While the 2009 Solar Decathlon officially wrapped up yesterday, the winners of the solar-powered home design competition were announced Friday morning. While sixteen of the twenty student teams hailed from the US, an international competitor took the gold: Team Germany received the highest number of points, and scored a repeat of its ‘07 win.

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With all of the talk of green jobs as a source of recovery from the economic doldrums, and climate change as a top priority for legislative action, the timing couldn’t be better for the next edition of the Solar Decathlon. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, this event brings twenty teams of college students from around the world together every two years to compete not in running, jumping, and throwing, but designing, building, and displaying a home that runs completely on solar energy.

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[caption id="attachment_24406" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="No need for road rage... just use the GPS..."][/caption]

Avoid road rage, build your own house, and blow up your solar panels… all in this week’s green tech finds.

• Ethanol from waste gases: Australian company LanzaTech won the Green Technology Innovator of the Year award at the Asia Pacific Industrial Technologies Awards in Singapore for its technology that captures waste gases from steel mills for recycling into ethanol.
  
  
• Build your own green house… Lego style: German company HIB has developed a kit building system that works an awful lot like Legos, and creates a well-insulated, soundproof, and non-toxic frame for almost any style of house. (via Springwise)
  
  

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Turns out that Madison, Wisconsin’s Benedictine sisters aren’t the only ones greening their house of worship: churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples around the US are implementing a range of green building and energy saving features. In most cases, they’re driven by religious imperatives; cost-savings likely play a role, too. The federal government’s even trying to encourage this behavior: Environmental Leader noted today that congregation buildings are now eligible for ENERGY STAR status.

Solar power is one of the first things most of us consider when trying to cut our energy costs and lighten our carbon footprints. Religious congregations are no different… here are a handful that have added solar features to their houses of worship.

• The First Presbyterian Church of Washingtonville, NY, has been heating the building with DIY solar systems for over 30 years!
  
  
• Bridgeview, Illinois’ Mosque Foundation added solar water heating in 2008, making it the first mosque in the US to adopt solar technology.
  
  

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Yesterday, the Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wisconsin, held its first mass in a new 30,000 square-foot building that may be the greenest in the country. The Benedictine Women of Madison’s new home features “Geothermal heating and cooling; solar panels; windows that open and natural lighting in all occupied spaces; rain gardens; roof gardens; tankless water heaters; and a slew of reused furniture including a renovated organ…” The sisters believe their new building has a “high probability” of receiving 63 of 69 LEED points, which would beat out the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center (also in Wisconsin), the current top dog of the US green building scene.

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Can the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid really deliver 230 mpg? Can you power your DVD player with your exercise bike? Answers to these questions and more in this week’s green tech finds…

• Powering up with your bicycle: Exercise bikes aren’t just good for keeping fit; many people are figuring out innovative ways to harness that power and create electricity.
  
  
• A showcase green home in Silicon Valley: Eco-entrepreneur Marc Porat has turned his 1936 English Tudor Revival home into a carbon-neutral showcase of green tech.
  
  

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Solar panels are certainly sexier than insulation, and new LEED-certified buildings look better on the front page than aging houses. Are aesthetics the main reason that newer technologies and practices get all the attention, while retrofits and efficiency upgrades are relegated to the sidelines of most conversations about a clean energy future?

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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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Elephant poop, chicken feathers, and iPhone apps… that’s the stuff of good green tech stories!

• Smart water: You’ve heard all about smart electrical grids… now Rotterdam, in partnership with IBM, is working on a smart water management system. (via Fast Company)
  
  
• Transformers 3 — The Solar Edition? No greenlights on the movie yet, but these cool 6-toys-in-1 solar-powered robots can introduce your kids to the wonders of solar power (via The Fun Times Guide to Living Green and Inhabitots).
  
  

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If you’ve spent any amount of time in buildings with historical significance (and you probably have), you recognize that such structures are more than the sum of their physical parts. The confluence of design, material, and human action that occurred in those buildings allow you to step out of time momentarily, and experience how past generations imagined the combination of form and function as they created a built environment.

Now, imagine those same buildings with solar panels on the roof. Does that take away from the experience?

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Utter the phrase “trial lawyer” in public, and you may hear responses such “ambulance chaser” and “bottom-feeder.” Lake Worth, Florida’s Romano Law Group may either take umbrage or laugh off such labels, but they’re serious about another one they’ve acquired: green builders. The firm’s EcoCentre building turns one in June, and showcases a number of innovative technologies inspired by nature.

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