A climate supercomputer made of iPod chips; $2.2 billion for CleanTech VC in 2007; and a new (and great looking) and a sexy electric car from Italian design firm Pininfarina.

New Breed Of Supercomputers Proposed To Improve Climate Change Prediction Accuracy: The problem with making hard-and-fast pronouncements about climate change is that long-range weather models are frighteningly complex. But now a group of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are proposing a new supercomputer design which might lend more power to the calculus of climate. The concept utilizes massively parallel banks of embedded, low-power processors similar to those is iPods and cellphones. Researchers believe thie embedded design will be up to 400 times more efficient then conventional processors, delivering billions of floating point operations per second. (Science Daily)

Venture Cash: Anything But Biofuels: A PriceWaterhouseCoopers report released Tuesday concludes that while the CleanTech business sector is still maturing, it’s also roaring ahead. The report tracks $2.2 billion in venture capital applied to green technology in 2007. The big winner: solar power. The big loser: biofuels, thought to be a political hot potato thanks to its effect on food prices. (WSJ.com)

“Green” Banana Farming Gains Industry Appeal: Bananas area worldwide food staple. Unfortunately, they’re one of the least environmentally sound crops on the planet, with wide sections of rainforest being cut to make room for plantations and vast amounts of chemicals used to keep them healthy. Now a pilot program a Costa Rica’s EARTH University hopes to build a better — and greener — banana. The University hopes it will eventually lead to successful organic fruit production. (National Geographic)

Baghdad Builds A Biorefinery: Why would anyone build a biorefinery in the middle of Iraq? It’s not so much a question of energy — there’s plenty of Iraqi oil — as security. Fuel tankers make a tempting roadside target. But by processing garbage into ethanol, the military hopes to cut down on the amount of fuel it needs to risk via transport. They’re testing a drop-in biofuel still that can process a ton of trash a day. (Clean Beta)

Pininfarina to unveil its electric car this Autumn: Italian design and auto coachworks Pininfarina is the latest European carmaker to announce an electric car. And this one sounds pretty sharp: an ultracompact two-seater that gets a respectable 155 miles between plug-ins; recharges from empty in five hours; and can get you 15 miles down the road on a quickie five minute charge-up. Pininfarina is responsible for giving some of Italy’s most loved sports cars their panache, so you know this plug-in will look great. (Autoblog Green)

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