A team of researchers at UCLA has developed a new way to make super-fast graphene transistors that are comparable to transistors that use more expensive (and toxic) materials. If successful commercially, the new graphene based technology could play a key role in energy conservation and waste reduction related to the rising tide of electronic devices in the world.

Like it or not, electronics are here to stay — and to grow into new markets as the developing world catches up with industrialized countries.  By reducing their size, making them more energy efficient, and cutting or outright eliminating the use of hazardous substances in their manufacture, it is possible to engineer a more sustainable path to a global electronic future.

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Put this one in the category of every cloud has a silver lining: E. coli, the bacteria notorious for contaminating food products from lettuce to  ground beef, could also play a key role in developing the next generation of biofuels. A team of scientists from Rutgers University is working with computer modeling to tweak the pesky little bug into overproduce fatty acids, which can then be processed into biodiesel.

If the research is successful, chalk up another win for producing biofuels from sustainable, non-food sources that can be grown without competing for land with food crops.  The growing list includes weedy plants, woody plants, algae and various microorganisms.

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Researchers at the University of California have developed a  smart phone chip that could spur a new generation of more efficient mobile electronic devices.  In turn, a more energy efficient device would enable the more widespread use of solar energy and other forms of renewable energy for battery recharging.

The new chip is based on the use of “dark silicon.” Dark silicon is shorthand for the growing portion of silicon on transistors that is underused because there is not enough power available to run them all of the transistors at once. The new chip, called GreenDroid, is designed to use about 11 times less energy than a typical processor.

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In a sign of things to come for corporate activism, The Gap, Timberland, Levi Strauss and Walgreens have just joined Whole Foods and Bed, Bath and Beyond in a boycott of petroleum products sourced from the notorious Alberta Tar Sands. As reported by Bob Weber of The Canadian Press, Federal Express has also adopted a policy that appears to lead toward joining the boycott.

The move comes just as scientists from the University of Alberta released a report on the mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and nine other toxins from tar sands operations found in the Athabasca River system. In the meantime, environmentalists in the U.S. are raising the alarm over tar sands-related damage in Montana, where new road construction is planned in order to accommodate trucks hauling massive pieces of equipment to the Alberta tar sands.

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Solar industry powerhouse Sunpower Corp. is busy creating new green jobs in the renewable energy sector, the latest endeavor being a group of contracts for a minimum of 20 megawatts in new solar installations for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, General Services Administration and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  All together, SunPower estimates that the construction work will create about 1,000 new green jobs in the local communities where the installations are located, in addition to saving taxpayers money by helping to shift the U.S. military into a more stable, low risk form of energy.

The new projects also illustrate how the Obama administration has stepped up the pace of solar installations at government facilities. SunPower has been installing solar arrays at U.S. government facilities since 1999, for a total of 20 megawatts to date. That’s equal to the minimum amount of solar capacity that will be installed under the new contracts.

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Following close on the heels of the U.S. Army, which just activated its first wind power project at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah, the U.S. Coast Guard is diving into wind power, too. The new turbine has been installed at the Coast Guard’s Southwest Harbor Base in Maine.

The new turbine is only rated at 2.4 kilowatts, but in this case, size doesn’t matter. What really matters is that the U.S. military has historically been very cautious about adopting wind power partly due to concerns over radio interference, but now with two branches of the armed services getting their feet wet, perhaps a tipping point is near and more clean, renewable wind power is in store across the Department of Defense.

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Scientists from Saint Louis University in Missouri are reporting the development of a new class of biobased fuel cells, which could replace disposable batteries and their toxic components. The new biofuel cells could be used to power small electronic devices such as laptops and cell phones, and could be charged by sugar from common sources such as soda pop and vegetable oil.

Conventional batteries, even when rechargeable, have become an enormous logistical issue, not only for consumers but also in terms of providing portable power for military purposes and dealing with supply and disposal issues, especially at remote bases. The U.S. military has already begun to develop biobased fuel cells, so chances are that the consumer market won’t be far behind.

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A team of scientists from Australia and Germany has discovered what could be a new, previously unknown form of chlorophyll. As we all know chlorophyll is the green-pigmented substance that plants and certain forms of bacteria use to convert sunlight into energy. This new form appears to be a kind of “scavenger” that harvests part of the light spectrum that other forms of chlorophyll don’t absorb.

The discovery is significant because it could help push forward the development of new strains of algae that can use a larger part of the light spectrum to produce biofuel oils, which in turn would help to make renewable biofuel production cheaper and more competitive with fossil fuels.

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Dry water might sound like an oxymoron but the concept is pretty straightforward: encapsulate microdrops of water in silica (otherwise known as common sand) to form a substance that looks like powdered sugar, then sit back and watch the fun. Though it was first discovered in 1968, the unique properties of dry water are only recently being recognized as an important tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists in at the University of Hull in the U.K. rediscovered dry water in 2006, and a team at the University of Liverpool is developing dry water to absorb and store gases including carbon dioxide and methane. While the team appears to be focusing on transporting natural gas from remote drilling areas, the technology might also be applied to the growing use of renewable biogas installations at farms and landfills.

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The petroleum-based adhesives used to make plywood and many other wood products have a nasty habit of leaching toxic formaldehyde fumes, but all that is on the way out. Scientists from the USDA Forest Products Laboratory are working on a new class of soy-based wood adhesive that uses a substance found in soy milk and tofu.

Soy-based wood adhesives that perform as well as their petroleum-based cousins are already inching their way into the market, but the USDA scientists have a more ambitious goal: to develop soy-based glues that are even stronger than conventional glues.

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