[ With a New Look, French Teams Take Top Prizes in Shell Eco-marathon Europe ]

For several years running, French engineering students from two neighboring Loire Valley schools, Polytech Nantes and La Joliverie, have shared engineering and effort to build rocket-shaped vehicles that captured top prizes at Shell Eco-marathon Europe fuel efficiency race. But the students began to feel there was something lacking in their cars’ perennially award-winning profile.

“It didn’t look like a car,” explained Nantes student Frederic Calvez.

So the students designed Cityjoule, a super-compact, but street-legal electric blue coupe powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.…

[ New Energy Secretary Moniz Stresses Efficiency, to Start ]

In his first official remarks as Energy Secretary Tuesday, Ernest Moniz focused on an aspect of energy policy that lends itself to consensus perhaps a bit more easily than others:  the need for greater efficiency.

Speaking at the Energy Efficiency Global Forum in Washington, Moniz noted it was fortuitous that the annual event followed his swearing in just three hours before: “Efficiency is going to be a big focus as we go forward.”

The 68-year-old physicist and MIT professor was unanimously confirmed as energy secretary by the Senate last week.…

[ A New Record for Our Team at Eco-marathon ]

After a really hard night, with some very last minute tweaking, we installed a Kinetic Energy Recovery System on our car at Shell Eco-marathon Europe. Even though the KERS system was pretty untested, we still chose to give it a chance, since we already had already set a new record of 612.3 kilometers on one liter of gasoline yesterday. (See also DTU Roadrunners 2013: Focusing On Evolution Instead of Revolution and At Eco-marathon Europe, Testing Commences)

But nothing comes easy when pushing the boundaries.…

[ From Sea to Shining Sea, Who’s Using the Most Fossil Fuels? ]

A lot of the debate over energy and climate change has focused on changing how people live. But in a lot of ways, where someone lives is as important as how they live.

Not all parts of the United States are the same when it comes to how much and what kind of energy is used. That makes a huge difference in how to attack our energy problems.

There’s evidence for this in the latest federal statistics on carbon emissions by state and per capita.…

[ Stichting Rootbox: Sustainable Design Through Collaboration, With or Without Wind Turbine ]

A hot pink wind turbine turned above one paddock at Shell Eco-marathon Europe this year; it was the stall of the team from Inholland University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. The students, all studying aeronautical engineering, have designed a vehicle with a detachable rear end that can be changed in few minutes and converted to a wind-powered vehicle.

There’s no category for wind-powered cars in Shell Eco-marathon, but for the past five years, the Inholland students have been competing in an annual competition called Racing Aeolus, which will take place in August in Den Helder, the Netherlands.…