There's a new sticker to look at when you buy a car in California. Starting tomorrow, new cars in the state will come with a sticker that provides information on the car's environmental impact. There is a smog score and a global warming score (all based on a one to ten scale) which rate how much methane, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, etc. will be emitted by the car. Per the scale, ten is the best, five is average. The California Air Resources Board also has a consumer Website with more information. The new sticker applies only to 2009 models and later, not to any year end closeouts you might be interested in buying. Some places go farther. Finland, for instance, charges much higher taxes on SUVs than economy cars. Policy makers in the U.S. have debated imposing these. It's not too big a stretch to imagine these kind of taxes will come to the states. The Air Resources Board also recently enacted a series of regulations that will require big-rig truckers to add filters to their trucks to reduce diesel emissions.

Areva Enrichment Services has applied to build a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant in Idaho as interest in nuclear in the U.S. grows. The plant, expected to be open in 2014 if approved, will produce three separative work units (SWU) a year, according to Reuters. An SWU measures how much energy a reactor expends in enriching uranium. In all, the 104 commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S. need about 13 to 14 SWUs a year. (There are 103 nuclear reactors in the military as well.) Two other enrichment plants in the U.S. are in the planning stages as well. Collectively, these three new plants could produce 15 SWUs a year by 2015. Right now, there is only one enrichment plant operating in the U.S. While these plants could conceivably cover the nuclear needs for the U.S., the interest in building more plants is growing. The NRC expects to get 34 applications for new plants by 2010. Global warming and fears about energy security have been reviving interest in nuclear technology in the U.S. for the past few years. Nuclear plants do not emit carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases, which proponents say make them cleaner than coal plants. Nuclear can also provide baseline power and isn't subject to the vagaries of the weather. Nuclear plants are also cost effective and can create jobs, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. (I did an interview with the head of the NEI, retired Navy Admiral Frank Bowman last year. He's interesting. Check it out here. ) Environmentalists such as Patrick Morris have also become nuclear advocates. Some new companies such as Hyperion Power Generation and General Fusion are promoting nuclear facilities which they say curb some of the risks and dangers of nuclear. Problems with disposal, proliferation and accidents remain, so opposition remains high. Thus, this is a debate that will go on for some time, but it won't go away. Areva, by the way, is primarily owned by the French government. France, Europe's biggest backer of nuclear, actually exports power to some neighboring nations.

Some of the biggest changes in store for green buildings are coming out of television. In the past couple of years, startups and others have begun to take technologies and ideas originally devised for the television market and port it to lighting. First, there was Luxim. The company makes a breathmint-sized bulb that puts out as much light as a conventional streetlight. The company has begun to sell its light to illuminate public spaces like cathedrals. The light was originally devised for projection TVs. Then there is Lumiette, which will make a flat, florescent bulb originally made for LCD TVs and sell it to contractors and architects as a svelte interior light. Meanwhile, Eden Park, a spin out from the University of Illinois, has created a light that pretty much works the same way as a plasma TV: an electronic charge excites phosphors contained in a thin panel and creates light. Seattle's Vu1, in a similar vein, has a bulb that functions like an old CRT set: an electron gun shoots electrons at phosphors attached to a curved piece of glass. The companies that tout OLEDs for TVs like Universal Display also want to market them as lights. And going the other direction, LED makers are selling an increasing number of their light-emitting chips to television makers and notebook manufacturers as energy efficient backlights. Dell is in the process of converting all of its notebooks to LEDs. That should help reduce the cost of manufacturing these things. Right now, the price of LEDs is still tough to swallow. What's driving this? Need. Lighting consumes 22 percent of the electrical power in the U.S. and many of the current bulbs are incredibly inefficient.Australia, Canada, California and others have passed or are contemplating restrictions on lighting in the next decade. However, those inefficient bulbs are also cheap. An incandescent bulb might only last 1000 hours, a fraction of the 50,000 hour lifetime of an LED, and use nine times as much power. But it only costs 75 cents. An equivalent LED might cost $90. Using parts from the TV world, or selling parts to TV makers to get to volume, reduces R&D and production costs.