International Herald Tribune

College students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy.

Going into this election, I thought that - for the first time - we would have a choice between two "green" candidates. That view is no longer operative - and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

Growth in solar power installations in Italy may not be enough to offset shrinking global demand, Italian industry experts say.

Part of that reduced demand could come in Spain, where solar power companies face a drastic slowdown next year because the government is preparing to sharply reduce subsidies.

Some companies are now pinning their hopes on the Italian market, but manufacturers and government officials in Italy are cautious over growth prospects.

General Motors has "essentially finished" designing its first plug-in hybrid car, the Chevrolet Volt, and says it will have production-ready prototypes within 10 days.

The automaker still has considerable work to do on the car's lithium-ion battery and other technology in the two years before the Volt is scheduled to go on sale, but completing the design is a milestone for what is arguably the most crucial car in decades for GM.

Two California companies said Thursday that they would each build solar power plants that were 10 times bigger than the largest now in service, creating the first true utility-scale use of a technology now mostly confined to rooftop supplements to conventional power supplies.

John McCain recently tried to underscore his seriousness about pushing through a new energy policy, with a strong focus on more drilling for oil, by telling a motorcycle convention that the U.S. Congress needed to come back from vacation immediately and do something about America's energy crisis. "Tell them to come back and get to work!" McCain bellowed.

Sorry, but I can't let that one go by. McCain knows why.

Retailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the biggest store chains in the United States are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource.

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl's, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.

One designer has threatened to wage war against them. Another reckons they're so depressing that we'll be driven into psychotherapy. A manufacturer describes them as "very unfriendly" and, even, "a little violent."

When the Sentry Equipment Corporation in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, was considering how to light its new factory last year, the company's president, Michael Farrell, decided to try something new: light emitting diodes, or LED's.

"I knew LED's were used in stoplights. I wondered why they can't be used in buildings," Farrell said. "So I went on a mission."

What Farrell found was a light source that many of the biggest bulb manufacturers are now convinced will supplant incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs.

The electric cars that Nissan Motor plans to start selling by 2010 will have varying capabilities depending on a given country's driving patterns, but all will be priced competitively and will generate profits, company executives said Tuesday.

Nissan's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, said that any electric car the company sold in the United States would need a range of at least 100 miles between charges to be practical, but that European drivers could make do with about half that range. Tolerance for the time it takes to recharge such a car may vary widely as well, he said.

A retired customer service representative for the local power company, Jeffrey Marchant, admits to a lifelong obsession with household energy, born originally of thrift rather than green environmental consciousness.

"I'm like one of those fellows who stands at the station spotting trains, only what I do is electricity," he says.