMAL PLANTS RETURN TO THE DESERTS

When most people think of harnessing the sun's power, they imagine a solar photovoltatic panel, which directly converts light from the sun into electricity. But an older technology emerged as a leading city-scale power technology in 2008: solar thermal. Companies like Ausra, BrightSource, eSolar, Solel, and a host of others are using sunlight-reflecting mirrors to turn liquids into steam, which can drive a turbine in the same way that coal-fired power plants make electricity.

Two companies, BrightSource and Ausra, debuted their pilot plants. They mark the first serious solar thermal experimentation in the United States since the 1980s. BrightSource's Israeli demo plant is shown above. (Image: BrightSource)

4. OBAMA PICKS A GREEN TECH EXPERT TO HEAD DOE

President-elect Barack Obama ran on the promise of green jobs and an economic stimulus package that would provide support for scientific innovation. Then, Obama picked Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, to head the Department of Energy. Chu had been focused on turning Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory into an alternative-energy powerhouse. The green tech community rejoiced that one of their own would be in the White House.

President-elect Barack Obama ran on the promise of green jobs and an economic stimulus package that would provide support for scientific innovation. Then, Obama picked Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, to head the Department of Energy. Chu had been focused on turning Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory into an alternative-energy powerhouse. The green tech community rejoiced that one of their own would be in the White House.

3. SOLAR CELL PRODUCTION GETS BIG, GIGA(WATT)BIGThat's because green tech is going to need some help. With the world economy falling into recession, the price of oil has dropped, even though there are serious concerns about the long-term oil supply. When energy prices drop, clean tech investments don't seem quite as attractive, and the renascent industry could be in trouble. It's happened before, after all.

Back in the '70s, geopolitical events sent the price of oil soaring, which, as it tends to, created a boom in green tech. But the early 1980s saw the worst recession since the Depression. Sound familiar? In the poor economic climate, focus and funds were shifted away from green tech. The last nail in the coffin was the election of Ronald Reagan, who immediately pulled off the solar panels Jimmy Carter had placed on the White House. The green tech industry collapsed.

History has given U.S. alternative energy research a second chance and environmental advocates hope that a different president will lead to a very different result. (Image: DOE)

3. SOLAR CELL PRODUCTION GETS BIG, GIGA(WATT)BIG

Every clean tech advocate's dream is a power-generating technology that could compete head-to-head with coal, the cheapest fossil fuel, on price alone. Nanosolar, one of a new generation of companies building solar panels out of cheap plastics, could be the first company to get there. Early this year, the company officially opened its one-gigawatt production facility, which is many times the size of most previous solar facilities.

Nanosolar, in other words, has found a process that can scale: it works as well in production as it does in the lab. That's the main reason that the company has picked up half-a-billion dollars in funding from investors like MDV's Erik Straser.

"[It's the] first time in industry a single tool with a 1GW throughput," Straser wrote in an e-mail. "It's a key part of how the company is achieving grid parity with coal."

2. PROJECT BETTER PLACE FINDS HOMES

Green technologies are dime a dozen, but a business model that could allow an entirely new, green infrastructure to be built is a rare thing.

Doing just that is the centerpiece of Sun Microsystems' SAP veteran Shai Agassi's vision for Project Better Place, a scheme that would distribute charging and swappable battery stations throughout smallish geographies like Israel, Hawaii and San Francisco. So far, there's very little steel in the ground, but in early December, the company's first charging location opened in Tel Aviv, Israel. Agassi's plan is one of several projects — like new biofuels rail terminals — that could create fundamentally new energy ecosystems.

Some of these systems, however, are actually throwbacks to earlier eras. As Peter Shulman, a historian of technology at Case Western Reserve University, likes to remind his students: in the early 20th century, before the Model T, one-third of all cars were electric. (Image: Joe Puglies/WIRED)                                                                         

1. CALERA'S GREEN CEMENT DEMO PLANT OPENS

Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here's the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.

Calera's technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.

With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world's cement would be a solution that's the scale of the world's climate change problem.

In August, the company opened its first demonstration site next to Dynegy's Moss Landing power plant in California, pictured here.

Netbook

A netbook (a portmanteau of Internet and notebook) is a class of laptop computer designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet.^[1]

Primarily designed for web browsing and e-mailing, netbooks rely heavily on the Internet for remote access to web-based applications"^[2] and are targeted increasingly at cloud computing users who require a less powerful client computer.^[3] Netbooks typically run either Linux or Windows XP operating systems^[2] rather than more resource-intensive operating systems like Windows Vista.^[4] The devices range in size from below 5 inches^[5] to over 13,^[6] typically weigh 2 to 3 pounds (~1 kg) and are often significantly cheaper than general purpose laptops.^[2]

History

The roots of the netbook can be traced to Psion's discontinued netBook line, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and the Palm Foleo which were all small, light network-enabled computers,^[7][8][9] however the influx of netbooks began in 2007 when Asus unveiled the ASUS Eee PC. Originally designed for emerging markets, the 8.9 × 6.5 in (23 x 17 cm) device weighed about two pounds and featured a 7-inch display, a keyboard approximately 85% the size of a normal keyboard, and a custom version of Linux with a simplified user interface geared towards netbook use.^[8] Following the EeePC, Everex launched its CloudBook, MSI released the Wind, Dell and HP both released a "Mini" series (the Inspiron Mini and HP Mini), and others soon followed suit. Windows XP based models were also introduced.^[8]

By late 2008, netbooks had begun to take market share away from laptops.^[10] It is estimated that almost thirty times more netbooks were sold in 2008 (11.4 million, 70% of which were in Europe^[11]) than in 2007 (400,000).^[12] For 2009 sales are expected to jump to 35 million, rising to an estimated 139 million in 2013.^[13] This trend is reinforced by the rise of web-based applications as well as mobile networking and, according to Wired Magazine, netbooks are evolving into "super-portable laptops for professionals".^[14]

Trends

At the start of 2009, models based on ARM^[15][16] and PowerPC^[17] architectures were released, indicating a shift away from Intel processors like the Atom (though some hybrid models contain both Intel and alternative architectures^[18]). Models using a MIPS System-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture also appeared around the same time, resulting in very low-cost systems.^[19]

As modern versions of Windows require x86-family microprocessors, it will not run on these netbooks.^[20] Linux, however, has fully supported non-x86 architectures such as MIPS, ARM, and PowerPC for many years.

Trademarks

In 1996 Psion started applying for trademarks for a line of netBook products that was later released in 1999^[21]. International trademarks were issued (including U.S. Trademark 75,215,401 and Community Trade Mark 000428250) but the models failed to gain popularity^[22] and are now discontinued (except for providing accessories, maintenance and support to existing users)^[23]. Similar marks were recently rejected by the USPTO citing a "likelihood of confusion" under section 2(d)^[24][25][26].

Despite expert analysis that the mark is "probably generic"^[27], Psion Teklogix issued cease and desist letters on 23 December 2008^[28][29][30]. This was heavily criticised^[31][32][33], prompting the formation of the "Save the Netbooks" grassroots campaign which worked to reverse the Google AdWords ban, cancel the trademark and encourage continued generic use of the term^[34]. While preparing a "Petition for Cancellation" of U.S. Trademark 75,215,401 they revealed^[35] that Dell had submitted one the day before^[36] on the basis of abandonment, genericness and fraud^[37]. They later revealed Psion's counter-suit against Intel, filed on 27 February 2009^[38].

It was also revealed around the same time that Intel had also sued Psion Teklogix (US & Canada) and Psion (UK) in the Federal Court on similar grounds^[39]. In addition to seeking cancellation of the trademark, Intel sought an order enjoining Psion from asserting any