Usually, the annual MacWorld keynote speech always brings in some goodies for the eco geeks. This year they managed to please everyone by announcing that new battery in the all-new 17-inch MacBook Pro is now 60% more efficient.

The battery is expected to run for more than 8 hours on a single charge, allows more than 1000 charges (that’s like 5 years) and is recyclable. It sure sounds green to me, but there’s more to it. It also got an EPEAT Gold award for being arsenic, BFR, mercury and PVC free.

Other than these, there’s also a smart chip within the battery that deal with each cell to make adjustments to the current for each cell, making it last three times longer than the industry’s standard. And did we mention that the battery is just as thing and just as light?

Though the user is still not able to change the battery itself, we think Apple has taken a big step forward. Don’t you?

Photo via Gizmodo : Live @ Macworld

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Alexandria is an old city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, located along the Western bank of the Potomac River. An old 1910 warehouse in the city managed to get a Gold level certification and got converted in eight beautiful condos, the first LEED units in the state.

Dubbed the Cromley Lofts, with large, wall-less, light filled spaces that brings in the rustic, industrial, and modern while still achieving a sense of warmth, the building retains much of its history with those brick columns still in place.

However the eco-factor is what gets us drooling. It has a green roof, Georgian pine floors (or cork flooring) and bamboo cabinetry, low-voc carpets, Energy Star appliances and those smart dual-flush toilets.

Though the condos may be out of our league for most of us - $535,000 to $645,000, they sure bring in a unique approach to green architecture, isn’t it?

Check out the pictures gallery after the break. Read more »

Mitsubishi Materials Corp, Electric Power Development Co, or J-Power, Nittetsu Mining Co Ltd and Kyushu Electric Power Co are stepping up efforts with the help of Tokyo to make more geothermal power stations.

Why not? Japan has more than its share of active volcanoes. And Japan needs a home grown source of energy. What’s more, geothermal power plants emit far less CO2.

Mitsubishi and J-Power will dumb Y40billon ($420m) to construct a georthermal power plant in Yuzawa in Akita. The facility will tap hot water and steam around 2000 meters below the surface by 2016.

Japan’s METI has set up a group to figure out how to help these companies to their thing, including financial support.

In the 70’s - think oil crisis - geothermal plants got a hot spurt, but nuclear power stations won out.

Japan has 18 geothermal plants that account for about 0.2% of electicity in the country. Japan!? Can you say Iceland?

Though George W. Bush is not the best friend of those caring about the environment, he’s going to do the right thing days before stepping off. Some 200,000 square miles of the amazingly beautiful and biologically diverse areas in the Pacific, are going to be declared “marine national monuments” preventing oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

The protected area which includes a group of islands, atolls and some of the waters around the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, will save huge underwater mud volcanoes, coral reefs, and rare species of whales.

“This historic action by President Bush protects some of the world’s most unique and biologically significant ocean habitat. Together with the Hawaii marine monument established two years ago, this marks the end of an era in which humans have increasingly understood the need to conserve vanishing wild places on land but failed to comprehend the similar plight of our oceans. It comes none too soon,” Joshua Reichert, said the managing director for Pew Environment Group.

He did the right thing, isn’t it?

Source: Reuters
Image courtesy of luigig

When people consider relocating simply because of the health threats air pollution brings up, there is something wrong with that city. We’re talking about large metropolis like Hong Kong where a study conducted by the think tank Civic Exchange revealed that 1 in 5 citizens - a total of 1.4 million - are considering fleeing the city, while 500,000 of these are “seriously considering or already planning to move”.

Most of those aware of the air problem include highly affluent, top earners and educated professionals who care about their health - and Singapore (long rivalry) wants them. Though breathability is a highly important chapter for cities to compete for, Hong Kong agrees on the fact that air quality is a “matter of life and death” but there aren’t any real measures taken.

Would you move out if you were living in Hong Kong?

GreenDaily via Yahoo!
Image by vagrantant

Toyota is coming out with a new Prius, a solar-powered Prius. The car will have solar panels in its roof that will be used to run the car’s air conditioning. And, when does a car need air conditioning? Right! When the sun is out.

The 2010 Prius is expected to get 55+mpg, be plug-in-able, smaller, a wagon, and even Li-ion battery carrying.

How cool is Toyota?

The solar panels will go on the high-end version of the Prius = be expensive.

The solar panels will be made by Kyocera.

Prius had its debut in Japan in 1997. So far it has sold more than 1 million vehicles worldwide. The 2G version came out in 2003. The 3G version is due out this year.

Two Japanese companies have come up with alternative ways to get hydrogen for fuel cells - one from dough and the other from human waste.

Kajima suggests microbes can created hydrogen from human waste. A prototype has alread been created that generated 130W from a cubic meter of waste. Commercially available by about 2020.

Not sure what she is holding there...

Sapporo Breweries, the beer maker, thinks microbes can decompose waste dough at bakery factories and generate hydrogen. hydrogen from excess cookie dough!? The brewery wants to sell its idea to food-processing plants some time next year. After that, to homes that could use their waste could follow. 25K liters of hydrogen from 125kg of waste.

I don’t know about you, but when I make cookies, I like to eat some of the dough. I hope somebody doesn’t get confused when making hydrogen from cookie dough and human waste and put their fingers in the wrong pile.

China wants its car makers to develop smaller, fuel-efficient models NOT the gas guzzlers that the US Big Three produced despite all the warnings to the contrary.

“We used to believe medium-sized cars would have the biggest market in China, but actually small cars have the greatest potential in terms of energy efficiency and price,” said a senior engineer  of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China.

While Americans kept producing gas hogs, Japan quietly went about its business gaining a stronghold appealing to the fuel-conscious consumer.

Toyota expanded its presence in the US with cheap fuel efficient cars back during the 70s crude oil crisis…and never looked back. Now that prices have dropped back down, chances are America will keep driving their cows around while this time, China ALSO gains a foothold.

Chinese still want midsized sedans. In ‘06-’07 sales for small compact cars dipped while the sedan sales went up 20%.  But, that will change….or will it?

Taotao is just ten months old. He has a sad story. His mama left him when he was a little guy, much like Knut in German, except that Taotao is in China.

Taotao’s keepers smeared polar bear urine and crap all over themselves so that Taotao would be fooled and let them help him. It worked. Taotao eventually sucked the fingers of his keepers, as opposed to other areas. He let them nurse him and he grew.

Taotao eventually grew from just several hundred grams to 35kg. Taotao now has his own private swimming pool and is growing. His favorite books are when keepers read global warming horror stories to him.

Keepers theorize that Taotao’s mother abandoned him because she was too young when he was born.

Taotao survived, however. Little guys who grow against the odds give us hope, no?

Since old mosquitoes spread diseases, Aussie researchers have been pondering what to do. The conclusion…have the buggers die sooner, without killing them or poisoning them, of course. That won’t work as the PETA mosquito bunch will be all over us, um, them.

Scientists have been trying genetically engineer mosquitoes to become resistant to malaria and dengue fever and such as an alternative to mass spraying of insecticide.

Just recently, researchers have discovered a way to breed mosquitoes to carry an insect parasite that will cause them to die sooner. Mosquitoes born with the parasite lived only 21 days instead of the usual 50 days…not long enough to encounter malaria and endure two weeks of incubation before the bug can spread the disease.

The plan is to somehow let the parasite grow more rapidly, attach to mosquitoes that carry diseases and have the mosquitoes die younger before they can infect anyone.

I don’t know about you, but it seems pretty naive to me to think that somebody thinks they can control the rampant setting free of parasites to kill bugs that are intent on causing diseases.