While Louis and his crew are on their way to Canada it`s time to take a short break and have a look at some impressions from their recent trip to Korea. Meeting the Swiss Army on the North Korean border, a media hype about the cab and an breakdown caused by rain. It seems the guys from the Solartaxi had an exciting time in their eleventh month away from home.

If you can't get to the energy source (like a plug) than the energy has to come to you - for Odersun it's all about enabling people to integrate solar energy in their everyday life. The best example: the solar bag. See how the bag works...

For SolarWorld and Q-Cells solar mobility isn't just a future vision, it's a reality worth talking about. Both companies support car concepts that are solely fueled by solar energy: the Solartaxi and the Solarracer .Here they talk about the cars, their visions and the possible integration of solar energy for cars of the future.

From heaven and from earth - not a title of a fairy tale but an award-winning new electricity concept of a German company (specialized in solar energy) combining both: the energy from heaven and from the earth. Pioneering a new solar hybrid power system, the Cologne-based provider Energiebau Solarstromsysteme GmbH just received in January 2007 the Roy Family Award 2007 from Harvard University - for their successful public-private partnership in the field of environmental protection.

The awarded solar hybrid system is a combination of a photovoltaic system and generators developed by Energiebau to be run on pure vegetable oil as well as inverters and batteries.
Tested in several projects in Africa and Asia, the newest project in Tanzania provides clean electricity day and night to 140 people. The whole system will be paid off after 10 – 15 years, energetic amortisation will be achieved even faster within 2 – 5 years.
But the concept goes further in its social implications:
first it provides whole communities with the basis to generate additional income from harvesting the plants needed to produce the generator oil.
Second, decentrally generated electricity in rural areas also facilitates access to clean water, to health care services, education and economic development.
Third, the alternative use of oil instead of common fuel provides independency from high costs for diesel – and on top doesn’t pollute the environment. The jatropha plant used for the oil also has the advantage that it even grows in very dry regions in barren soil.

Since sun and barren landscape aren't scarce resources in Africa, the concept seems well thought trough.
Experts even think that it could become a model for the whole of Africa – getting one step closer to heaven on earth!
Foto: Website

Hydrogen as a clean fuel will be the basis for mobility in this new energy system. In the long run, there is no alternative. And it will be produced CO2 neutral, short- to mid-term through steam reformation of coal and gas with carbon separation, and ultimately, through solar energy and other renewable sources. The critics often doubt that solar energy would provide enough potential to fuel the world’s energy needs. Well: In just 42 minutes, the sun radiates more energy to the face of the earth than the world annual energy consumption amounts to today. Any questions?The third wave of industrialisation is just about to kick off, with the potential to emerge into a new boom economy. The question of our future energy is not only a political or ideological question, but a vital one.