Solyndra negativity dries up solar energy investments

A look at some stories on the environmental front that caught our attention this past week...

Spurring energy-friendly products is also being hampered by negative attention on Solyndra, a solar energy company which went bankrupt after getting a $528 million loan guarantee. Over the last few months, Republicans in Congress have been sounding the trumpets that there was something wrong about the way the Obama administration invested in the company. But regardless of whether any ethics were breached in the loan guarantee, the negative attention on the company has chilled funding in the solar energy sector. Republicans say it should be up to private venture capitalists to make these types of environmentally-positive energy bets, but according to a report by NPR, both the federal government and VCs are now steering clear in the wake of Solyndra.

Companies advertising their green bona fides

Chevy is supposedly making a push into the green segment for cars and wants everyone to know it. The automaker says it will soon slap stickers on each of its cars touting their environmental impact, including the materials that went into make the car, the emissions, and a section talking about how a car can be recycled after it is no longer on the road. The company says that it will get its claims verified by an independent third-party named Two Tomorrows. Let’s just hope this turns out better than the labels attached by the salon industry to its popular “Brazilian Blowout” product. There, salons advertised its hair-straightening procedures as “formaldehyde free” to the displeasure of government toxologists.

Dishwasher waste becomes renewable energy

File this under very promising ideas: A start-up company says it has a method towards transforming waste water into renewable energy. Greg Ryan, the company’s founder, says he was inspired by the way his father used wastewater on the family farm. Traditionally, municipalities go to a lot of expense and use many chemicals to treat wastewater. Under his method, according to a WSJ article, water is heated and biogas, a byproduct of wastewater treatment, powers the electricity-generating turbines. In other words, the electricity is self-generated and stored and then, reused or sold. The patented system is already being used by a fruit-and-nut agricultural business and a snack food producer in California.

Developer of energy-saving thermostat hit with patent infringement claim

Speaking of patents, how do we make sure that companies have incentives to innovate while also ensuring that products benefiting mankind are widely available? It’s a problem that’s haunted the pharmaceutical industry for years, and now, this issue could be coming to the environmentally-friendly arena. In October, in this space, we included news that the inventor of the iPod was developing a new thermostat that made home energy-management sexy. Now, Honeywell International, a corporate giant, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit over the product.

The most disgusting fuel cell ever

Wastewater from dishwashers or beams of light from the sun aren’t the only methods of creating energy that’s more friendly than oil and gas. There is always the power of cockroaches. Yes, turning a cockroach into a mobile, and kind of gross fuel cell is possible. The technical process as described by LifeScience:

The fuel cell consists of two electrodes; at one electrode, two enzymes break down a sugar, trehalose, which the cockroach produces from its food. The first of the two enzymes, trehalase, breaks down the trehalose into glucose, then the second enzyme converts the glucose into another product and releases the electrons. The electrons travel to the second electrode, where another enzyme delivers the electrons to oxygen in the air. The byproduct is water.”