Policy

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4.2 billion.

That's how many rooftops you'd have to cover with solar panels to displace a cubic mile of oil (CMO), a measure of energy consumption, according to Ripudaman Malhotra, who oversees research on fossil fuels at SRI International. The electricity captured in those hypothetical solar panels in a year (2.1 kilowatts each) would roughly equal the energy in a CMO. The world consumes a little over 1 CMO of oil a year right now and about 3 CMOs of energy from all sources.

Put … Read more

The SuperMoneyMaker Pump sounds like something that Billy Mays might offer on cable TV, but it's an agricultural tool that's encouraging economic sustainability in Africa.

The device, which won Martin Fisher the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT award for sustainability, can pull water 30 feet below, in a well, and then push it through a pipe to irrigate two acres of land.

The idea is to allow farmers to grow crops continuously throughout the year, rather than concentrate on a single, seasonal crop. Potentially, the pump enables land to be used more efficiently and lets farmers grow more food.

The … Read more

Denmark-based Agroplast wants to transform pig urine into plastic dinnerware and household items.

We all have to have dreams, I suppose.

The company has essentially devised a way to better commercialize urea, a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, found in urine.

Other animal waste products like manure can be inserted into the system, but pig urine is particularly interesting because it is an environmental hazard, says Peter Tøttrup, a partner at Seed Capital, a Danish venture firm that also helps the government incubate start-ups. We ran into Tøttrup at the coffee urn at the … Read more

With Earth Day upon us again, CNET News.com green reporters sat down and selected five leading companies in five different clean technology categories. Here are the ones to watch in the recycling realm:

1. GreenFuel Technologies: Large oil companies and many academics favor capturing carbon dioxide, turning it into a liquid, and storing it underground. Politically, though, that's a tough sell.

GreenFuel, with a pedigree from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and millions in venture funding, wants to feed captured carbon dioxide to algae, and then turn the algae into biofuel. The company is still fine-tuning … Read more

China is the Saudi Arabia of waste heat, according to Roger Ballentine, president of Green Strategies.

The country's power plants aren't very efficient and, unlike Denmark or Japan, China hasn't invested a lot in technologies that can capture the heat and harness it to produce electricity. That means there's a vast amount of potential energy being squandered--or waiting to be tapped by an entrepreneur or two.

China isn't alone. Over half of the electricity produced in the U.S., for instance, never actually gets used for a productive purpose. A lot of it gets converted … Read more

The much-heralded clean-tech revolution needs a bigger army.

The absence of technical and managerial talent in the clean energy sector is putting a strain on the development of the industry, a survey finds.

Research firm New Energy Finance and recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles queried 75 executives in clean energy companies from around the world and found that the lack of people in the field is a problem.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said that the recruitment issue is "very serious," and 59 percent said it was "moderately serious."

Getting appropriate people, particularly chief technology officers and … Read more

While some people wonder whether there's too much hot air in the clean-tech sector, the man who has advised California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on environmental matters says the industry is just beginning to reach its potential.

Regardless of who sets up shop in the Oval Office in January, sweeping changes in federal energy and climate policy are expected to give the clean-tech industry a big boost, says Terry Tamminen, former director of the California Environment Protection Agency and now a clean-tech adviser for Pegasus Capital Advisors.

"We need to take California's standards and federalize them," said … Read more

President Bush on Wednesday set a goal of halting the growth of greenhouse gases by 2025, calling for elimination of clean-energy international trade barriers but stopping short of specific proposals to mandate carbon emissions caps.

Delivering a speech at the White House Rose Garden, Bush said national greenhouse gas emissions growth should peak within 10 to 15 years, stop in 2025, and then decline.

He said the nationwide strategy would build on existing policies to accelerate development of energy-efficiency technologies, cellulosic ethanol, nuclear power, and renewable energy like wind and solar.

Bush said the U.S.--which has been accused … Read more

What's causing the global rise in food prices? Everything.

Growing demand for food in emerging nations, wheat crop failures, currency fluctuation, speculation in the commodities market, hastily conceived government policies, and the growing demand for biofuels have all--among other factors--converged to drive up the price of food, experts say.

"Those who say it's all the fault of biofuels are wrong and those that say that none of the fault belongs to biofuels are wrong," said Walter Falcon, a professor emeritus of international agricultural policy at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford's Center for Environmental Sciences … Read more