via EcoGeek:

Bicycle commuting rocks. It’s healthy, safe, fast, cheap and the only emission is what the biker breathes out. But it does have it’s problems. One is that bikes generally have a very awkward shape. If there is no bike rack, or if you want to go somewhere with your bike, you’re reduced to lugging a very cumbersome package around with you.

Well what if there was a bike you could fit in your trunk, that was the size of a briefcase, or that you could take on the subway. That sure would be nice.

Thus, the concept of the folding bike. You might be surprised to learn that there are actually quite a lot of these guys out there. They range from the practical to the nonsensical and from frugal to near-car prices. And today, at EcoGeek, we’re going to show you the best of the folding bikes.

2007 Burning Man’s theme is called “The Green Man” that celebrates clean energy, green technology and environmental responsibilities. Already a festival with a strong leave no trace behind consensus, this year’s the Burning Man figure will “stand atop a structure that resembles green mountain peak. Nestled at its base, will be the Green Man Pavilion, 30,000 square feet of shaded exhibition space for the display of interactive artistic, scientific and educational models, a “World’s Fair” of emerging technologies.”

One of the centerpieces, Jim Mason’s Mechabolic, is an 80-foot-long slug that will process garbage and turn it into clean energy using “Gasification” technology similar to the energy-from-waste project led by researchers at Purdue University. “The Mechabolic invites participants to walk through the innards of an exploded metabolic animal and contribute their waste paper, wood, coffee grounds and food compost to the fuel making effort. Participants can watch all fuel/food processing through transparent process tanks and plumbing, as well as handle the feed and fuels at various points in the “refining” process. All in all, a fun house walk-through journey of machine digestion and respiration –from mouth to anus, oil well to gas tank, trash dumpster to carburetor plenum– with all the interstitial fun and mysteries of organic chemistry implied therein.”

Cnet has a great article explaining the projects and Eco Razzi has a detailed overviews of this year festival.

Added to Dubai’s insane architectural developments including Time Residences- a fully rotating residential tower powered by solar energy and Hydropolis- the world’s first underwater hotel, Italian-Israeli architect David Fisher unveils The Rotating Tower- a 59 floors Dynamic Architecture building which will be constantly in motion changing its shape. The building “employs wind turbines, positioned horizontally between each floors, which will produce energy to the building itself and will supply as well energy for several other buildings.”

“The total energy produced by this inbuilt ‘powerhouse’ every year will be worth approximately seven million dollars. Each turbine can produce 0.3 megawatt of electricity, compared to 1-1.5 megawatt generated by a normal vertical turbine (windmill). Considering that Dubai gets 4,000 wind hours annually, the turbines incorporated into the building can generate 1,200,000 kilowatt-hour of energy.

As average annual power consumption of a family is estimated to be 24,000 kilowatt-hour, each turbine can supply energy for about 50 families. The Dynamic Architecture tower in Dubai will be having 200 apartments and hence four turbines can take care of their energy needs. The surplus clean energy produced by the remaining 44 turbines can light up the neighborhood of the building.

However, taking into consideration that the average wind speed in Dubai is of only 16 km/h the architects may need to double the number of turbines to light up the building to eight. Still there will be 40 free turbines, good enough to supply power for five skyscrapers of the same size.”

More resources at Wall Street Journal, EcoGeek and Inhabitat

German architect Eckhard Gerber reveals the Burj al Taqa, “Energy Tower“, a 68 stories high office building that powers itself through solar, wind and water installations with zero emissions.

“The Burj al-Taqa’s cylindrical shape is designed to expose as little surface area to the sun as possible.” The building is designed to act like a Thermos Flask that “have a cooling effect in the summer and retain heat in the winter.” Besides using seawater to pre-cool the air, the eco-friendly building also draws inspiration from the Persian wind towers “Badgirs“, which use “clever design to create natural air conditioning- Cool air will be sucked down into the tower while hot air will rise out.” The electricity will come from a “60-meter (197-feet) turbine on the tower roof and two photovoltaic facilities with a total area of 15,000 square meters (161,459 square feet).”

(Original article via Spiegel Online)

United Kingdom based architecture firm, Foster and Partners unveils their plans for the Masdar Initiative - a 6 million square meter dense walled city in Abu Dhab, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The city is claimed to be the world’s first zero carbon, waste free city.

from the press release:

The principle of the Masdar development is a dense walled city to be constructed in an energy efficient two-stage phasing that relies on the creation of a large photovoltaic power plant, which later becomes the site for the city’s second phase, allowing for urban growth yet avoiding low density sprawl.

Rooted in a zero carbon ambition, the city itself is car free. With a maximum distance of 200m to the nearest transport link and amenities, the compact network of streets encourages walking and is complemented by a personalised rapid transport system. The shaded walkways and narrow streets will create a pedestrian-friendly environment in the context of Abu Dhabi’s extreme climate. It also articulates the tightly planned, compact nature of traditional walled cities. With expansion carefully planned, the surrounding land will contain wind, photovoltaic farms, research fields and plantations, so that the city will be entirely self-sustaining.

The firm also won an international design competition for the new La Ciudad del Motor (Motor City) in Arago, Spain that featured sustainable energy and design.

From TreeHugger:

“Mark Oberholzer, a runner-up in the Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition, has proposed a new Jersey barrier design. After researching alternatives to energy, Oberholzer proposed integrating turbines into the barriers between highway lanes to take advantage of the wind generated by passing cars to create energy. He believes that Jersey barriers are perfectly positioned to utilize this wind and, by replacing sections of solid concrete with turbines, he thinks they could not only power highway lights but also harvest enough energy to power a light-rail line. Although the concept is still in the research stage, Oberholzer keeps learning more as he continues to flesh out the idea. For example, his original proposal suggested a single row of vertical-axis rotary turbines but he’s recently discovered that double-stacked Darius turbines will capture the wind from both directions more efficiently. He told Metropolis, “The peaks of traffic flow more or less coincide with those of energy use” and suggested that rush-hour chaos on the highways could actually help power the commute for public-transport users. Brilliant! Via ::Metropolis“

New Jersey is infamous for giving speeding tickets. I guess next time if I got busted I can tell the highway patrol I am just trying to help the environment.

Next Generation® is an industrial design competition founded by Metropolis magazine to promote activism, social involvement, and entrepreneurship in young designers. This year the theme is “Energy”.

The San Francisco-based firm Civil Twilight awarded $10,000 for their energy-conserving “Lunar Resonant Street Lamps” proposal.

More details from Arch News now: “Replace standard urban streetlight bulbs with “lunar-resonant” units that would automatically dim or brighten in response to ambient moonlight – potentially saving as much as 95% of energy used in street lighting, while also enhancing nighttime visibility and enabling city residents to once again experience the pleasures of observing the nighttime sky.

According to the team’s statistics, streetlights account for 38% of all electricity used for lighting in the U.S., and produce about 300 million tons of carbon emissions per year. In addition, their light pollution prevents two-thirds of Americans from seeing moonlight or stars.

The concept could be implemented simply and economically, by retrofitting existing lights with dimmable LED bulbs and a highly sensitive photo-sensor cell that would detect/respond to moonlight (as well as cloud cover and atmospheric conditions affecting daytime needs for street lighting). Most parts required are available off the shelf.”

This make me think of Dutch design house Demakersvanthe’s Light Wind- a street lamp that was powered by wind.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Sustainable Construction and Building Initiative (SBCI) release a report focuses on the building sector. The report states that “the right mix of appropriate government regulation, greater use of energy saving technologies and behavioural change can substantially reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the building sector which accounts for 30-40 % of global energy use.” Imagine, over two billion tonnes of C0₂ emission can be reduced if we set a more aggressive energy efficiency policy in the building sector world-wide, thats almost 3 times the amount of the Greenhouse gas to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. The full report can be downloaded from http://www.unep.org

Or maybe another solution we can consider is to “grow” our own home? Architect Mitchell Joachim’s Fab Tree Hab is a living structure that “is designed to be nearly entirely edible so as to provide food to some organism at each stage of its life. While inhabited, the home’s gardens and exterior walls produce food for people and animals. The seasonal cycles help the tree structure provide for itself through composting of fallen leaves in autumn. The envisioned bioplastic windows, which would flex with the home as it grows, would also degrade and return to the earth upon life’s end, as would the walls.” This means we don’t even have to use the terms biodegradable to describe the home since none of the materials is processed.

According to a Popular Science interview with Joachim, “Despite its odd exterior, the house will look normal on the inside. The walls, packed with clay and plastered over, will keep out the rain, and modern technology will be welcome. Yet there are still a few practical kinks to work out. Joachim wonders, for example, how a planning board will react to a house that constantly expands. Each house will take at least five years to grow, depending on the climate, but Joachim envisions the structures being grown and tended to on a farm. Customers could pick a finished tree habitat and then have it transported to and replanted on a lot within 100 miles.“

Here’s a link of a video showing how the interior will look like.

In the latest Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics: 3rd Edition, Apple ranks the last among the 14 electronics companies, only scoring 2.7 out of 10. Greenpeace ranks the CPUs and Mobile companies companies on their chemicals policy and practice, which includes Chemicals Management, Timeline for phasing out all use of vinyl plastic (PVC) and brominated flame retardants and the amount of PVC- and BFR-free models of electronic products on the market. So befoe you break your piggy-bank to buy that suave looking iPhone think about it first. You can also find more info on eWaste at S.V.T.C. and its Computer Take Back campaign.