I first thought this was a piece of architecture rescued from a minature golf course. Something like the old troll's house on the 16th fairway.

It's actually from an old wind turbine, says Barry Johnston, CEO of ScotRenewables, a tidal power company in the Orkney Islands. ScotRenewables is building an unusual tidal turbine that sits on the surface of the water. It is somewhat of a can-do company. The employees -- mostly mechanical engineers and hydrodynamic specialists -- built their own office building and 40 meter wave tank, along with this wind hub room. Johnston first tried to use it as a conference room but each time the speakerphone was used it echoed like crazy.

It's right there in the picture. These are oil tankers in Scapa Flow, the deep harbor formed by the Orkney Islands in the North of Scotland. These tankers -- we counted four -- have been sitting here for weeks waiting for the price of oil to rise. The Scapa Flow, which covers about 250 square miles, is also where the German Navy scuttled its fleet rather than give it to the British after the end of World War I.

Why stop at regenerative braking when there are so many potholes and speed bumps to harness for power? That's the idea behind shock absorbers that can generate electricity — and two separate versions of the same concept are now looking for commercial potential. The first is from Levant Power Corp., a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout formed by students who developed a shock absorber hydraulic system that pushes fluid through a turbine that powers a generator. They're testing a prototype on a Humvee provided by AM General, the company that makes the vehicles for the U.S. military. Levant reports that its shock absorbers can generate about 1 kilowatt each on regular roads in a six-shock heavy truck, enough to power alternator loads. The students-turned-entrepreneurs hope their invention will find a home in vehicles like the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. AM General is one of several contractors competing for the $20-billion-plus contract to develop the proposed replacement for the Humvee for the U.S. military. But the idea of using shock absorbers to generate power isn't new — in fact, it's been around since at least 2001. That's when two professors from Tufts University first proposed their alternative method of getting power out of bumpy roads (via Green Car Congress). The Tufts shock absorbers don't use a hydraulic system. Instead, they use an electromagnetic linear generator to generate power from the up-and-down motion the shocks undergo — an average of 1 to 6 kilowatts on typical roads and as much as 16 kilowatts of average power on rough roads, according to its inventors. Electric Truck LLC optioned the rights to the technology in November. The company is "working diligently to develop commercial prototypes," according to Martin Son, associate director of Tufts' technology licensing office. Perhaps a race to the finish line is in order.

The environmental minister for Northern Ireland has banned TV ads urging consumers to conserve energy, calling it “an insidious propaganda campaign� to support this nonsense notion called climate change.

Sammy Wilson, a protestant in the Democratic Unionist Party, said he believes the world’s climate is cooling, not warming, so the British government’s “Act on CO2� campaign is hogwash, reported the Associated Press and the Belfast Telegraph.

“I dispute the theory, and it is only a theory, that the world is warming due to CO2 emissions and other human activity,� Wilson wrote on his Website. “Government policy and decision making has been heavily influenced by the green lobby, which I believe has been detrimental to the British economy. Green taxes have been levied on business and families, in the guise of promoting green behaviour, but in reality they have been stealth taxes which have hampered economic growth and made it harder for people to prosper.�

Although North Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, the local Protestant-Catholic power sharing government apparently has a lot of autonomy. Not only that, individual ministers have a lot of control over how policies are carried out, even if they face strong opposition from the rest of the four-party coalition, according to the AP.

Wilson’s own party actually supports efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.