It looks like carmakers are going to make their quiet, electrically powered cars a lot noisier. And that's going to happen regardless of whether there's any actual data to support the notion that electric cars are so silent they pose a hazard to blind pedestrians. As of now, three different automakers have taken three different approaches, with more likely to be on the way in future models. Warbles, blips, or fake engine noises?

Langt flere danskere skal op på cyklen og lære at cykle til og fra arbejde. Derfor anlægges der nu flere hundrede kilometer nye supercykelveje i og omkring de større byer. Målet er at få op mod dobbelt så mange til at tage cyklen til og fra arbejde.
»Cyklisterne har det som bilisterne, de vil gerne have motorveje. Og de hader at stoppe for rødt lys,« fortæller politisk chef i Dansk Cyklistforbund Lise Bjørg Pedersen.
Hun tror på, at man kan fordoble den andel af transporten i Danmark, der foregår på cykel, fra 3-6 pct.

SV stiller eget lag i elbil-rally fra Oslo til Stavanger. – Jeg håper flere får øynene opp for elbil og alle fordelene med den, sier Inga Marte Thorkildsen, som kjører første etappe fra Oslo tirsdag.

Markveien på Grünerløkka i Oslo skal gjøres om til gågate
Det har et enstemmig bystyre bestemt. SV, som fremmet forslaget, håper arbeidet med å kjøre gata fri for biltrafikk kan begynne allerede neste år. Fire nye gågater i Oslo Lokalt ønske Målet er å skape en rolig handlegate tilrettelagt for fotgjengere, syklister og næringsliv. – Det kan bli et kjempeprosjekt, og er et stort pluss for både beboere i byen og for næringslivet, sier SVs Andreas Behring. Han forteller at det lenge har vært et lokalt ønske om å få til en gågate. – Dessuten blir dette en forlengelse av Torggata, og vi får nå gågate helt til Karl Johan, forteller Behring. – Det kan bli et kjempeprosjekt, sier SVs Andreas Behring.

Reducing energy consumption in data centers, particularly with the prospect of a federal carbon tax, is pushing vendors to explore an ever-growing range of ideas.
HP engineers say that biogas may, excuse this, offer a fresh alternative energy approach for IT managers.
Researchers at Hewlett Packard Co.'s HP Labs presented a paper (download PDF) on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots and other "digested farm waste" to generate electricity to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference held this week.
In the paper, the research team calculates that "a hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows" could power a 1 MW data center -- or on the order of 1,000 servers.

Artificial photosynthesis may soon be a reality – splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. You only have to look as far as your garden to observe one of the most common chemical reactions in nature at work pulling apart water molecules (H2O) and splitting them into carbohydrates and oxygen (O2). Nature provides the template for this process using the energy from sunlight to fuel the reaction. Here's a video showing the basic process:

Incandescent bulbs are highly energy-intensive and are widely used in India as they are easily available and are very cheap. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), on the other hand, are energy efficient but costly. Cost is one of the main factors restricting the proliferation of CFLs in India.

Ten sites on the seabed off the north coast of Scotland have been leased out to power companies in an effort to generate wave and tidal energy.In the first project of its kind in the world, areas in the Pentland Firth and around Orkney have been leased to seven companies by the Crown Estate. The companies are to push forward plans to generate enough electricity to supply 750,000 homes by 2020. Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said it was a "major milestone". He said the waters had been described as the "Saudi Arabia of marine power" due to their "rich natural resources". The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed around the UK, has awarded the leases after inviting bids from developers.

 Nå vil Tvedestrand kommune forsøke å gjøre det kommunale ledningsnettet mer
frostsikkert. - Vi stolte på global oppvarming, sier enhetsleder Per Charles
Andersen. Han er litt overrasket over at vinteren i år ble så kald.

Wind power has made incredible inroads into the U.S. energy system thanks to big, efficient machines standing hundreds of feet tall. But the future of wind power may be underground.
In the abandoned mines and sandstones of the Midwest, compressed-air storage ventures are trying to convert the intermittent motions of the air into the kind of steady power that could displace coal.
Compressed-air energy storage plants use compressors to store electricity generated when it’s not needed. The air, pumped into large underground formations, is like a spring that’s been squeezed and when it’s needed, it can deliver a large percentage of the energy that it received. 

Transonic Combustion, a startup based in Camarillo, CA, has developed a fuel-injection system it says can improve the efficiency of gasoline engines by more than 50 percent. A test vehicle equipped with the technology gets 64 miles per gallon in highway driving, which is far better than more costly gas-electric hybrids, such as the Prius, which gets 48 miles per gallon on the highway.

Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. "These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials," says Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor, professor of applied physics and materials science, and director of Caltech's Resnick Institute, which focuses on sustainability research.

När man surfar in på SJ:s hemsida kommer man direkt in på listan med inställda avgångar, förseningar och varningar.
I Sverige råder vinterväder och trafikkaos.
Vädret delar vi med våra nordiska grannländer, men hur är det med kaoset?

– Det har varit mycket runt Oslo och på linjen mot Göteborg. Men där är felet på den svenska sidan, säger de på NSB:s kundtjänst.
De har inga uppgifter om inställda tåg och förseningarna runt Oslo ska bero på växelfel.
Är det kylan som ställt till det?

– Det är inte riktigt lika illa här som i Sverige. Vi har haft halvtimmesförseningar och några på upp till en timme.
Och enligt hemsidorna så upplever inte heller kanadensiska Via Rail eller Transsibiriska järnvägen något som liknar kaos. Då var det ändå 33 grader kallt på stationen i Omsk i morse.

Olje- og energiminister Terje Riis-Johansen og Sveriges visestatsminister og näringsminister Maud Olofsson undertegnet på et møte i Stockholm i dag en overenskomst om prinsippene for det videre arbeidet med å etablere et felles elsertifikatmarked i Norge og Sverige. – Jeg er glad for at vi nå har fått på plass de sentrale prinsippene for et felles elsertifikatmarked med Sverige.