States that could, in the future, attract manufacturing jobs using low reliance on coal as a marketing tool. Image credit: J.Laumer, with USEIA data. A few days ago I asserted that total coal consumption per state is a more useful metric than coal dependency for electricity. In this post, which borrows a graphic from the linked one, I'd like to take the insight to the next level. Job "leakage," from here on out, is also an interstate game. Post C...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Liquid crystal switching windows have been around for a while, and just last week Mike wrote about how Energy-Saving Dynamically Tinted Glass Could Make Most Buildings More Efficient. Now Dutch entrepreneurs Casper van Oosten and Teun Wagenaar have taken switchable glass one step further: their Smart Energy Glass collects solar energy and generates its own power. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

NoMix Toilet. Photo: Flickr Technological Innovations in the Bathroom? You Bet! Being green is all about solving problems and grabbing overlooked opportunities. It turns out that there's such a double-win in most bathrooms around the world; if we had "NoMix" toilets that separate urine from solid waste, municipal wastewater plants would have a significantly easier task (and produce more methane to generate electricity), and we could much more easily extract precious nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen for use as fertilizer (instead of using fossil fuels). So what's stopping us from going NoMix?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: MIT Could Store Power at 100x More Energy/Weight Than Lithium-Ion A team of scientists at MIT has discovered a new way to generate power with carbon nanotubes. In a paper titled "Chemically driven carbon-nanotube-guided thermopower waves" published in Nature Materials, they describe how they made "thermopower waves" flow through the nanotubes, generating a significant amount of power relative to the size of the nanotubes. This opens up new areas of research in energy gener...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Installing radiant barriers into your rafters is a great way to save money on heating and electricity.

Doityourself.com, THE source for home improvement information.