Green Building Award: BottleStone

“…a combination of clay, cement, and old glass that looks uncannily like real granite, but takes much less energy to produce…”

Transportation Award: ElectraDrive

“…ElectraDrive aims to make electric conversion more accessible to the masses with its one-size-fits-all conversion kit. The kit’s designed to turn just about any car into an EV, whether it’s a sleek convertible or a hulking truck—you just take your car’s gas drivetrain out and put the company’s ElectraMount module in…”

Energy Efficiency Award: Viridis Earth

“…Viridis Earth manufactures $350 retrofit devices that can make your old a/c unit an energy-efficient wunderkind. One device cuts an air conditioner’s energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent, a reduction so substantial that the retrofit typically pays for itself in less than a year…”

Renewables Award: Focal Point Energy

“Lots of companies that use hot water or steam for manufacturing rely on gas or electricity to generate their heat. But it’s much more efficient to gather sunlight and use it to heat the water directly…  “To collect the heat, we use a reflective membrane made out of a Mylar-like material,” says Howard Harrenstien… The reflector focuses incoming sunlight into a concentrated beam, which can then be aimed at water-filled containers to make the contents boil.”

Green Building Award runner-up: Solar Red

“…By devising a system that can be put up by the same guys who nail on your roof tiles (no professional solar installer required), Solar Red has succeeded in cutting the cost of home solar by 25 to 50 percent…”

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Without a way to store their power, no number of solar panels will free a home from the electrical grid. Until now. Researchers at Utah-based Ceramatec have developed a new battery that can be scaled up to store 20 kilowatt-hours—enough to power an average home for most of a day.

An easy sell for solar users, but it could also allow the grid to stockpile energy during less expensive off-peak hours. The new battery runs on sodium-sulfur—a composition that typically operates at greater than 600 F.

“Sodium-sulfur is more energetic than lead-acid, so if you can somehow get it to a lower temperature, it would be valuable for residential use,” Ralph Brodd, an independent energy conversion consultant, says. Ceramatec’s new battery runs at less than 200 F.

Ceramatec says that batteries will be ready for market testing in 2011, and will sell for about $2000.

Read more from Popular Mechanics.