Efficient LED lighting on wingtips; Solar LED hat; Toyota’s new tiny car, the iQ3; Solar-powered Air Conditioner; High-altitude wind machines powering NYC

Efficient LED lighting on Airbus wingtips. Airbus A320 planes are about to get an energy-efficiency upgrade in the form of LED lights on their wingtips, which will last up to 20,000 hours before replacement compared to existing halogen lights that have on average lifespan of 500 hours. These new LED lights are expected to save operators $30,000 per aircraft over its life.

Solar LED Cap: heads-up lighting. OK, so you might look a little nerdy, but you will be happy you have this hat when it gets dark and you are out in the woods! The top of the brim is a solar panel that powers two LED lights under the brim, so you have enough power to continue hiking at night or read a book in your tent.

Toyota’s new tiny car, the iQ3. That is one tiny, tiny little car – and I love it. The Toyota iQ3 is now on sale in the UK (Please bring it here Toyota!) with a 98 bhp 1.33-liter engine and Toyota Optimal Drive. The start-stop system helps the iQ3 get CO2 emissions down to 113g/km. The manual with a six-speed gearbox gets 49 mpg (U.S.). I’m sold – when can I get one?

Solar-powered air conditioner. I really don’t know why this hasn’t been done before, especially out here in the southwest. This solar device is 75 percent efficient and is essentially a utility scale solar thermal plant and a utility-scale concentrating solar PV plant in miniature. It contains mirrors, receivers and a concentrator for generating solar thermal energy as well as silicon solar cells. The heat – roughly 65 percent of the power generated – gets exploited to run the air conditioners while the PV-generated electricity is used locally to offset grid power. Because there are spaces between the mirrors, sunlight can be used to light the interior below. Smaller devices will later come out for the residential market.

High-altitude wind machines powering NYC. NYC might have some strong winds down at street level, but it’s the wind a few thousand feet above the city that scientists are trying to harness to power the entire city. A study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over. That would be so phenomenal – talk about clean energy!