The financial woes at General Motors could finally be catching up with its fuel cell vehicle development program.

In a Web-based interview with the media Tuesday, CEO Fritz Henderson said the company may take a close look at what it spends on fuel cell development. When asked by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’s Matt Daneman about fuel cells, Henderson said “while we need to be more efficient in this area, we are confident we can maintain the capabilities necessary to win in the market going forward.” Th giant automaker declared bankruptcy this month and is selling off subsidiaries.

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The state of Massachusetts is hunting for unusual places to put wind turbines as it looks to meet an ambitious goal of producing 2,000 megawatts of windpower by 2020.

The Associated Press reports that state officials are encouraging municipal planners to look at using capped landfills as potential wind farm locations. Plans were also just announced for a military reservation on Cape Cod.

The state is hoping to jump start development, because right now, the AP reports, there are only 11 commercial scale turbines in the state. But, ther are dozens of smaller ones installed and nearly 200 other projects in various stages of planning.

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Could a regular light bulb end up being an energy efficient competitor to a compact fluorescent bulb? Researchers at the University of Rochester say yes.

A team of optics researchers at the school say they’ve developed a process that makes a 100-watt incandescent bulb use less electricity than a 60-watt bulb. The process, they say, would keep the cost of a traditional light bulb well under that of its fluorescent counterpart while maintaining the more pleasant light an incandescent bulb gives off.

Professor Chunlei Guo  (pictured above) and his team developed a laser process that treats the tungsten filament in a traditional bulb. The process creates nano- and micro- level structures on the filament that dramatically improve its efficiency.

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A wind farm that was planned for the upstate New York town of Beekmantown and shot down by town officials after a collapse of a turbine at a nearby park, may be back on again.

A new developer has submitted plans to the town, the Plattsburgh Press-Republican reports. The town council voted down a plan submitted by Windhorse Power LLC in March. Among the reasons cited were contentious lawsuits filed by residents, inaction by Windhorse Power and fears of an incident similar to a turbine collapse in neighboring Altona.

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Mascoma Corp. says it has found a way to remove several steps from the process of making cellulosic ethanol, cutting the cost and time it takes to make the fuel, while increasing yields.

The Lebanon, N.H.-based company says it has made advances in consolidated bioprocessing, a process that uses engineered microorganism to make ethanol from cellulosic biomass, such as grasses, stalks and wood waste. Mascoma’s CBP process eliminates the need to produce costly cellulase enzymes, by producing the cellulase and ethanol in a single step.

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At most college dining halls, they’ll fry just about anything.

Wings, mozzarella sticks, fries and onion rings. Old shoe leather (wait, maybe that’s just a memory of how things tasted at my college dining hall.) All that frying leaves a lot of leftover grease and oil.

At the University of Rochester, a group of students used that oil as the foundation for a business plan that has produced both a biodiesel powered shuttle bus and a new building for biofuel experimentation. The project will hit a milestone on Earth Day, when university President Joel Seligman will help send the shuttle bus off on its first trips around campus, including a tour of the new building.

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Yes, even the wind power is bigger in Texas. The Lone Star State held the top spot again in the just released American Wind Energy Association’s annual industry report.

In fact, if Texas was its own country it would rank sixth worldwide in production, with 7,118 megawatts installed. Texas added 2,671 MW just last year.

The AWEA report breaks down a record 2008 for wind power in the U.S. The U.S. now ranks ahead of Germany as the world’s top wind power producer. More than 8,500 MW of wind power came online last year, the report says, a more than 50 percent jump in U.S. production.

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Hey, hold on a just a minute Chicago, San Francisco and Portland. Connecticut and Massachusetts want in on your race to be the country’s EV hotbed.

Northeast Utilities wants to build a 575-outlet EV charging system in the Nutmeg and Bay States, The Hartford Courant says. The pilot project would take two years to complete and the outlets would be built at private homes, businesses and public spots. Total cost: $1.4 million, helped out by a $694,000 federal grant.

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The head of BP Solar International says his firm will install 100 megawatts of utility-level solar power projects on U.S. soil in 2009.

Reyad Fezzani told Dow Jones in an interview published Monday that his company, a subsidiary of energy giant BP PLC, is seeing high demand, and strong financing interest from investors. BP expects to manufacture 320 MW of solar panels in 2009, roughly double the amount it made in 2008. That will be split about 60/40 between large commericial and utility installations and residential sales, Fezzani said. That equates to about 192 MW of large scale installations, with 100 MW of that in the U.S., he said.

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In this current gold rush climate for green energy words such as “biggest” and “largest” get thrown around all the time in an effort to grab some headlines.  But this project in Sweden is big no matter how you parse it.

With 1,101 turbines it would be Europe’s biggest wind farm, and as organizers told the Norrbotten county board in the region where the project would be built, possibly the biggest in the world. It would cost 55 billion kronor or roughly $6.9 billion. It would be located in the northern part of Sweden, near Markbygden and occupy 175 square miles.

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While in spring time Indiana’s thoughts generally turn from high school hoops to auto racing, Indianapolis last week launched a more than $200 million plan to put the region on the lead lap of the race to be a leader in hybrid vehicle technology.

The Indianapolis Star reports area business leaders are calling the effort the Energy Systems Network and says the effort hopes to draw on technical resources already in the region to create a hybrid economy.

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New York’s Ontario County is exploring the possibility of turning garbage into gas at the county’s landfill.

The county is debating whether to let Casella Waste Systems, which runs the landfill in the town of Seneca, build a $5 million pilot plant there. If the pilot proves successful, a $100 million plant could eventually be built on the site, reports the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The idea will be debated at a public hearing tonight.

Currently the landfill takes in about 2,200 tons of trash a day from 33 counties, other states and Canada.

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Duke Energy said today it will build a third wind farm in Wyoming and the Charlotte, N.C., based company plans to have the facility online by the end of this year.

The Silver Sage Windpower Project will generate 42 megawatts of electricity with 20 2.1 MW Suzlon wind turbines. It will join Duke’s 29-MW Happy Jack Windpower Project in Cheyenne and the 99-MW Campbell Hill Windpower Project near Casper which should also be online by year’s end.

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Pittsburgh’s plans to make itself into a hotbed for solar power and other green technology got a metaphorical fist bump last week with the visit of two cabinet secretaries to announce funding from the federal stimulus package.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $11 million green stimulus funding during their trip. They also toured a welding and heating and air conditioning training facility at Allegheny County Community College, where officials showed off the skills needed for energy efficient projects. Allegheny County  will get $8.1 million, City of Pittsburgh will receive $3.4 million out of a $3.2 billion pot being divvied up around the country.

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The U.S. may lag behind Europe when it comes to generating power from offshore wind farms, but a proposed wind farm off the Long Island Coast would be a big step forward in catching up.

Consolidated Edison and the Long Island Power Authority say they want to build a 700 megawatt in the Atlantic Ocean, about 13 miles off the Rockaway Pennisula. The project would be built in two stages of 350 MW each.

A draft assessment of the project released by Con Ed and LIPA this week said it would cost about $415 million to expand electricity transmission capabilities to handle the first 350 MW phase when built.

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We told you recently about a wind turbine collapse in northern New York that has officials looking for a cause. Now comes word that a nearby town is scraping plans for a windfarm, in part because of concerns over that collapse.

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican reports that the Beekmantown Town Council killed a proposed farm with 13 turbines last week after a contentious meeting. Vermont-based Windhorse Power LLC had proposed the facility three years ago but the project had become tied up in lawsuits by residents. Council members voted 3-2 to to kill the project.

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Chemical maker DuPont (NYSE:DD) said this week it expects to triple its photovoltaic sales to $1 billion annually by 2012.

The increase will come as the market for solar power increases and the company boosts its own ability to produce solar cells, company officials said during the Jefferies 7th Global Clean Technology Conference.

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IBM, which has been promoting the virtues of its smart grid and smart traffic technologies, today announced it’s jumping into “smart water,” too. The technology and services giant introduced a new suite of services and products aimed at better using water resources.

At the top of the list, a new membrane that filters toxins more efficiently than current methods, IBM says. The membrane uses a unique chemistry in what IBM calls a  “water super-highway.”"  The rate at which the water super-highway removes arsenic from contaminated water doubles as the pH increases. When contaminated water is forced through the membrane salts and a number of toxins are filtered out  and what’s left is pure drinking water.

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New York State’s Public Service Commission investigators are trying to figure out why a wind turbine collapsed last week in upstate Clinton County.

The Albany Times Union reports that Noble Environmental Power, which owns the 65-turbine Altona Wind Park, and turbine maker General Electric Co.  found “wiring anomalies” prevented two turbines from shutting down as they are supposed to during a power outage. One tower collapsed in a fiery heap, starting a small fire on the ground. The other was damaged but remained standing. Debris was scattered as far as a quarter-mile away, the paper reported. WPTZ has video with images of the collapsed turbine.

There were no reported injuries. The incident is believed to be the first collapse of a turbine in New York. The PSC would like G.E. and Noble to share information from their investigation with the agency.

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New York City utility Consolidated Edison wants to install a 12 megawatt pilot solar project in the Big Apple.

Con Ed filed its plans with the New York State Public Service Commission late last week. the 18-month project would generate energy for homes, businesses and Con Ed buildings. The utility said 1 MW powers about 1,000 homes. That’s a tiny fraction of the 3 million customers Con Ed serves.

The project would cost as much as $25 million, the utility said.

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