Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

    "To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky," said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university's Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. "Our new antireflective coating makes this possible."

    An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it - meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

    After a silicon surface was treated with Lin's new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it - meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.

    Lin's new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles.

    From the outside, the house at the bottom of Stocking Street looks no different from any other in the cul-de-sac. But step around the back and a purpose-built shed hums with the latest in green technology - a state of the art hydrogen fuel cell.

    Today the house in Lye, near Stourbridge in the West Midlands, will be opened as the first permanent hydrogen-powered home connected to the national grid. The refrigerator-sized fuel cell unit will produce 1.5kW of electricity and 3kW of heat for the occupants of the house, with any excess power being fed into the national grid.

    "You shouldn't notice any difference in the house," said Waldemar Bujalski from the University of Birmingham's fuel cells group, which will monitor its performance and reliability.

    "For the typical house, the unit is capable of providing 65% of the power on average and about 75% of total energy demand, both electricity and heat."

    There is no way yet to pipe hydrogen directly into homes, so the demonstration house will use natural gas that comes in via the existing mains supply. This is first passed through a steam reformer that generates hydrogen. The hydrogen is then combined with oxygen in a fuel cell unit, made by German company Baxi Innotech, that produces both electricity and heat and without producing carbon dioxide. Although creating the hydrogen from gas does produce some carbon dioxide, using the fuel cell cuts overall household emissions by 40% compared with running on gas alone.

    The electricity is fed directly into the house, while the heat warms water for the taps and conventional radiators. Bujalski said the demonstration house would be monitored by his team to see how well the fuel cell works, with the aim of ironing out problems before the devices reach the mass market. Initially they would cost about £2,000 each, he said. In Germany, there are plans to install 800 hydrogen fuel cell units by 2010 as part of a large-scale demonstration of the technology.

    Atlantic City, New Jersey - New Jersey is powering up an ambitious plan to become a world leader in the use of wind-generated energy.

    Gov. Jon Corzine wants the Garden State to triple the amount of wind power it plans to use by 2020 to 3,000 megawatts. That would be 13 percent of New Jersey's total energy, enough to power between 800,000 to just under 1 million homes.

    "We want to create this generation's race to the moon, but this time, a race to the sea, to harness this potential wind source off of our coasts, and bring economic development, environmental benefits, and new, green jobs to the Garden State," Corzine said Monday.

    Environmentalists hailed the plan. Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of Environment New Jersey, termed it "a gale force for change, moving us away from dirty power and towards a new energy future. It is the most visionary plan to promote offshore wind energy in the nation."

    Last week, Garden State Offshore Energy, a joint venture of PSE&G Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, was chosen to build a $1 billion, 345 megawatt wind farm in the ocean about 16 miles southeast of Atlantic City. That plant would be able to power about 125,000 homes.

    There are currently no offshore wind power projects anywhere in the United States, but two others have been approved for areas off Rhode Island and Delaware, environmentalists said.

    Call him cement man.

    Back when Stanford Professor Brent Constantz was 27, he created a high-tech cement that revolutionized bone fracture repair in hospitals worldwide. People who might have died from the complications of breaking their hips lived. Fractured wrists became good as new.

    Now, 22 years later, he wants to repair the world.

    Constantz says he has invented a green cement that could eliminate the huge amounts of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by manufacturers of the everyday cement used in concrete for buildings, roadways and bridges.

    His vision of eliminating a large source of the world's greenhouse CO2 has gained traction with both investors and environmentalists.

    Already, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing Constantz's company, the Calera Corp., which has a pilot factory in Moss Landing (Monterey County) churning out cement in small batches.

    And Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says it could be "a game changer" if Constantz can do it quickly, on a big scale and at a decent price.

    "It changes the nature of the fight against global warming," said Pope, who has talked with Constantz about his work.