Glitter-sized solar panels, green electronics, and cow fat… your green tech finds.

• Lubing your engine with cow fat: Green Earth Technologies‘ G-OIL, a “bio-oil” created from cow fat, has been named the official motor oil of green racing series American Le Mans.
  
  
• Design your own electric vehicle: Trexa has created a concept platform for electric vehicles, which could allow specialty vehicle developers to create cars much like tech developers create iPhone apps (via Auto Blog Green)
  
  

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We’ve still got a ways to go until Spring, but we do have baseball and beer for you at this week’s green tech finds:

• A green Mercedes on the way?: We’ll have to see, but Daimler, the brand’s owner, says it plans to challenge BMW’s supremacy in the “green luxury” market by putting half of its $6.4 R&D budget for 2010 into green tech.
  
  
• Rainwater recycling comes to baseball: The Minnesota Twins’ new stadium will feature a rainwater collection and purification system. The water will be used for washing down stands and irrigating the fields (see the video above). (via CNET Green Tech)
  
  

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CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER? from JOSHFOX on Vimeo.

Imagine receiving a lucrative offer from an energy company to drill for natural gas on property you own. Would you take it? What would that drilling mean in terms of environmental quality for the land itself and the surrounding community? Filmmaker Josh Fox received such an offer, and his documentary GASLAND, which has its world premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, explores the impact of gas extraction, especially the process of “fracking,” and the environmental consequences that can come from the quest for this “clean” energy source.

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Your last green tech finds of ‘09… enjoy!

• The obligatory New Year prediction: 2010 will be a banner year for clean technology, according to investment bank Jeffries, and Greentech Media. Places to watch include Finland and South Korea.
  
  
• Tetris meets SimCity meets urban planning: That’s the basic idea between new strategy game City Rain (and that’s a screenshot above). (via sustainablog)
  
  

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Want your phone to sound like a woodpecker? Got’cha covered… that and more at this week’s green tech finds.

• Scots get paid to recycle: British supermarket chain Tesco has been testing out Tomra recycling machines (which “pays” recyclers with reward points) at one branch in Edinburgh, and is so happy with the results that its expanding its offerings to another store… with more planned.
  
  
• Research product sustainability right in the store: GoodGuide has released an iPhone app that “…lets you scan bar codes for what the guide calls “impartial” health, environmental, and social responsibility ratings of not only the products you are scanning but their companies, too.” (via CNET Health Tech)

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Wind-powered techies, energy-capturing pavement, and DIY hybrid electric sports cars… it’s time for your weekly green tech finds.

• This light rocks: Literally… kinetic energy from rocking the Murakami chair powers an attached OLED lamp. (via Gizmodo)
  
  
• Plug-ins aren’t so weird: CNET editor Martin LaMonica takes note of the strides automakers are taking to make electric vehicles perform in a similar manner to their gas-powered counterparts.
  
  

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Green tech galore… here are this week’s finds.

• Smart car charging comes to San Diego: If you envision freeloading friends trying to charge their cars up at your place in the future, fear not: as a part of its testing of car-charging stations, San Diego will have participants use a Plug Smart “intelligent charger” that makes sure the drivers get the bill for the electricity.
  
  
• Package delivery by UrbanMole: Both Fed-Ex and UPS (among others) are doing there best to green up their operations. Designer Phillip Hermes’ UrbanMole concept would take the trucks off of the street completely with a “capsule-like device … that travels through an underground pipe network that transports packages of all stripes.” (via Cleantechnica)
  
  

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From Spain to Toledo, green tech stories are popping up everywhere. Here’s your round-up for the week.

• Electric vehicles are winners on CO2 emissions: DVICE crunches the numbers, and finds that, even when electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, EVs produce less CO2 than gas-powered cars. (via AutoBlog Green)
  
  
• Solar Mudhens: Rust-belt poster child Toledo, OH, is on its way to reinventing itself as a hub of solar manufacturing.
  
  

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Beer and gas? Sound like a National Lampoon movie… but it’s your green tech finds for the week.

• Fart-powered fuel cells? Sort of… Danbury, Connecticut-based FuelCell Energy recently installed two fuel cell power plants at food processor Gills Onions that “…create electricity using old onions and a process that mimics how the human body expels gas”
  
  
• Solar-powered parking: Austin, Texas is replacing traditional parking meters with “pay stations [that] are solar-powered, take credit cards, debit cards and coins, and will replace the 3,800 outdated single-space parking meters around the city.”
  
  

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Techies rejoice! Here’s your weekly run-down of some of the cooler green tech stories out there…

• Free energy? There’s a ton of it out there — 7 quadrillion BTUs — in the form of wasted heat. The Department of Energy has announced funding opportunities for R&D on how to tap this massive source of energy. (via Cleantechnica)
  
  
• NYC — the wind energy capital? It seems counterintuitive, but the Carnegie Institution and California State University have found that high-altitude winds, which are concentrated over the Big Apple (among other places), “contain enough energy to meet world demand 100 times over.” (via Green Living Ideas)
  
  

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