Overnight News Digest: Green Goodness

Happy Sunday all...

and Happy Mom's Day to those who it applies to.

Reanult seen investing up to a billion in swappable battery electric car

The head of an Israeli-backed electric car project estimated on Sunday that its partner, the Renault-Nissan alliance, would likely invest $500 million to $1 billion in the swappable-battery electric cars.

"This is the cost for a three-year car program," Shai Agassi, the founder and chief executive of California-based Project Better Place, said on the sidelines of a news conference to introduce the electric car prototype.

1.5 Million Chinese kids take part in painting contest with environmental theme

An unprecedented 1.5 million Chinese children have participated in a painting competition on the topic of climate change, in a sign of the country's growing awareness of environmental issues.

The competition, held in China for the first time, saw the children collectively submit 200,000 paintings on the theme of climate change. Some 620 paintings were selected for prizes by the jury, which was made up of renowned Chinese artists, UNEP officials and Ms Elizabeth Rihoy of Resource Africa.

More reproductive control for women better for the environment..

Unwanted childbearing is a greater demographic force than the desire for large families, and may have been for centuries, suggests Robert Engelman, Vice President at the Worldwatch Institute, in his new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. Expanding the capacity of all women to choose when to bear children is thus the surest route to achieving an environmentally sustainable population.

In countries that make effective personal control of reproduction possible for all, women invariably have two children or fewer on average, according to More. Such low fertility levels eventually lead to gradually declining populations in the absence of net immigration.

Europe's offshore wind plans

he E.U. is serious about getting clean energy on the grid. The European Parliament has set a 25% target for renewable energy by 2020. About half of that target is projected to come from wind energy. A new report, "Pure Power - Wind Energy Scenarios up to 2030,"  put out by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), shows that this is a feasible scenario, given current trends in the field. As of 2007, five E.U. countries (Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Germany) have more than 5% of their electricity demand supplied by wind energy. If the 2020 goal is met, wind energy could equal 38% of the EU-15's Kyoto Protocol obligation, avoid 133 mega-tons of C02, and save billions in fuel costs. Future wind production is dependent, however, on continued government/private capital investments in the offshore wind energy market.

New generation of farmers

CHRISTOPHER and Johanna Finley of Finley Farms have grappled with all of those issues. They run a popular stand at the Sunday Hollywood market as well as at several markets in the Santa Barbara area and they are in the middle of the small-grower learning curve.

The couple, who embody the young, idealistic farmers market growers, met when they were both working at farmers market stands while attending UC Santa Barbara -- he was an environmental studies major and she studied ceramics. Finding their student jobs more interesting than their undergraduate training, four years ago they started to farm a 1-acre plot they rented north of Goleta.

New ways to bury greenhouse gases

Turn greenhouse gases to stone? Transform them into a treacle-like liquid deep under the seabed?

The ideas may sound like far-fetched schemes from an alchemist's notebook but scientists are pursuing them as many countries prepare to bury captured greenhouse gases in coming years as part of the fight against global warming.

Analysts say the search for a suitable technology could become a $150 billion-plus market. But a big worry is that gases may leak from badly chosen underground sites, perhaps jolted open by an earthquake.

China's self sustaining HUGE LED wall

t’s called the GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, and with 2,292 individual color LEDs, comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. monitor screen, it’s said to be the largest color LED display in the world. The wall is solar-powered too — photovoltaics are integrated into the wall’s glass curtain, and it harvests power during the day, to illuminate the display at night.

Designed by, Simone Giostra & Partners Architects, the GreenPix wall is part of the Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympics.

14 Tiger cubs spotted in the wild

Fourteen tiger cubs have been spotted in a leading Indian sanctuary, a rare piece of good news in the country's fight to protect its dwindling population of big cats from poachers and habitat destruction.

The cubs have been sighted regularly over the past few weeks in Ranthambore National Park in western Rajasthan, R.N. Mehrotra, the state's chief wildlife warden, told Reuters on Tuesday.

"The cubs belong to six or seven different mothers and they are all around three-and-a-half months old," Mehrotra said.

Have a happy Sunday...

Chaos