None of the key points are radical, except for asking for a $4.4 trillion investment—90 percent of new cars electric by 2030, 45mpg average fuel efficiency, efficient electricity use to cut demand 33 percent, replacing all coal with renewable electricity. I was hoping for something more innovative and exciting, like Google Power, which would be in beta for 22 years. Cause if Google can't save the world, who can? [Google via Alley Insider]

In its current form, solar sails are an ideal solution for boats designed for short trips. Tests in Sidney have illustrated that ships equipped with the sail can go around 6 knots on wind power alone or 6 knots on solar power. When combined, speeds of 10 knots are achievable. [Crave]

Michael Jantzen's rendering of his concept shows it employed over a pool in the middle of the desert—where it's powering all of the lights, maintenance, etc.—making for all kinds of cool blues to make a neat idea look pretty sexy too. Also, check out his massive portfolio of future-y convention-busting designs.
[Michael Jantzen via Groovy Green via Sci-Fi Tech]

The 3.5" SATA drives for desktops, the WD Caviar GP series, are now available, ranging from 320GB to 1TB. The press release claims that switching to a GreenPower 1TB is "the equivalent of taking your car off the road for 14 days each year." The more believable claim is that you will save "up to $10 per drive per year in electricity costs." So it practically pays for itself, in, like, 30 or 40 years.

Key features:

IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and cache size designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.

IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. View demo >

IntelliPark - Delivers lower power consumption by automatically unloading the heads during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag.

Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - Employ PMR technology to achieve even greater areal density.

StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.

From the press release:

WD'S New GreenPower Hard Drives Reduce Energy Consumption, Helping Protect the Environment

Company's First One Terabyte Drive Enables Up To 40% Hard Drive Power Savings for Desktop, Enterprise, CE and WD Branded Customers

LAKE FOREST, Calif., July 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/—Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced a new environmentally friendly GreenPower(TM) family of WD(R) desktop, enterprise, CE and external hard drive products. The new GreenPower (GP) family will ship in capacities from 320 gigabytes (GB) to one terabyte (TB), and will save up to 40% in hard drive power consumption, or as much as $10 per drive per year.

Based on extensive customer input toward supporting ENERGY STAR 4.0 compliance and incorporating the latest in engineering technology, WD has delivered the first 3.5-inch hard drive platform designed with power savings as the primary attribute. The GreenPower family gives customers more choices when it comes to purchasing hard drives. The initial drive that will take advantage of WD's new GreenPower technology is the WD Caviar GP. The WD Caviar GP 1TB hard drive will first ship in July in the My Book(TM) range of storage appliances, with 1TB desktop channel shipments following in August.

GreenPower versions of WD RE enterprise drives and WD AV consumer electronics drives will ship in volume within calendar Q3.

ENERGY STAR 4.0 computing systems are designed to enable organizations to minimize their carbon footprint as well as realize significant savings in electricity costs. By WD estimates, in certain applications, the new GreenPower platform can save greater than $10 per drive per year in electricity costs. For example, a data center with 10,000 drives can save $100,000 in annual energy costs, and reduce CO2 emission by 600 metric tons—the equivalent of taking almost 400 cars off the road for a year.