A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• A relatively clean-burning diesel Volkswagen Jetta TDI sedan won "Green Car of the Year" honors at the Los Angeles auto show, the first diesel-powered car to win the auto industry's highest environmental honor, Reuters reports.
• Retail king Wal-Mart will purchase electricity from a Duke Energy windpower project in Texas to light up 15 percent of its 360 stores in the Longhorn State, Wal-Mart's first direct purchase of windpower, says Green Tech Media.
• The Stata Center building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology captures runoff waste water from storms in a giant cistern and reuses it in toilets in the building, the New York Times Green Inc. blog reports from the Greenbuild conference in Boston.
• Air Canada flight attendant Marcelo da Luz last month set a Guinness World Record for distance travelled in a sun-powered car of 9,320 miles throughout Canada and Alaska. Now he's pointing his flying-saucer-looking vehicle south to Argentina to extend the record, Canada's Globe and Mail reports.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Environmentally-friendly shopping garnered attention at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, with start-ups pitching their companies to the venture capital crowd. The New York Times' Bits blog reports that an Internet start-up named GoodGuide rates more than 60,000 products on environmental, health and social impacts. The company's founder created the site when he learned his daughter's sunscreen contained carcinogenic chemicals. Bits also reports on a solar panel installation company and a video broadcast start-up.
• Green Wombat visited California start-up Cool Earth Solar for a Fortune Magazine story on a novel solar power technology to generate electricity from balloons. A single balloon of thin-film reflective plastic with a photovoltaic cell will generate one kilowatt of power. Put together 10,000 balloons and you can light up a town. Cool Earth is building a prototype plant and says a 1.5-megawatt plant will be built next year near Tracy, Calif.
• The U.S. military is marching ahead on the green energy front. My NEXT100 colleague Jonathan Marshall recently posted on the U.S. Army's energy efficiency and sustainable energy projects. Now Earth2Tech notes that the U.S. Navy has awarded a $3 million contract to Ocean Power Technologies to test the company's PowerBuoy system to generate electricity from ocean waves to power oceanic data and communication systems.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Green pumpkins? Add Halloween to the greening of everything. The Baltimore Sun notes that a "Green Halloween" movement is spreading across the land promoting organic candy, fruit, other wholesome treats, and even costumes made of natural fiber. This Halloween vet, however, will stick with a traditional bowl of chewy gooey candy bars for the wee goblins tonight.
• More greening: The New York City Marathon this Sunday will add biodiesel generators to power official race clocks, loudspeakers, a medical tent and other fixtures at the race's finish line in Central Park. The generators, developed by the GreeNow company, run on 99 percent biodiesel made from U.S.-grown soy, according to The New York Times' City Room blog.
• Senators Obama and McCain are getting a lot of advice from scientists, The New York Times' Dot Earth blog reports. The American Association for the Advancement of Science and some 180 other organizations want the next president to appoint a White House science adviser with cabinet-level rank to provide scientific and technical advice on energy security, climate change and other issues. The groups grumbled that the Bush administration was slow to appoint a science adviser and didn't give the post cabinet rank.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Tesla To Delay New Car: The credit crisis has forced electric car developer Tesla Motors to delay its launch of a five-passenger battery-powered sedan and lay off a "modest" number of its 250 employees to save cash. Tesla, which sells the spiffy Roadster, faces stiff competition for electric cars with GM, Nissan, China's BYD Co. and possibly Chrysler, Reuters says.
• Pedaling For Progress In The Bailout: EnviroWonk reports the $700 billion bailout bill has a provision to allow bicycle commuters to get a $20 monthly credit for maintenance, repairs and purchasing, thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who bikes daily to his Washington office.
• What's Fresh Is Not The Only Factor: Environmentally conscious sushi lovers now can get a lot of information about sustainability of the seafood from three new pocket guides, says the New York Times' Dining & Wine page. The guides -- from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Environmental Defense Fund and the Blue Ocean Institute -- agree on which fish are sustainable but present the information in different ways.
• Another Reason For Bats To Like Halloween: The Reuters Environment blog notes that bats may get some help from the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative, an unlikely group of conservationists, wind power companies and the federal government. They want to know if stopping spinning turbines during low wind conditions will reduce bat deaths at wind farms.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week:

• Sustainable is one of the top categories featured on NEXT100, so Andy Revkin's post on sustainable cities on his DotEarth blog seemed right for this week's roundup. Portland, Oregon, again topped a list of 50 U.S. cities compiled by SustainLane.com, a publisher that reviews things that are supposed to be good for you. The Rose City has topped the list for social and environmental sustainability since it began in 2005. San Francisco was No. 2 for the second consecutive year.
• Another piece on sustainability:environmental and aid groups are urging wealthy industrial countries to pay poorer nations to preserve their forests and jungles. Tropical forests absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Deforestration releases large volumes of CO2, threatening to cancel out emission reductions elsewhere. 
• A U.N. report this week -- "Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World" -- says more than 20 million jobs could be created as countries move toward new energy sectors, including wind, solar and geothermal power. Some 2.3 million people are now working in alternative energy jobs, with half in biofuels, according to the report.
• Shifting gears to plug-in vehicles, Montreal-based Dorel Industries is introducing a lithium-ion-battery-powered "e-bike" -- the Schwinn Tailwind. It claims to recharge the battery in only 30 minutes compared with four hours or more for a standard e-bike. The price: $3,200 (U.S.). 

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• A $10,000 premium for the GM plug-in Chevy Volt's lithium-ion batteries probably means a long wait for affordable electric cars.
• Wanted: Wildlife Biologists. Solar energy developers are snapping up biologists to survey power plant sites in California (including a PG&E project) and the desert Southwest for protected species and to prepare habitat-protection plans.
• A rival for Cow-Power? Food giant Kraft has found a way to turn whey, a cheese byproduct, into biomethane gas to power dairy plants. Will this frighten Little Miss Muffet?
• While Google eyes wave-powered floating data centers on the high seas, San Francisco-based International Data Center plans to dock retrofitted data center ships at piers and take electricity from nearby utilities, reducing operating costs.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• Professors and execs sound off about energy-efficient data centers.
• T. Boone puts forth a national wind energy policy.
• Duke announces wind plans of its own -- expanding its use of wind-produced electricity and purchasing more wind turbine generators.
• Energy experts urge legislators to use renewables and efficency to handle high fuel costs.
• Toyota's plug-in hybrid launch carries with it UK's hopes for becoming number one location for low-carbon vehicles.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• Plug-in hybrid transit buses start hitting the road.
• The BBC looks at how Denmark, which gets 20% of its energy from wind power, keeps the juice flowing even when the wind isn't.
• Treehugger discusses how global warming will not cause sea levels to rise as much as first anticipated.
• Chrysler reveals its plug-in...to dealers.
• The Bright Green Blog shows us non-cheesy environmentally-themed songs are possible.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• Google injects more than $10 million into geothermal projects with Sausalito, CA-based AltaRock Energy and Redwood City, CA's Potter Drilling.
• Reuters reports, in a story from London, criticisms of carbon offsets associated with air travel, claiming calculations miss important factors in carbon measurement.
• Support for California's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions weakens under pressure of higher energy prices, according to a new survey of California voters.
• Spoiled food = wasted water, as rich and poor countries throw away more food, The New York Times blog, Dot Earth, reports.

A roundup of green headlines that caught our eye this week.

• The Governor of Oregon recently unveiled the country's first solar highway installation
• Reuters reports that the Department of Defense claims to be the only entity with the federal mandate and the size to develop new energy technologies and products on the scale needed for mass adoption.

• The Associated Press reports that McCain pledges to negotiate trade deals favorable to farm commodities, even though he does not believe in ethanol subsidies...other things to hold in disbelief, the 1,253-pound boar named Freight Train and pork chop on a stick featured at the Iowa State Fair.

• Kite power! Not the newest cartoon superhero, but rather a technology that could potentially power 100,000 homes.