Alaska Airlines recently completed 75 passenger flights running on a 20% biofuel blend made with reclaimed cooking oil. Once we learned this fuel blend met aviation and military safety, environmental, and performance standards we breathed a huge sigh of relief. And this, right after some airlines decided to go electric when taxiing .

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Cooking oil now powering airplanes

Droughts are devastating to farmers, killing off scores of crops thanks to a total lack of rain over a long period of time. But this years James Dyson Award winner is the Airdrop, an “air harvester” that promises to make droughts less of an issue in the future.

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This ‘air harvester’ pulls water from thin air in times of drought

When we think about geothermal energy, we usually think about somewhere like Iceland, which has more volcanoes that it knows what to do with . But according to a new study funded by Google.org , the U.S. has the potential to easily, right now, replace all of our coal-fired power plants with clean and endless geothermal power.

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Geothermal energy could replace U.S. coal power ten times over

Dean Kamen, noted brilliant and sometimes crazy inventor, has patented a new design for inflatable wind turbines which can double as illuminated advertising billboards. I guess free wind energy is just not quite good enough.

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Dean Kamen patents light-up, mobile, inflatable wind turbines

That’s not a smoothie, Jimmy — that’s grandma!

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Liquifying your body ranks as the greenest funeral to have

Solar power is wonderful. Really, it is. And if you don’t think so, it means that you hate the planet, and you don’t hate the planet, do you? The one teeny tiny little problem with solar power is that so far it’s proven to be more or less useless with the things that could really benefit from it, like mobile electronics . So what’s the problem?

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Nokia explains why you don’t have a solar powered cellphone yet

In what can’t possibly fail to be a symbolic gesture, old coal mines in Germany are being repurposed into giant storage tanks for wind energy .

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How to store wind power in an abandoned coal mine

Renewable energy’s dependence on weather is one of the factors that’s kept it from replacing oil and coal and nuclear and other nasty evil polluting power sources for day-to-day use. In a stroke of genius, scientists in the U.K. have stuck a solar powered generator onto a rain and wind-powered generator to make an all-weather power harvester .

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Renewable generator harvests power from sun, wind, and raindrops

Remember that plastic made from fruit ? Scratch that. A team of researchers at the University of Florida might well be on their way to cutting our dependence on valuable natural resources to create plastic. Instead of using food carbohydrates or petroleum, new plastics can be made with discarded plant wastes. Yes, that’s leaves, grass and petals.

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Researchers can now transform yard waste into plastic

Your average street pole provides light and display’s a crossing name. Called Savannius, this redesigned pole could keep itself charged and even juice up your gadgets, and it wouldn’t have to be on just a street corner, either.

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A wind-powered pole with outlets for your gadgets