The humble electric immersion could play a key role in fighting climate change, according to Dr Mark Barrett, a rearcher at the Energy Institute at University College London.

According to the Guardian: 

Dr Barrett says the heaters could be switched on and off rapidly to compensate for the erratic output of wind turbines and solar panels, each heater controlled by a gadget that responds to signals sent through the electricity grid – a system used since the second world war. "Everybody is always looking for a shiny new silver-bullet solution" says Dr Barrett, "but this idea is cheap, safe, and based on technology that's been around for decades"....

...Dr Barrett explains that 19m domestic tanks, each fitted with a standard 3kW (kilowatt) immersion heater, would provide over 55GW of potentially flexible demand, which could be adjusted to suit the output of renewable generators. The immersion controller would ensure the water temperature stays above a set minimum – so the house would never be without a hot shower – but within a range of 45C-65C the grid would be in control. Along with hot-water storage in commercial buildings, this would provide balancing capacity greater than peak consumption today, and is a key feature of the computer model Dr Barrett has devised to investigate how Britain could best achieve a high proportion of renewable power.

  Check out the Guardian's interactive guide to greening your home. 

Writing on TreeHugger, Lloyd Alter takes a look at two supposedly carbon neutral buildings. The first is the Satander building in Milan, which architects Mario Cucinella have billed as "first zero CO2 office building in Milan."

The Guardian reports that, between 1998 and 2007, green industries in the US were producing new jobs at twice the rate of their traditional counterparts.

Leeds based architects Garnett Netherwood have won an international competition to construct 12-meter high "wildlife towers" along the Leeds and Liverpool canal. The towers will be constructed from parts of demolished buildings.

Speaking in London yesterday, US energy secretary Steven Chu said that painting roofs and pavements white could help to mitigate global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space.

Mario Cucinella architects have produced an interesting theoretical prototype for a low cost sustainable home, dubbed 'Casa 100k'.

The Green Party has published its ten point cycling plan for Dublin. Among the key points are:

Writing on the BBC Website, Mark Mardell profiles Freiburg, perhaps the world's greenest city. Mardell writes:

What is missing is the constant low thrum of traffic in the background. It's not that cars are completely banned from the city, but most of the centre, rather than the odd street, is a pedestrian zone. You pedal or walk to trams or trains. Freiburg can lay claim to being the greenest city in the world, and it's all rather pleasant.

 A group of students from the University of Michigan has won the $200,000 MIT Clean Energy grand prize for developing insulation panels from agricultural waste.

The May issue of National Geographic magazine features an in-depth article on green roofs. The full article can be read online here.

Spirit of Ireland have been getting a lot of publicity over the last month - check out the group's news page for a list of recent media articles. If you haven't heard, the group's proposals essentially involve storing wind energy in the form of pumped storage reservoirs along the coast.

Guardian green technology Alok Jha correspondent outlines his plans to reduce the energy demand of his terraced London Victorian home in this video.