Pop quiz: Which company can lay claim to the title as the world’s largest producer of Geothermal Energy? Times up- If you guessed oil giant Chevron, you’re right.

Chevron is in fact the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy, a renewable resource that generates near inexhaustible power while producing virtually no greenhouse gas emissions.

In Indonesia, the power plants Chevron owns and operate produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 3.9 million homes. In July 2007, they expanded the effort by commercial production at the 110-megawatt Darajat Unit III geothermal power plant in Garut, West Java. This new unit brings their total geothermal generating capacity at Garut to 259 megawatts.

Their plants in the Philippines supply 7 percent of the electricity to Luzon, the country’s largest island with a population of more than 48 million.

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Another great energy savings idea. If everyone did not do their commute (average of 30 miles one way) one day a week, that would probably be at least a 10% reduction in miles driven. (If you figure that commuter driving is one half of all driving and that 20% of commuter driving is eliminated)

What are the other benefits? There are so many. Let’s start a list.

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Some industry experts look at the idea of the EV as a legitimate alternative to oil dependency as improvements in lithium battery technology for plug-in hybrids reaches new heights.

Interestingly enough the Israeli government is largely responsible for Nissan’s enthusiasm in supporting what they call Project Better Place. Founded by entrepreneur Shai Agassi, the plan would put some 500,000 car charging stations throughout the country (some strictly for plug in recharging, others for full battery pack swaps) by 2011. Renault/ Nissan would responsible for providing the vehicles for this ambitious endeavor.

While it is yet too early to assess the results of such a radical proposal, one thing for sure is that charging stations would be every bit as important as the cars themselves if the technology were to succeed. Hopefully the US benefits by observing Israel’s forward thinking.

My first response to reading this was “Wow!”

There are a lot of different organizations working from many different angles trying to come up with products ands methods to generate or conserve energy .

Most of them are discussed in here. And it seems from Mr. Dumaine’s prose that all of them could be successful. Perhaps he has already winnowed out the ones that don’t have a chance. And he has used his Fortune connections to reach out to the venture capital firms to find out who they are investing in. And I think that is a great method to find out any economic trend. As a whole, venture capital goes to that field where gains can be made. I bet there are few VCs out there investing in whaling ships.

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While I’m not advocating any such claims, I did feel it necessary to look into the alleged process of turning tap water into an energy source. It turns out that there is in fact a legitimate scientific process at work in a water-fueled hybrid conversion kit in that electricity from the car’s battery can be used to separate water (stored in a separate tank from the gasoline) into a gas known as HHO (2 parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen). HHO (commonly called Hydroxy) is in fact quite combustible. It is this gas that is ignited in typical internal combustion fashion with the byproduct being water rather hydrocarbons; not unlike the exhaust in the fuel cell process.

There is little concern of hauling a massive tank of water around either as the conversion works to something along the lines of one quart of water produces over 1800 gallons worth of HHO- which when used daily could literally last for months. It’s important to note that gasoline is still required only the car burns less of it thanks to the hydrogen injection.

I was skeptical at first, but the science behind the process is sound anyway. I have yet to conduct a test of an H20 burning hybrid conversion but will be keeping close tabs on the technology in posts to come.

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For January, February, March and April, there were 461 million vehicle miles that were NOT driven as compared to 2007 in the state of Virginia. And that includes a extra day in February. That’s right almost one half of one billion less miles. That is great news and I bet that May, June and July will show even more drops in mileage as compared to last year.

This is out of a total of 25 BILLION miles so as a percentage it is not that great. But at an average of 20 miles per gallon, that becomes 23 million gallons of gasoline not used. And at current prices that is $92 million dollars not spent on fuel. That’s 184 million pounds of carbon not released into the atmosphere.

Good job Virginia.

But where did all those miles not take us? (more…)

Second, the Genepax water car that was introduced in Japan a few days back, has been creating some waves. Genepax claims that their new invention can run on any kind of water - “even tea works.” The car is fitted with a generator that extracts hydrogen from water, and then releases electrons that power the car. However, at the moment the car is swimming in controversy. Skeptics are concerned that it is not possible for the car to run on water alone. Apparantely, the real source of power are metal hydrides that react with water to produce hydrogen - which runs the car. (Read more about it here )

I too am concerned. If the car is a hoax, we’re in trouble. But if the car is for real, we are in greater trouble. Is the world not already grappling with acute water shortage?I might be totally off, but will a water-fueled car not exacerbate the problem? It is true that there is a serious gas shortage at the moment, and it’s only going to get worse. It might even be completely depleted off the face of our planet in the not-so-distant future. But all I can say is that a world without gas, though unimaginable, is still possible. But a world without water - will cease to exist.

This is a Public Relations firm that uses less paper than most. As someone who has been in the marketing world, I know that there is a lot of paper getting printed, marked, and tossed out. Media Source strives to get to the paperless office. And they are also using less energy in other arenas. The use a lot of natural lighting at their workplace which I know makes for a better work environment as well.

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Without over complicating the explanation, the concept for the most common fuel cell designs works like this: An electrolyte membrane is sandwiched between a positive electrode and a negative electrode. Hydrogen is introduced to the negative side while oxygen to the positive. The hydrogen molecules travel through the membrane but become stripped of their electrons in the process.

These now free electrons are forced to travel through an external circuit where they recombine with the hydrogen ions on the positive side, where, when combined with the hydrogen ions and oxygen molecules form water. It is this flow of electrons through the external circuit that produces the electrical current needed to power the wheel motors. It’s really that simple.

The bottom line is that fuel cell vehicles could use pure hydrogen gas stored directly on the vehicle or extracted from a secondary fuel (methanol, ethanol, or natural gas). Of course secondary fuels would have to be first be converted into hydrogen gas by an on board reformer. Fuel cell vehicles fueled with pure hydrogen would emit no pollutants, only water! Reformer-equipped models would, however, produce small amounts of air pollutants albeit a mere fraction of that which is currently produced by the internal combustion process.