URBEE is a return to fundamentals, a rethink of traditional automotive design and manufacturing. As a species endangered by our own actions, we must quickly learn to stop burning fossil fuels. Surely, the ultimate goal of Design is to serve the ‘public good’. Therefore, corporations and individual designers have a responsibility to offer products that are not only useful, but in balance with the environment.

URBEE is now crowd-funded to create the greenest car on Earth. A first prototype was completed in 2013. It became the first car to have its body 3D printed. The team recently initiated a second prototype, called URBEE 2. They are embracing Digital Manufacturing as essential to the design of an environmental car. Engineered to safely mingle with traffic, the two passenger vehicle will have its entire exterior and interior 3D printed.

Consider the Source

Consider the Source

Make the stove and the insulating bricks.

Around 100 students are expected to enroll this year in EDGE (Educating and Developing Workers for the Green Economy), a public-private partnership that offers industrial and technical certificate programs in biofuels and biotech production, analysis and processing.
EDGE’s first certificate course began in March at MiraCosta community college in northern San Diego County, and a second set of students will start classes this summer. Tuition will be waved the first two years as the program is tweaked, and course materials will later be packaged for nationwide distribution. A Masters of Advanced Science will be offered next year through the University of California, San Diego for biotech entrepreneurs.
The one-year-old EcoTech Institute near Denver, which earlier this month unveiled a new $10 million flagship campus that will host up to 1,200 students. Some 250 students have been enrolled since last July in two-year associate’s degree programs for wind and solar energy technology, electrical engineering technology, energy efficiency, environmental technology and general renewable energy training.
Where California and Colorado are readying employees for whole new professions, Nevada is looking to recruit new talent and update skills of mature workers for its decades-old geothermal industry. This summer, the National Geothermal Academy will offer its first set of eight weeklong courses on geothermal energy development and utilization at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Aevia — Consider the Source

In Australia, Aurora Algae opened its demonstration facility in Karratha, Western Australia, where the Company’s algae-based biomass is being harvested for products in the nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, aquaculture and renewable energy markets.
“This would not have been possible with a U.S.-based production facility,” said Greg Bafalis, CEO of Aurora Algae, “where we believe the climatic conditions are not economically viable to produce large-scale, cost-competitive algae products.” The company’s open-pond production method, and proprietary pale green cultivar algae strains, utilize dry, arid climates with large amounts of CO2 and seawater as feed stocks.
Aevia — Consider the Source

With projects like Sapphire Energy’s drive to put a huge algae-fuel production facility in the Mexican desert, you’re seeing the first building blocks of world-scale capability for these fuels.
Margaret McCormick, the co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Matrix Genetics said, “I think that microorganisms can solve most of the problems of the world. If you go back, it was alcohol or it was cheese. There’s so much potential that can be harnessed out of these microorganisms and the DNA that’s in them, and we can look at them to solve all kinds of problems.”
McCormick said the latest phase of alternative fuels work is not purely driven by an economic need to reduce spending on oil, but is also by the need to address climate change and national security issues.
Aevia — Consider the Source

ST. GALLEN, Switzerland (MarketWatch) — BP PLC’s (BP.LN) plans to invest $1.5 billion in biofuels in 2011 but won’t do so at the expense of food security in the countries where it does invest, Chief Executive Robert Dudley said Friday.
“It is our policy…We will not invest in biofuel, in corn-based ethanol, on lands used for food, it will be in the Brazilian grasslands” which are used specifically for fuel crops, Dudley told an audience at a business conference here.
Ascension University — Source Material

Journey to Forever has established an online biofuels library with a wide variety of books and articles available at no charge.
Consider the Source: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library.html

LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA.
Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

“We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock.”
Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter. Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.
AEVIA Reveals the Source