Liquid Robotics announced that it has raised $22 million to fund the ongoing development of the Wave Glider, an undersea robot powered by waves.

The robot is designed for a variety of applications, including "ocean observation, data collection, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance." They can be controlled by satellite, and feature a patented propulsion system that turns the up and down motion of the waves into thrust, thus making the Wave Glider self-powered.

Wave Gliders are currently being used by several institues, including the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Hawaii.

In addition to being able to travel long distances while being controlled remotely, the robots can also transmit data in real time, making them ideal oceanographic research tools.

Toyota is planning to update one of its plants in the UK with enough solar power to build 7,000 cars.

The plant, located in Derbyshire, will receive a £10 million solar array, which includes 17,000 solar panels spread out over 90,000 square meters. The plant produces the Toyota Auris, a hybrid available in Europe, Japan, and Australia.

In addition to providing power to build cars, the new solar installation is also expected to reduce CO2 emissions by around 2,000 tons on an annual basis, according to Toyota. The array is being installed by British Gas and is expected to be fully functional by this July.

Via the Guardian

Two miles of solar panels have been installed in Belgium along the roof of a train tunnel.

The installation features 16,000 different solar panels along the train route from Paris to Amsterdam and is being used to power a nearby station in Antwerp. Though it doesn't provide all of the power for the station, the solar tunnel is able to provide around 50 percent of the energy needed. The entire project is believed to have cost just over $20 million.

Via GOOD

It may be dealing with garbage, but Waste Management is still trying to go green. The company has announced the all new SmartEnergy trash compactor, which features improved efficiency and solar power to provide energy savings of up to 70 percent.

Each compactor comes equipped with a new monitoring system, which helps determine when it needs to be serviced. By reducing the amount of trips needed to check on a compactor, the monitoring equipment helps save on the CO2 emissions that service vehicles create. The compactors also feature chargebox fullness indicators that help to minimize the amount of energy expended.

"The SmartEnergy compactor can be a clear statement by our customers to their stakeholders that, as a business, they are committed to sustainability," said senior business director Rick Cochrane.

Even better, the electronic controls for the SmartEnergy compactor are powered by solar energy with a backup battery system.

Solar energy is being used to power seemingly everything these days, and the team at Solar Roast Coffee are using it to, as you can probably guess, roast coffee.

Co-founder David Hartkop has developed four generations worth of solar concentrators, which create the heat needed to make coffee. He's currently working on the fifth generation, dubbed Helios 5, but is looking for donations from Kickstarter to get things going.

"The real advancement is that the system can be installed on the roof of an urban building, and used to provide heat to some process on the floor below," Hartkop wrote on the Kickstarter page. "In our case, we will be using this heat energy to roast our coffee; we know that coffee is just the start, though.

"This is why we have opted to release the plans and instructions for building our concentrator system as an open-source technology project. We're calling it 'The Open Sun Project' and you can read more about it at www.opensunproject.com. "

Currently the project has raised around $2,200 of its $20,000 goal. There's still a month to go, and those who donate at least $25 will get a sample bag of the company's Helios dark blend coffee.

Via Popular Science

The US Marines have deployed green initiatives for a while, and now the service is looking to expand its efforts through the use of things like solar generators and LED lighting.

According to Maj. Gen. John A. Toolan from the second marine division, innovations like these make the Marines more mobile, in addition to reducing costs. And the less dependent they are on fossil fuels, the better.

"The goal is to make the Marines a more effective fighting force and to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, transported water, and battery logistics," he told the New York Times. "We will significantly increase our energy efficiency on the battlefield and in doing so reduce our reliance on logistics convoys."

The switch also frees up soldiers who would previously be needed to guard trucks full of fuel to do other work.

We all love our laptops, but battery life is a major concern: it's no fun using your Macbook when it's plugged into a wall. But what if you never had to plug it in at all?

That's the idea behind the Luce Solar Powered Laptop concept. It features two solar panels — one on top and one just in front of the keyboard — that can keep your computer charged continuously. It also features a pretty striking look, with a simple touch keyboard, transparent edges, and paper-thin design.

Of course, like all of the solar laptops featured on GCT, it's not ready for production just yet. So you'll need to keep that charger at hand — at least for now.

Via Inhabitat

The rising price of oil not only means that gas prices are going up, it also means that plastic is getting more expensive to produce. And for many retailers this means looking towards alternative packaging options for products. For consumers, this also means that the hated, but near ubiquitous, plastic clamshell design could be on its way out.

One such example of new packaging techniques comes from Seventh Generation, which produces household cleaners and detergents. Instead of a plastic bottle, the company's laundry detergent comes packed in a fiber bottle lined with a pouch to hold the liquid, and it's both recyclable and compostible.

Other companies are simply cutting down on the amount of plastic they use, many replacing all-plastic designs with a design called Natralock, which features a sheet of tamper-proof cardboard and thin piece of thermoform to house the product. These changes reduce plastic use by around 60 percent, which in turn makes the products lighter, reducing shipping costs by around 30 percent.

"Plastic packaging is a byproduct of a byproduct, and we don't represent enough volume to counteract the industry," Ronald Sasine, Wal-Mart's senior director for packaging procurement, told the New York Times. "We get dictated by things like petroleum pricing, natural gas pricing, home heating oil."

A team at North Carolina State University has discovered that, while biodegradable goods might break down faster, they actually aren't the best choice for the environment. Because as they break down they release greenhouse gas.

These biodegradable materials are broken down by microorganisms, which then produce a great deal of methane, a powerful greenhouse emission. Estimates by the EPA suggest that around a third of the methane produced at landfills is then reused to create energy. Meanwhile, the rest is either burned off or simply escapes into the atmosphere.

"In other words," Dr. Morton Barlaz told ScienceDaily, "biodegradable products are not necessarily more environmentally friendly when disposed in landfills."

In order to alleviate this problem, landfills will need to improve and expand their methane collection to gather the wayward gases.

You may think of solar power as a relatively new technology, but as a recent post on General Electric's Tumblr feed shows, it's actually been around for quite some time.

The device pictured is called a Sun Motor, and was unveiled at the World's Fair back in 1939. It featured just one, relatively large, photovoltaic cell, which could provide enough energy to power the attached motor. Though the Sun Motor never became a commercial product, it's a great example of just how far the technology has come.