Photo: HEB Low-Impact Micro-Hydro Power Mike Lowery, a retired entrepreneur and inventor, and Paul Price have created a clever little device called the Hydro-Electric-Barrel Generator (HEB) that could help many people harness the power of rivers and stream while keep the impact on nature at a minimum. The beauty is that the HEB works in pretty much any type of river, regardless of depth or flow speed (though that will have an impact on the quantity of power generated).... Read the full story on TreeHugger

1980 Era VW Rabbit (Golf). Image credit: VW Vortex American car makers would have us believe they have an intense struggle to develop new designs and to capitalize new operations in which to make more efficient cars, suitable for the Climate Age. What a line of propaganda that is. Back in 1980, amidst a serious oil shortage, I bought a cheap (for the era) VW Rabbit, as pictured, which consistently got over 40 mpg. Among the models introduced to meet the US' increasingly stringent emissions standards, Rabbit did this with fuel injection instead of the cobbled Detroit-style carburetion schemes prevalent at the time. It also had European style bucket seats - then a novelty, believe it or not - and, best of all, would reliably start in the 20-below temperatures common to where I lived in Wisconsin. Look below for a list of all the affordable, high-mileage, small- and mid-size models available, circa 1980.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Bombardier What's the US Doing? The Chinese Ministry of Railways has announced that it will buy 80 "very high speed trains" from Bombardier's Chinese joint ventre Bombardier Sifang to add to China's fast-growing network of high-speed rail. The ZEFIRO 380 trains are both very efficient (more on that below) and very fast, and should help make transportation in China greener, especially if train trips displace plane trips. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Two years ago I was interviewed about the future of the green kitchen, and suggested it might look much like Donald Chong's design , saying:

Local food, fresh ingredients, the slow food movement; these are all the rage these days. A green kitchen will have big work areas and sinks for preserving, tons of storage to keep it in, but will not have a four foot wide fridge or a six burner Viking range. It will open to outdoors to vent the heat in summer, to the rest of the house to retain the heat in winter. The dining area will be integrated into it, perhaps right in the middle. A green kitchen will be like grandma's farm kitchen- big, open, the focus of the house and no energy from the appliances will be wasted in winter or kept inside in summer.

It hasn't happened yet, but there have been a lot of new ideas in how you design a kitchen, what you put in it, where it goes when you are not using it. We look at some of the sliding, changing reinventions of the kitchen.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Brian recently wrote that CFL Sales are Plummeting in the US--Right When they Could Help Most, and in the comments to his post there were many complaints about how fast they burned out, how awful they looked, and how long they took to warm up. Recently at IIDEX, a big trade show, I talked to a representative of Standard Lighting about why my expensive PAR spotlight style CFLs took so long to warm up. He told me that all of the cheap spiral style bulbs were designed to be pointing up in lamps as incandescent replacements, and the heat rises away from the bulb. Put it upside down in a potlight and they overheat the electronics in the base and burn out early. In the design of the spotlight style bulbs, they have to control the heat, which they do with a different amalgam of mercury that takes a lot longer to vaporize but runs a lot cooler. He said that the big mistake everyone makes is thinking that one bulb fits all, whereas just like with incandescents before them, there are dozens, even hundreds, of colours, sizes and permutations. Important things to look for:... Read the full story on TreeHugger