The City of Copenhagen has announced the establishment of its first hydrogen fueling station, alongside a mini-fleet of fuel cell vehicles, and hopes that the move will help it towards the ambitious goal of becoming the first carbon-neutral capital city in the world by 2025.

Following the recent news of a growing hydrogen fueling system in Germany, the new facility also opens up the intriguing proposition of a cross-border European hydrogen infrastructure.

According to grandly titled Technology and Environment Mayor Klaus Bondam, “Today we are putting Copenhagen on the map as a champion of clean transport. Together with [fuel cell vehicle integrator] H2 Logic, Copenhagen is setting in motion the development of hydrogen transport in Denmark and in northern Europe, because the hydrogen filling station in Copenhagen will help provide future hydrogen-powered vehicles from Scandinavia and Germany with hydrogen.”

Read more of this story »

Nissan have announced plans to roll out a ‘fast charge’ electric car network in Arizona, capable of topping up batteries in as little as 10-15 minutes.

The Japanese company has teamed up with EV charge-tech firm ECOtality and the Pima association of government’s, (representing the Tucson, Arizona region), to establish a pilot-scale network in readiness for the launch of Nissan electric cars in the US next year.

Read more of this story »

image by Käthe Köllwitz

In San Francisco, more than 150,000 people live at or far below the the poverty line and are in desperate need of food aid; in 2008 the SF Food Bank alone distributed 33 million pounds of food to local hungry residents, many of whom are seniors and children.

San Francisco’s Food Security Task Force has just released information showing the huge increase in numbers of people needing food assistance, and the growing strain that is being put on food relief agencies. Hunger is soaring and donations have been dropping. Local food pantries have seen a 13.5% increase in need from the year before. During the first federal fiscal quarter (July-Sep.) of 2008 Glide Memorial Church saw an 18.9% increase in the number of individual meals served from the previous year. And our economy is continuing to decline; unemployment in the Bay Area is nearly in double digits, which puts more and more people at risk of going hungry every single day.

Read more of this story »

Australian researchers have figured out a cool new way to tackle the threat of global warming, by setting up a network of ‘talking’ fridges.

But wait, the idea isn’t as crazy as it might sound. The fridges feature cutting-edge technology enabling them to communicate with each other via a network to share and store energy from renewable energy sources such as solar panels or wind turbines.

According to inventor, Sam West, “The fridges are designed to talk to each other, negotiating when it’s a good time to consume electricity and when it’s better not to.”

Read more of this story »

The Australian government has given the green light to a plan to establish one of the world’s largest electric car recharging infrastructures, powered entirely by renewable energy.

The A$1 billion ($676 million) project could see the establishment of as many as two million recharging points, as well as more than 500 battery swap stations, where drivers can exchange depleted batteries without the need to wait for a recharge.

Read more of this story »