Solar power has been around since the’ 70s, but until recently, people were about as likely to use it as they were to live in geodesic domes and grow all their own food. The reason? No company has been able to make solar power as affordable as electricity produced by coal and natural gas.

That’ s where Nanosolar comes in: Its thin film technology involves“ printing” a microscopic layer of solar cells onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil. The resulting panels are lighter, cheaper, and as efficient as traditional solar panels, but they require no silicon, short supplies of which have caused many solar companies to stumble. Others are pursuing thin film, too, but Nanosolar is poised to produce enough to generate 430 megawatts of electricity a year— four times the amount produced by all solar plants in the U. S. combined. Perhaps more importantly, Nanosolar is the first company to figure out how to produce these cells cheaply. How cheaply? Less than $ 1 per watt, or one-tenth of the cost of traditional cells. In other words, solar power will finally be able to compete with gas and fossil fuels.

This year, the company will begin building the world’ s largest solar-cell factory, which will triple U. S. capacity and make us second only to Japan in output. Investments from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Larry Page and Sergey

Brin, the founders of Google, are bolstering the company, and a new deal with Conergy, the nation’ s largest solar electric systems integrator, gives Nanosolar a huge jump on its competitors.

When inventor Stanford Ovshinsky first opened ECD Ovonics in 1960, he had a lofty goal— to use science to change the world completely. Over the past four decades, he’ s done just that, inventing everything from the flexible solar cell to the nickel-metal hydride batteries that power every hybrid car on the market.

The spry octogenarian’ s latest obsession is that clean-fuel sticky wicket: hydrogen. Though often touted as a replacement for gasoline in cars, hydrogen is extremely flammable in its gaseous state. But Ovshinsky has solved that problem by pioneering a method for storing hydrogen in solid form, rather than as a highpressure gas. The process involves

a proprietary formula made up of non-polluting metals that are ground into a fine powder. When added to a tank of hydrogen, the powder acts as a sort of sponge to encapsulate the gas. When the hydrogen is needed for fuel, a small amount of heat is added to the tank, which releases the element.

Those who say a hydrogen car is impossible need only look at Ovshinsky’ s modified Prius, which has an internal combustion engine powered entirely by solid-state hydrogen. George W. Bush has even shown interest. An unlikely ally? Maybe, but stranger things have happened. A few years ago, Chevron came calling, hoping to sniff out the threat. Instead, they invested $ 67.3 million for a 20 percent stake in the company.

Former International Space Station researcher Isaac Berzin, along with his team of scientists from Harvard, Columbia, and MIT, have found a truly bizarre secret weapon in the fight against carbon dioxide emissions: algae. Yes, algae. Not only does it“ eat”

CO2, it can also be used as a clean, renewable biofuel. The researchers at GreenFuel Technologies have developed an emissions scrubbing system that takes advantage of this happy coincidence.

Power plants that use Berzin’ s system not only reduce their carbon footprints and gain valuable emissions credits, but they

can also use the algae-based fuel themselves or sell it on the open market. If it sounds like a pipe dream, it’ s not. The company has already launched small projects in Arizona, Massachusetts, and New York. A large U. S. utility company and a major U. S. power generator are poised to begin partnerships with GreenFuel to build 1,000-megawatt plants, which will each generate over 100 million gallons of biofuel a year; the owners of a 2,200-megawatt coal plant are also ready to try out the technology. With $ 20 million in venture capital investment in the bag, GreenFuel is one to watch.

In the U. S., two-stroke engines are mostly used for chain saws and go-karts, but in the developing world, they are the motor of choice. There are more than 100 million two-stroke vehicles in Asia alone, from Thailand’ s tuktuks to India’ s auto rickshaws. They ply the streets leaving swirls of brown smog in their wake; the toxic clouds of ash, soot, and other particles spewed from the exhaust cause hundreds of thousands of people to die each year from respiratory disease.

Those days may be drawing to a close, thanks to a retrofit kit originally developed for snowmobiles. Envirofit has retooled the technology to convert twostroke engines into cleaner-burn-

50 | Feb / Mar / 07 plentymag. com