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..."

At a semi-indy movie theater chain I frequent, they use old-mode hand dryers in the bathrooms (well, in the men's room, at least), the ones that are ineffective but noisy. Signs on them attempt to blunt what must be a common plaint: "We don't like them either, but they're the best devices for the environment." Or something like that.

Car services are a bit beyond my means, or perhaps I should say, I have no specific idea what car services cost because I’ve always assumed they are beyond my means. Which, I’m sure, they are. But enough about me.

Planettran has put the eco-twist on car service by putting into service a fleet of Priuses to ferry the swells around town.

Sorry, Second Rotation, for calling you a leftover, and I do so only in the sense that I didn't follow up soon after the show.

Second Rotation has figured out a way to profit from buying used cell phones, computers, cameras, gaming consoles, GPSs, and other electronic gizmos that are sitting in your drawer, unused. (If you've already sent them to the landfill, too late.)

So now the three days of Down:2:Earth are done, and I've got plenty to share — more than I think I will have the bandwidth for. It wasn't as bad as the information bulge that resulted from BE'08, which I'm still trying to work through, but then again, d2e wasn't nearly as monumental. Nevertheless, it is a credit to the show that there is more to report on than there is time to report on.

An Orlando, Fla., company, Hydromatic Technologies, has been drawing blogosphere attention this week for what seems like a no-brainer, why-didn't-anyone-do-this-years-ago development for the clothes dryer, one of the home's worst energy hogs. It is so power-mad, in fact, that Energy Star doesn't list a single one.

My good friend Margaret Ann, as bright a thinker as I've ever met, bemoaned a while back that while CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs, the bulbs that use far less energy than incandescents and last 10 years) are an advance, what do we do about all those incandescents that have been decommissioned in the process of switching over? Just throwing them in the trash seems to dull some of the planet-saving luster of switching over to CFLs.

My short answer for that is, "I still don't know." However...