Dr. Tom Hansen has a vision for clean power. It’s big and bold. Dubbed the ‘Hansen Plan’ in a January 2008 Scientific American article, it would completely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power generation across the country. The idea is gaining fervent followers for its seeming simplicity, and equally passionate detractors for the cost and effort required to implement it.

At first blush Dr. Hansen seems an unlikely visionary. The mild, even humble manner, worn running shoes, plaid shirt and rumpled khakis belong to a man who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. For years he ran coal-fired power plants for Tucson Electric Power, now serving almost four hundred thousand customers in Arizona. Not having much to do because the plants “ran themselves,” he started researching how to transform TEP and the industry. In the early 90s he quit running the coal plants to focus on renewables, and is now TEP’s Vice President of Environmental Services, Conservation and Renewable Energy.

Last week I chatted with Dr. Hansen at TEP’s bustling Green Team office. We talked about the company’s goals, the Hansen Plan, state of the art energy storage, plug-in hybrids and the new Smart Grid demo projects, as well as his concerns about natural gas. He also reveals his pick for the best thin film solar panels . They may be less efficient but are becoming less expensive than the standard silicon-based ones, which he calls “crystallines”.

In December 2006, Dr. Mark Trexler authored a controversial paper called A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers. He studied and ranked the numerous firms selling carbon offsets - also known as carbon credits - and named several firms with credible products. However, some of the most popular companies in the fledgling industry came out smelling, well, rather bad. The report caused quite a flap.

Dr. Trexler is Managing Director of EcoSecurities Global Consulting Services, an international carbon trading and consulting firm. I caught up with him at the noisy EUEC Energy and Environment Conference held at the end of every January in the foothills of Tucson, Arizona. Scientists, policy makers and business leaders from around the world gathered to tackle the fabulously difficult issues of climate change and energy.

Here are Dr. Trexler’s thoughts on topics including whether the Federal Trade Commission will find fraud in the carbon market during its ongoing investigation, when he thinks carbon credits work, and whether to buy them.

Most of us think of solar power as coming from glass panels on rooftops, and increasingly large arrays in the middle of some sun-drenched desert. Now it can come from green, slimy ponds and bioreactors filled with algae that soak up the rays to make oil.

Some species of algae contain as much as 50% oil, and out-produce other biofuels. An acre of soybean produces around 70 gallons of biodiesel. The same area of corn makes roughly 420 gallons of ethanol. Algae can produce about 5,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Not too shabby!

Another plus is that algae don’t compete with our food supply as other biofuels can. No exorbitantly priced corn tortillas just to fill our gas tanks!

As if that’s not enough to make you cheer, algae thrive on things that are either free, or considered pollutants that need treating - sun, CO₂ and compounds commonly found in wastewater. Team algae production up with power plants, and suddenly a CO₂-emissions problem becomes an oil boon.

A number of experimental algae biodiesel production plants have been built. Last year New Belgium Brewing Company in Colorado installed test systems to scrub its annual 5,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. Several power companies around the country gather data from systems treating CO₂-laden flue gas.

As someone who fantasizes about shooting a paint gun at Hummers and other suburban attack vehicles to mark them as hazards to planetary health, I recently succumbed to the most scandalous vacation decision. My husband and I were to drive around the Southwest in an RV, dragging two motorcycles – bikes that aren’t even street legal, I might add, only meant for riding at high speed around a tarmac racetrack, burning up fossil fuels just for the hell of it.

“How many miles does this RV do to the gallon?” I timidly asked the man who handed me the rental papers to sign.

“Well, the manual says 10, but it’s more like 7, particularly with a trailer.” He said. We had chosen the smallest camper. I wondered what the larger ones get.

“I’m going to cover my face with a ski mask just in case we run into someone we know,” I said to my husband.

“I wonder how it would compare with flying and staying in over air-conditioned hotels?” mused my ever optimistic hubby. “I bet it’s not as bad as you think.”

Research in all manner of renewable energy technologies abounds. There’s tidal energy, underwater turbines, biological fuel cells, cow poop power. You name it someone’s probably having a go at it. Now researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have come up with the kind of power source that is reminiscent of the Star Trek materializer – solar cells that spew out of an inkjet printer. It’s so simple, anyone can do it.

No more bulky, unsightly roof-top panels. No more taking out a second mortgage to do the right thing and be off the grid. Nope, you just slide in the flexible ‘paper’, hit the print button, and out pops a slender solar panel of the size and shape you designate – cheap and easy.

Instead of wrapping cars in advertisements to make money, let’s wrap ‘em to make energy. Roll up your “power pad” and take it camping. Slather your roof in power grids – and no one can accuse you of violating your home owners’ association regulations.

With all the talk of contaminated food pouring in from China and elsewhere, I have to wonder how safe our food supply really is. Let’s face it! It’s not just food coming from outside our borders that contain things not normally considered edible.

There’s mercury and Prozac (yes Prozac) in our fish; hormones in our meat. And what about that old adage, an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Is it really healthy to eat all those apples? We’re not just eating apple with our apples, you know, but a whole array of pesticides and heaven knows what else.

I hate to be a neurotic alarmist about what’s in my food, but when a report from the non-profit Environmental Working Group says that conventionally-grown food really does have a load of pesticides on them it gives pause.

For the record the FDA defines a pesticide thusly:

"The term pesticide includes many kinds of ingredients used in products, such as insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, insect repellants, weed killers, antimicrobials, and swimming pool chemicals, which are designed to prevent, destroy, repel, or reduce pests of any sort."

(I would like to assert that I am not a pest, despite what’s apparently on my food, and what my friends and family may think on occasion.)

There is so much green being bandied about that it’s practically impossible for us mere mortals to sort out the true green from the green wash. Some of the claims are indeed true, some are a pile of hocus pocus, and some are well, good in theory but too bloody bad because of unintended consequences. So in this, my new series about what’s green and what’s not, I am going to attempt to figure out just that. You and I can then vote green thumbs up, or alternatively, down. (See the thumb key at the end to see how to rate).

In this my inaugural piece, I thought I’d go straight for the jugular, and tackle that most maligned of issues… carbon credits. Do they have an objectively positive effect on our atmosphere, or are they – as many claim – only a license to pollute?

Firstly, let’s make sure we all get the basic concept, which, if you’re reading this you probably do. But just in case, here goes...

Let’s say your next door neighbor starts grinding away on his electric guitar at three in the morning. He’s not only burning through your patience, but electricity, which usually comes from carbon dioxide-emitting power plants. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is, of course, one of the primary greenhouse gases making our global thermostat rise.

White gold. That’s what some call one of the most-eaten seafoods because it's so lucrative. A.k.a. shrimp, the new gold rush has reached landlocked desert farms in Arizona.

“What heat-stroked dummkopf came up with that insane notion?” I find myself exclaiming at the thought of all that water. “Haven’t they heard the word drought? Or sustainability?”

Well, actually, it’s not quite as certifiable as it sounds.

Scientists at Oxford University have come up with a way to make electricity biologically. It’s not an English version of Ed Begley, pedaling his stationary bike attached to a turbine to make tea and crumpets. Nope, two different enzymes (hydrogenase and laccase) work together to kick start the chemical reactions that make electricity from hydrogen. It’s a biological fuel cell.

Traditional fuel cells generally use platinum to catalyze the reactions. The precious metal is scarce and toxic, making it expensive and hardly eco-friendly. The enzymes in bio-fuel cells are ubiquitous, found in plants and micro-organisms. They are pretty much infinitely renewable and completely biodegradable. They effectively make biological batteries that never run out as long as there is some hydrogen around. And what’s more, the hydrogen stream does not have to be pure, as it does for chemical catalysts. The enzymes simply pick and choose the hydrogen atoms from a smorgasbord of gases that would render the traditional fuel cell utterly impotent.

Ain’t life grand!

The university’s commercialization company, Isis Innovations has a couple of bio-fuel cells running a digital watch as a demo, reminiscent of, but a jot more sophisticated than sticking electrodes into a spud. The company hopes the invention will juice up all kinds of small electronics, and eventually more power-hungry gizmos.

However, the Oxford profs have a nagging little problem in common with traditional fuel cell developers.

This morning, the University of Arizona’s soft spoken Dean of the College of Science, Joaquin Ruiz, stood outside Biosphere 2, the 3.15-acre miniature world-under-glass just north of Tucson. He announced to a small crowd of well wishers and press that the University is taking over. With a new battle cry ‘Where Science Lives’ emblazoned on signs, a team of roughly 50 hopes to perform world-class science relevant to today’s grand challenges and inspire and educate people about them.

Yesterday, the Israeli Air Force took out at least two buildings in Gaza City in response to the previous day’s Palestinian militants’ attack. Not far away, a group of environmentalists called Friends of the Earth Middle East is taking a different tack to quell the violence. By bringing together Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians to work together on environmental issues that affect them all, they hope to build lasting peace.

It seems to be working.

Take the West Bank village of Baqa Al-Sharqiya, for example. Only four years ago the Israeli Army surrounded it with a Security Barrier that effectively cut it off from the rest of the West Bank, destroying large numbers of businesses and forcing the residents to rely on agriculture in a region with limited water.

To make living conditions worse, villagers use leaking cesspits to collect their sewage, which they routinely empty into nearby Wadis and valleys because they don’t know what else to do with it. In some places sewage bypasses the cesspits altogether, and pours right into the streets.