Green Options

A new way to treat wood has trees back in the limelight: a hardwood’s reliability that even a rain forest mahogany tree can love.

Check out the world’s first heavy traffic road bridge made from Accoya® wood. The bridge, located in Sneek in the Netherlands, is “the first wooden bridge in the world that can support the heaviest load class of 60 tons”. At this week’s Wall Street Green Trading Summit, a panel on forestation introduced a new way of [...]

The longer I am here at the Wall Street Green Trading Summit, the less this feels like anything to do with environmentalism. At some point, when does off-setting stop being feasible, and when does carbon reduction become the name of the game?

The summit is over for today, but I wanted to throw some concluding thoughts out after an afternoon spent discussing good business models for producing alternative energy and for overhauling our current electrical grid.

Excuse Me, Waiter? What Year is this Carbon?

We’re coming at you live with special Red, Green, and Blue coverage from New York’s very own Wall Street Green Trading Summit.

Struggling Indian car company Tata Motors has announced the commercial launch of the Tata Nano, the most fuel-efficient petrol-driven car in India, and quite possibly the world.

The Tata Nano, keenly anticipated across India since its unveiling early last year, is capable of an incredible 23.6km/litre (55.5 mpg) and ultra-low carbon emissions of 101 g/km, one of the lowest in India. Oh, and with prices starting at about 100,000 rupees ($2,050), it’s also the cheapest car in the world (more pics after the jump).

Italian car company Pininfarina have announced plans to launch the first car in the world to use an iPhone as a remote control.

The Pininfarina Bluecar is an all-electric vehicle capable of travelling 155 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 80 mph. But get this - drivers will be able to use their iPhone to remotely check up on battery charge levels and ‘pre-heat the car’s electric drive system,’ very swish (more pics after the jump).

Italdesign, the Italian design firm responsible for the development of dozens of Lamborghini, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo production cars over the past 40 years, has announced plans to bring what it calls “the world’s fastest hybrid” to this year’s 2009 Geneva show, which will also be hosting the debut of the hotly-anticipated ethanol Bentley supercar.

Photos and speculation after the jump.

Last week, I reported on Shelby Super Cars (SSCs) plan to release what will become the world’s fastest electric car, the Ultimate Aero EV.

Since then, the company has been subject to intense speculation that some of it’s claims about the EVs performance were, how can I put this, a trifle over ambitious. In fact, a growing majority of critics have publicly ridiculed Shelby’s claim that the Aero’s battery will feature a 10 minute re-charge capability via a 110v outlet, saying that it simply defies the laws of the known universe.

Shelby SuperCars (SSC), the company behind the world’s fastest production car, has announced plans to launch an electric supercar that is four times as powerful as the Tesla Roadster later this year.

The Ultimate Aero EV will feature the firms proprietary All-Electric Scalable Powertrain, the AESP, containing twin electric motors capable of an incredible 1,000 HP (735 Kw) and 800 lb-ft (1083.42 NM) of torque. According to SSC, this should enable acceleration from 0-60 mph in a breathtaking 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 208 mph.

Motorola has announced plans to launch the world’s first completely carbon neutral mobile phone, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas.

The shell of the W233 Renew is made entirely of recycled water bottles, and will be available via T-Mobile within the next three months. The struggling cell phone manufacturer has also teamed up with CarbonFund.org to offset the energy used in the manufacture, distribution and operation of each phone throughout its lifetime.