Everybody has a computer today. They’re like wristwatches or televisions. But how much does your computer use contribute to greenhouse gasses and their global warming effect? You might be surprised!

Conservative estimates rank computer usage right up there with the airline industry for its harmful effect on the atmosphere, making it responsible for up to 2% of the total problem. To put your mind at ease, that doesn’t mean your household PC is all that nasty. That figure includes all the industrial server farms, government supercomputers, and college networks. Unfortunately, there are a lot more of them than you might think. Even your average grocery store has a server room somewhere in it to run the “back office” (accounts receivable and inventory control) and “front office” (cash registers and checkout system) components of its operation.

So how much damage does your average PC do? Running one 8 hours per day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year will use 400 kilowatt hours or 180,800 grams of carbon dioxide (452 grams – just shy of a pound – per hour X 2,000 hours). That sounds like a lot but when you consider that a home PC accounts for less than ten percent of the average home’s energy bill (according to MR. Electricty AKA Michael Bluejay of Michaelbluejay.com) it’s not that big of a number in the overall picture. Your water heater, furnace, and refrigerator are much bigger carbon offenders.

But as my mother always used to say “every little bit helps.” So here are some ways to go greener and keep your high-speed digital lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed.

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When striving to create a small, disposable test for various disease such as diabetes, scientists were pushed to find an equally small, inexpensive, disposable battery.  (someone ironic, seeing as you’re not supposed to throw out batteries)

What they discovered is that many tests rely on urine to determine test results.  Since urine is acidity, scientists have developed a battery powered by the very urine it is testing.  An acid based battery has been around since you could buy kits to make batteries out of potatoes or lemon water.

“In order to address this problem, we have designed a disposable battery on a chip, which is activated by biofluids such as urine,” says Ki Bang Lee, one of the researchers responsible for the innovation.

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For those who follow domain news, you might be interested to know that there will soon be a domain name for environmentally focused companies and blogs.  The domain extension “.eco” will soon be available according to ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the government sponsored organization charged with supervising the domain name industry.

According to anyone who has tried, creating a new domain extension is quite the nightmare.  Typically, one needs a great deal of funding to complete the process.  And it doesn’t hurt to have a government sponsorship either.  Ever heard of .to?  It was started by an entrepreneur who convinced the island nation of Tonga to lend him their name.  They are compensated, and he is making millions.

The .eco movement is a little more egalitarian.  At least it seems so on the surface.  The group has been soliciting stakeholder input for months, and operates a very user friendly, transparent website.

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A company called Konarka makes a flexible solar generating plastic compound that generates electricity.  Think of the possible applications for this technology.  Wrapping electric vehicles, buildings and remote structures to power small applications.  Or, imaging a trickle-charging effect for boats and RV’s that need occasional power boosts.

Konarka has announced that their product’s efficiency has increased to 8.3 percent.  Although still small, this is a big boost.  Some day we’ll have technology that captures 100% of the sun’s energy by the time it reaches the earth’s surface.  For now, we’ll have to use 8.3% to power bus stops in San Francisco.

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Ever wonder how they plan wind farms?  A lot more energy and assessment goes into the area that just an open field and some tall poles.  Survey equipment is often erected to determine the absolute premium location for each turbine.  Setting up poles and milling through data has been the only method for planning wind farms… until now.

The mobile wind turbine by Pope Design moves to follow the wind or to collect data.  It no longer takes a whole crew of workers and a crane to collect data over and over.

Another possible use is mobile wind generation.  Military applications are endless, as are heavily rural or undeveloped areas.  A mobile electrical plan is just what many communities need, especially those in transition.  Additionally, disaster areas are ripe for utilization of this new technology.

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Synthetically grown (all-natural) algae biofuel has recently been pegged as the most promising replacement for traditional fuels.  The potential to grow it in a factory setting and the much lower carbon footprint make it a potential miracle fuel source.

Until researchers found one pretty big snag.  Growing the algae biofuel in the manner most thought to be scalable, (large, clear cylinders) has been found to have a carbon footprint 3.7x that of petro-diesel, the fuel it was intended to replace.

The study also found that when grown in ponds instead of turbo-sized test-tubes, the carbon footprint of algae biofuel drops to 4.5 x lower than petro-diesel.  However, this method consumes more water.  Not an issue in regions with an abundance.

Although the yield using ponds is lower than that of the test-tube method, it’s the carbon foootprint and cost effectiveness we’re worried about.  The algae fuel seems to be the perfect solution as it consumes carbon-dioxide and spits out a combustible fuel.  It could very well be the solution to our addiction to oil, global warming and a suffering economy rolled into one neat little technology.

Other scientists are experimenting with new test tube reactor designs that use a series of baffles to move water and algae around in a manner that achieves the circulation necessary while using much less energy.  This issue being that algae needs constant movement and exposure to sunlight in order to grow quickly.  This method, pioneered by Benjamin Taylor at the University of Cambridge uses 4% of the energy typically consumed by this method of production.

You can read the entire study here.

“Solar Impulse”, a completely solar-powered airplane took off just before 5 am GMT, Wednesday from an airfield in Payerne, near Geneva.  The plane set off to prove it could stay aloft for 24 hours, it flew 26.

Piloted by Andre Borschberg, the flight plan included altitudes between 5,000 and 28,000 feet with a dawn landing.  The wingspan on this breakthrough innovation is 63 meters – rivaling the Airbus A340 and boats an array of solar cells numbering 12,000.

So why such a venture? The founder of the project, Bertrand Piccard, says the goal is to create a plane that can fly day and night on purely solar energy.  Does the name sound familiar?  Piccard piloted the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe in 1999.  Four years later, the challenge to fly around the globe was announced, a long term aim of the project.

Because the flight was successful, the team can begin work on the next phase of the project, to develop the plane further so that it may fly much longer distances, across continents or oceans.  If this phase is completed successfully, the team hopes to fly the Solar Impulse around the world in five stages in 2012.

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You can snap photos all day with a new camera strap powered by the sun.  As Inhabitat puts it, photography is the art of light, so what better way to enter the artistic environment than by powering your art with the sun.

Wired’s Gadget Lab tested the device and came up with one piece of critical feedback.  The strap’s cables connect directly to the batter port, meaning you cannot have a battery in place as a backup.  This isn’t a challenge when in the sun.  However, when those clouds roll out, it’s time to switch to a more reliable power source.

As film has become virtually obsolete with the digital revolution, so soon, will batteries perhaps.

Think back to the ’90s when Electric Vehicles first became a reality for the average consumer. (Yes, I mean the 90′s that happened 20 years ago, EV’s were alive and well then).

One of the chief concerns for both consumers and change-makers was that of range.  EV manufacturers are now toying with different solutions to the same problem: people don’t want to be limited by battery life or lack of charging stations.

A small startup is hoping to be one component of the answer.  They are testing a battery swapping station that will allow, in this stage of development, three taxi cabs to drive in and roll along a conveyor belt as if in a car wash.  In less than 60 seconds, this station will swap out a car’s battery.  That’s less time than it takes to fill your gas tank!

Via Inhabitat