“Greener” boxcars; Smart power grids full of bugs; Algae-based biofuels slow to market; CNG-Powered Honda Civic; Solar-powered cellphone.

Union Pacific greening their shipping boxcars. Union Pacific has installed diesel refrigeration units on 700 of it’s boxcars in order to meet California Air Resources Board standards that take effect in July.

CNG-Powered Honda Civic GX could take over 20 minutes to fill up. Seems like there is a big difference between CNG fill-up stations in terms of the PSI they are set at – one Edmunds editor in Santa Monica, CA encountered a pump that still hadn’t filled up the CNG tank on the Civic in 20 minutes. I am on the fence on CNG cars, but if we go down this road they will have to make sure this doesn’t happen anymore!

Smart Power Grids May Be Full Of Security Bugs. Some new technology that is designed to control our electrical grid looks to be hackable and possibly full of security bugs. This doesn’t sound good! The new meters create a communication network between the end user and their local power plant – but the software that runs it doesn’t seem to have the necessary security in place.

Algae-based biofuels getting off to a slow start. Although it is supposed to reach commercial viability around 2012, analysts are saying that they doubt it will have an affect on the fuel market until at least 2016 – 7 years from now. Production costs, consistent harvesting, and engine availability all look to be part of the delay.

Samsung’s new solar-powered cellphone. Samsung today announced its first solar powered mobile phone, the “Crest Solar”. The new handset can charge the battery anywhere the sun is shining. This is definitely the future of cellphone technology.