Writing at offgrid.com, Nick Rosen discusses micro-nuclear plants, which, the story says, could power 20,000 homes for 10 years or more.

The devices, said to be only a few feet across, would be buried well underground, have no moving parts, and be powered by low-energy uranium that would be difficult to enrich into nuclear weapons. All the steam, to run turbines, and waste would be contained underground.

The idea was developed at Los Alamos. Hyperion Power, which has leased the technology, says its first unit will be installed in 2013. The devices will go for about $25 million each.

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”

Great analogy, from a great column.

Using Swedish technology, a utility plant in Spremberg, Germany, near the Polish border, has begun capturing the carbon released by the burning of coal for electricity.

First, the lignite coal is being burned in pure oxygen, which makes the effluent cleaner — still carbon-laden but with less sulphur, mercury, and other elements typical to coal burning.

The effluent is then compressed until it is liquid, and injected underground into naturally occurring caverns.

My question — not buttressed by scientific expertise — has always been whether the holes deep in the ground can accommodate the huge volumes of CO2 produced by continuous coal burning. There are other questions, too, of course: What about plants that aren't located near underground caverns — do you truck the liquid CO2 to where they are? Would the process work with dirtier coal? How much energy is required to produce the pure oxygen, to compress the CO2, and to pump it underground?

I've mentioned previously a story I wrote about electric bikes for E, the Environmental Magazine, and though it has been available to subscribers for more than a week, it's now available electronically as well. I commend it to you, but duh, I wrote it, y'know?

Link.

Via Re-Nest and the Hartford Courant (a former employer) comes the Tiny House, a one-off production of Elizabeth Turnbull, with help from friends and neighbors.

Turnbull lives in Newburyport, Mass., but is moving to New Haven for the next two years to attend the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She calculated her housing costs for that period, and decided to apply the funds in a more constructive way than just finding a roomie and paying rent.

As with many things on Re-Nest, I'm not sure I could live in her space. The bathroom, as she points out in a video, is smaller than most people's showers — 3 feet by 3 1/2 feet. But she'll be quite self-sufficient, with a composting toilet and three 70-watt solar panels that she says will provide all her needs.

For several years, LEDs were supposed to be the next big thing in consumer lighting, and they're still coming.

But a post this week at GreenDaily touts Electron Stimulated Luminescence as a quicker comer. They are supposed to be equivalent to CFLs in cost and lifespan, but to overcome two of their shortcomings: They use no mercury, and are dimmable.

Eric Taub of the Times has a story this morning saying that the coming age of LED lights is just about here, but I don't know if he hit it just right.

The story touches the usual points about LEDs — very expensive, but lasts longer, has no mercury, and can generate any color — but on the question of white-light intensity, he devotes no more than an aside: "L.E.D. bulbs, with their brighter light and longer life, have already replaced..."

The idea of getting energy from waste has been around at least 30 years, when I covered the periphery of a bid for a trash-burning plant in northeastern Ohio. But it was, at best, an immature plan at that time, and still today is a poor solution for resource efficiency.

That's the idea presented this morning by Stephen Jewell of Composite Energy Ltd, a UK firm. They are investigating whether it can be profitable to inject flue gases into the coal stratum underground, with the dual advantages of forcing out the methane that is found in coal deposits, which can then be burned, while depositing CO2 in its place.

It is a weed, also known as cardoon, also known at artichoke thistle. It has been around long enough that Homer cited it in the Iliad, as a fuel, no less. That is, according to Nicolas Danalatos of the University of Thessaly in Greece, who touted it as a prime source of biofuel.

Among its benefits, he pointed out that it needs no weed killers, "because it is a weed." He said it also requires no pesticides, will grow without irrigation, and is a perennial. He said in diesel equivalence, it costs one fifth the price.