Green Options

Many of us are accustomed to watching TV on high-quality plasma and LCD screens, but we pay a severe price in energy inefficiency. Toshiba has come up with a solution to our energy woes: flexible OLED paper that doubles as a TV screen.

An Atlanta, GA-based company called Geoplasma is using trash to provide power to 50,000 homes in Florida. The company’s plasma refuse plant, which should be online by 2011, is a first for the United States. It will process 1,500 tons of garbage each day and send 60 MW of power to the grid.

If you own a big-screen TV, you may have some inkling about the amount of energy that goes into powering it. And while LCD TV’s use significantly less energy than plasma screens, these power-suckers are still nothing to scoff at.

Fortunately, television manufacturers are beginning to realize that rising energy costs mean they have to address this problem. Sharp is presenting their environmentally-friendly way of watching TV at the IFA electronics show in Berlin. The company is also one of the biggest solar panel manufacturers in the world, and it believes that a single panel can provide enough energy to power an LCD TV for four and a half hours a day with no extra electricity from the grid.

Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.

Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year.