Trucking is among the most important, yet polluting parts of our environment. Everything everywhere was delivered by a truck, unless you live on a farm. A necessary evil, if you will. Getting truckers on board with the green movement will play an integral part in the widespread acceptance of alternative fuel vehicles. To do that, you’ve got to hit them in the wallet.

Towards that end, last week Vision Industries, with the help of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, unveiled a short haul, hydrogen-powered truck dubbed the Tyrano.

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In preparation for the steadily approaching launch of their first mass-market electric car—the LEAF—Nissan has produced a series of videos highlighting different aspects of their approach to developing electric car technology.

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The moment sustainable motoring has waited for has finally arrived: a full range of all-electric cars.

Renault has launched the world’s first range of purely electric cars at the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show 2009.  Designed to cater for everyone from a single traveller to local commerce, via 2.5 kids family cars, it’s a revolution in three important ways:

• the range is designed from scratch as a complete set of electric cars — not gas-fueled cars with an electric motor retro-fitted to give the manufacturer green kudos;
• the cars will be priced without an “electric premium,” allowing them to compete alongside gas-based engines on a like-for-like basis for the first time ever;
• most importantly, they’re real. Presented as concept cars, the Kangoo ZE is already in an advanced prototype stage, and I was lucky enough to drive it at Frankfurt.

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You’ve got to hand it to Nissan: they’ve been burning the midnight oil with their EV information blitz recently. I’m sure there are many blurry eyed and bedazzled marketing and engineering folks behind the Nissan EV scenes right now who are starting to wonder if they get paid enough.

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Picture: Offshore Algae Harvesting in Semi-permeable bags

NASA’s design calls for using large plastic bags, made of forward-osmosis membranes, and filled with sewage for offshore harvesting of algae for bio-fuel.

My earlier post about leveraging nanotechnology for increasing the commercial viability of Algal bio-fuel opened me up a fantastic world of realizations. The wonderful technologies being developed by NASA have been time and again used to improve the quality of life for the people who inhabit this world and not just the journeys and stays of astronauts in the space. And particularly, because I felt that my hope for algae as commercially viable source of alternate energy had an even greater chance of being realized because NASA researchers too are pitching their effots in the same direction.

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The algae! Yes – the same slimy brown-green ‘plant’ that makes a pond or a lake look yucky – is the creating a great buzz as the most promising source of alternative energy. And now nanotechnology is being leveraged to add some more zing to the promise!

Algae are some of the simplest of the living organisms and can’t even be classified as plants as they lack any differentiation into various structures such as leaves, roots or other organs that characterize a plant. Yet this simple structure is the very reason for the alarming growth rate of the algae: Under optimal conditions, it can double its mass overnight.

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It’s plentiful, it’s homegrown, and it could help clean up the environment while powering our cities. The idea of transforming algae into a fuel is a reality. Nowadays there are numerous implementations of algae into the renewable energy market.

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Malta is becoming the first smart grid island. Now comes an architectural plan to turn a whole Asian island into a zero-emissions eco-resort. Call it one massive brownfield reclamation project.

The Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, wants to turn Azerbaijan’s Zira Island into a resort and residential complex that would produce the same amount of energy it consumes. Some towns have looked to become carbon neutral and eco-cities are under construction. BIG’s idea seems to match any of those ambitions.

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The company has already stated its intentions not to be left behind the competition when it comes to green and fuel efficient vehicle technologies. The electric MPV is the first in a series of three possible production electric cars that will be viewed by dealers later this month, with the one that’s best received going into production first.

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Last week, Nissan Motors announced a partnership with the state of Tennessee to study what transportation framework will be required to integrate electric cars into the global transportation economy.  Nissan hopes that the study will provide insight that will allow them to market their electric cars globally by the year 2012.

What Nissan lacks in hybrid technology, they are attempting making up for with electric foresight (Nissan has some smaller, more efficient cars, but none have hybrid technology).  The company is banking on a high demand for zero emission vehicles and has taken the necessary steps to facilitate the use of electric vehicles.  Nissan recently announced they will sell electric cars in the US in 2010 with plans for another electric vehicle to be globally released in 2012. There will be no backup combustion engines in any of Nissan’s electric vehicles.

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