Nicole Miranda, a first-year doctoral student at the University of Oxford, practices her vehicle exit technique and timing at Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2012 in Rotterdam. She is assisted by fellow student and driver, Lucy Mahoney. (Often female students serve as drivers in the fuel efficiency competition because they weigh less than the men on the team.)

This is the first year of competition for the United Kingdom?s storied school, and the team has had to improvise, says manager Justin Bishop. They used the shell of a vehicle that already had been built by another student team in 2006, modifying it and including the needed safety equipment....

Romain Lejas, of Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, works on InfinitiX, the team?s entry in Shell Eco-marathon 2012 this week in Rotterdam. Last year, the team achieved 454 kilometers per liter (1,067 miles per gallon), and this year sought to reduce weight more.

The car is entered in the ?prototype? category?these don?t have to be street-legal. Typically the students seek extremes in aerodynamics and light weight to reduce mileage in the race for the most fuel-efficient vehicle.

Lejas is in one of the student team ?paddocks? at the huge Ahoy convention center....

The drive for a new and better way of doing things is built into the car designed by students from Italy?s Italy?s Politecnico di Torino, and entered in Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2012 this week in Rotterdam.

Most students in the fuel efficiency competition choose ultra-lightweight material like carbon fiber to shave mileage. But for their urban concept vehicle, XAM, the Torino students chose a soft natural fiber, covered with a resin to make it hard enough to serve as a chassis....

Students from Spain?s La Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) do some final testing on "Urban Spirit," the car they hope will help test new possibilities for fuel efficiency in Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2012. The Valencia team is one of 154 teams from some 20 countries gathered in Rotterdam this week for the student design, build, and drive competition.

The goal isn?t to be the fastest car, but to be the most efficient; still, the Urban Spirit UPV team has been inspired by the world of sports car driving....

Negotiators picked up discussions toward a new global climate treaty in Bonn, Germany this week. The meeting was the first since the 2011 17^th Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Durban, where leaders initially agreed to put together a plan that would limit Earth-warming emissions. The stakes for the 10-day meeting are high?negotiators have set goals of building support for funding developing nations to the tune of $100 billion a year by 2020 and of constructing a global, legally binding climate agreement that extends the Kyoto Protocol....

Bryony Schwan, co-founder and Executive Director of The Biomimicry Institute, discusses the solutions embedded in nature that could help address global food, water and energy issues. She appeared at the Powering Progress forum Wednesday in Rotterdam.

Related:

Pictures: Nature Yields New Ideas for Energy and Efficiency

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Hubert Klumpner, co-founder of the Urban Think Tank in Zurich, Switzerland and Sao Paulo, Brazil, discusses the challenge and promise of cities in addressing global resource stresses, at the Powering Progress business forum Wednesday in Rotterdam.

Related:

The City Solution

Pictures: Twelve Car-Free City Zones

Quiz: What You Don't Know About Cities and Energy

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Alexandra van Huffelen, vice mayor for sustainability for the city of Rotterdam, discusses why her city is an appropriate host for the Powering Progress business forum on the linked stresses that the world faces in meeting its water, food, and energy needs....

"This is not an engineering discussion. It is a humanities one," Bruce Oreck, U.S. Ambassador to Finland, told an auditorium full of engineers this week at the World Renewable Energy Forum in Denver.

Paraphrasing great thinkers such as Aristotle, Einstein, and Newton, Oreck said, "Words don't just describe what we think. They shape what we think. Language is so important that it exerts a hidden power, like the moon's effect on the tide."

Oreck, who currently is leading an effort to improve building efficiency at U.S....

My Urban Bike Commute: Cycling to EarthShare

Erica Flock, EarthShare Online Manager

whiteknuckled / Flickr

One sign of the bike?s popularity in Washington, DC is the nonchalance with which many of my friends and colleagues hop on one after work or dinner with friends. I regularly see cyclists zipping by at all hours on the street in my neighborhood or tourists grinning on red Capital Bikeshare bikes on paths and lanes around the city.

Ranked as a top 10 bikeable city by Walkscore, the District is, indeed, a great city for bicyclists, at least by U.S....