Oh sure, Rock Port, Missouri managed to snag the title of being "100% wind powered," but Texas' new plan will make the Show Me state's gusty initiatives look awfully weak. Officials at the Public Utility Commission recently okayed a plan to "build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from West Texas to urban areas." The ginormous Lone Star state is already the nation's leader in wind power, but when said plan is fully implemented (pending final approval), it'll produce more wind energy than the next closest 14 states combined. Granted, customers will be paying a touch more ($4 per month is the current estimate) for all this clean energy, but pundits assert that the cost is minor when looking at just how much this will help out Mother Earth. Look for everything to go live in four to five years, barring any unforeseen setbacks.

[Thanks, Adam]

Never heard of Fresno-Yosemite International? Thanks to this low-key airport now housing the largest solar installation of any airport in the entire United States, you have now. Arriving passengers will notice the panels a half-mile out, as they cover about seven football fields worth of land and will eventually result in taxpayer savings of $11 million. The 2-megawatt farm has been churning out clean energy for the past month, and electricity from the installation helps to run "everything from airport lighting to tower communications." FYI's aviation director even noted that it would "produce about 40% of its annual electrical requirement." If you're worried that other locales won't follow suit, don't be -- a similar, albeit smaller system is already in the works at DEN.

[Via Gadling, thanks Trowa]

If you're all about the environment, you probably have a hybrid car, monitor your power use, and recycle your detritus. But if you still have a power-guzzling alarm clock that plugs into the wall, for shame, you glutton! Fear not, though -- the eco-friendly, water-powered Bedol Wall Wave Clock is here to save the day. Powered by electrodes immersed in water that extract energy from compound particles, this thirsty clock won't be available until August 15, 2008. To make things less painful, though, it will only run you $19.00 when it comes to save us all.

[Via Cool Hunting]

You can find a washer just about anywhere that promises to consume less water than most of its rivals, but finding one that's "virtually waterless" is still a chore. Yeah, there was that one contraption from Singapore a few years back, but c'mon, it's no bona fide washing machine. Nevertheless, a University of Leeds spin-out company -- dubbed Xeros -- has already received £500,000 in order to commercialize a device that "uses less than 2% of the water and energy of a conventional washing machine." Instead, it relies on a plethora of plastic chips that are tumbled with the clothes to remove stains. We're not sure how comfortable we really are with the thought of that, but folks that have already warmed to the idea can look for these things to hit the UK market in 2009.

[Via MetaEfficient]

Hate to say it, but Pleo ain't got nothing on Sparky. Created by five interaction design master students, this robodog actually responds in sensible ways to positive / negative scenarios going on around it. For instance, the creature will drop its head, whimper and collapse down if faced with "carbon monoxide, cigarette smoke, alcohol, too much dark lighting, hitting and yelling." Consequently, he'll perk up and show signs of excitement when standing in broad daylight or going on walks. All the pluses of having your own pet, minus the excrement and doggy daycare costs -- brilliant! Peep Sparky's day out on the town after the jump.

HP is doing its part to help you feel good -- or bad -- about your carbon footprint with its new Eco Highlights label. The sticker will list a product's enviro-friendly "ingredients", much like those FDA labels you see at the grocery store that tell you how much fat and sugar you're consuming. The program's launch products will include printers such as the Deskjet D2545 ink-jet printer, LaserJet P4015x, LaserJet P4515x and LaserJet P4515xm which are made mostly of recycled parts. Other Eco Highlights label attributes will include recycled cartridges, recyclable packaging, and auto-on/auto-off with deep-sleep modes. Finally, a new HP Carbon Footprint Calculator for Printing and HP LaserJet Power Calculator will most likely make you feel really bad about the printer you're currently using, send you into a shame spiral, and ultimately force you to buy an HP Eco Highlight printer.

[Via News.com]

We've seen quite a few efforts to use gardens and terrariums in cities to order to bring down overall CO2 emissions and reduce temperatures, but Tokyo's earthquake-prone location means that structures there have to meet strict load requirements -- so a company called Suntory Ltd., has developed a synthetic dirt substitute called Pafcal it says weighs less than half as much as real soil. The fake dirt, which is made of urethane, can reduce the internal temperature of a building with a roof garden up to 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Of course, there's considerable irony in trying to save the planet by covering concrete buildings in fake plastic dirt, but then again, such a solution is about as Japanese as it gets, no?

We're not exactly sure what became of that biodegradable laptop being touted by NEC all the way back in 2004, but the concept of corn-based notebook casings is far from dead, with Fujitsu showing off just such a machine at this year's CES. According to Inhabitat, "the main component is polylactic acid, also known as PLA, a resin that comes from the fermentation of the raw biomass from plants," although a small amount of nasty fossil fuels must still be mixed in to create a housing with the proper structural integrity. Fortunately, once the rig is ready for the great gadget heaven in the sky, the plastic can be separated from the PLA so that the latter material can be left to safely biodegrade. No word yet on when we'll see these edible inedible lappies hit the market, so for now we'll have to continue kicking Mother Nature's ass with our biannual tech upgrades.

[Via, and image courtesy of, Inhabitat]

We surprisingly haven't heard a ton about green(er) tech at this year's CES, but there's still some news going down -- and Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba have just announced that they've formed a new joint venture, the sexily named Electronics Manufacturers Recycling Management Company, to handle collection and recycling of their products in the US. MRM seems to have formed in response to some new stringent regulations recently passed in Minnesota, as well as similar regs that are about to go on the books in Connecticut, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, but the idea is to provide recycling programs to state and local governments and other manufacturers -- and to that end, MRM already has deals with Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sanyo, and Syntax-Brillian. MRM's managed to collect and handle 750 tons of old gear in its first five months in Minnesota, a feat the company credits to its strategy of making electronics disposal convenient to consumers -- sounds like an idea whose time has come.

New York's finest will also be some of New York's greenest next month, when the NYPD begins field testing four all-electric scooters from Rhode Island-based Vectrix USA. Although twice as expensive as the gas-powered Piaggio scooters that the department currently uses -- and with a fraction of their range -- the Vectrix offers police three attractive benefits: reduced fuel costs, lowered vehicle emissions, and, more practically, the element of surprise -- the scooters' nearly-silent engines should allow two-wheeled cops to approach suspects with more discretion. Sounds like a winner to us, as long as officers don't try pulling some eminent domain crap on our outlet at Starbucks when they need to juice up.

[Via Autoblog Green]

It's already developed a "gas gauge" for its servers, and a greener means of recycling silicon, but IBM now looks to be taking its increasing environmental awareness to an even larger scale, with it, Enterprise Information Management, and Evergreen Energy developing a greenhouse gas meter that promises to measure the carbon output of various industries and devices, according to IDG. Dubbed GreenCert, the software employs a whole mess of IBM tools including various WebSphere applications, along with an "engine" designed by the folks at C-Lock in order to take a snapshot of a particular company's carbon footprint. It then does it's thing again after the company's taken measures to reduce its carbon emissions, giving them proof of their reductions which they can use to get carbon emission credits that can be traded on the carbon market. The software won't be available in its final form until sometime in the first half of 2008, however, but those looking to get a jump on things can apparently get a beta version from C-Lock right now.

Considering that (practically) every other mega-corp on the planet is doing something related to environmental conservatism, Toshiba is making sure it's not left behind. Consequently, the outfit has crafted the Carbon Zero Scheme, which allows customers (or philanthropists) to donate £1.18 ($2.43) in exchange for Toshiba "offsetting the lifetime carbon footprint of one's laptop." Interestingly, you don't actually have to purchase a new machine in order to participate, so you can still squash the guilt you're currently feeling as you gaze at the LCD of your five-month old, non-offset lappie. For each donation, the company will plant trees in a dedicated area in Cumbria, and you can supposedly rest easy knowing that you've done a small part to look after Mother Earth.

[Via RegHardware]

We've seen a couple innovative wind power solutions pop up, but none that claim to offer the benefits of maglev wind turbines, which use full-permanent magnets to nearly eliminate friction by "floating" the blades above the base. According to developers, the technology is capable of scaling to massive sizes, with a proposed $53M turbine able enough to replace 1000 traditional windmills and power 750 thousand homes. Additional benefits include the ability to generate power with winds as slow as three miles per hour, operational costs some 50 percent cheaper than windmills, and an estimated lifespan of 500 years. That all sounds great, but the real proof will come when these things get put to use, which may happen sooner than you'd think: Development is proceeding rapidly in both the US and China, with Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology currently building a $5M factory to produce the turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts.

One of the main arguments that Windows users offer during those habitual debates with Macheads is that PC boxes are much easier to upgrade; instead of buying a new machine every year, you can simply swap out components ad hoc. Well a graduate of Ireland's National College of Art and Design imagines taking this convenience a step further, with a tree-shaped rig -- known as Cultivate - the Sustainable Living Computer -- whose CPU, RAM, hard drive, and other swappable parts extend from the motherboard-packing "trunk" inside removable "branches." Designer Laura Caulwell won a cool €2,000 $2,929) for her concept, and also earned the right to compete for January's annual International James Dyson Award in Australia, which offers up £15,000 ($31,476) in prizes.

[Via The Register, photo courtesy of Electric News]