It's 8:35 in the morning. The first session of the second day has begun, and the fellow from SEBANE, the Solar Energy Business Association of New England, is telling the gathering crowd some not-so-interesting market and industry perspectives. I'm sure it will get better, or I will have some time to write.

To start, he asked the crowd to show hands on questions about why they are here, and a large number appeared to be homeowners (as opposed to installers) committed to, but early in the process of, installing photovoltaics and/or solar hot water systems.

Gov. Deval Patrick delighted an estimated 1,ooo people at this morning's opening session of Building Energy '08 by saying that he's forming a Zero Net Energy Buildings task force. He said he's asking the group to give him recommendations for construction practices in time for this conference next year and to have the specifications in force soon afterward.

Switching to lower-energy-use CFL lightbulbs and driving a hybrid car are good responses to the planet's climate crisis, says Lester Brown, the internationally recognized climate-change advocate, but the most important step a concerned citizen can take is to become politically active, he told a near capacity crowd at Cary Hall in Lexington Sunday night.

"Saving civilization is not a spectator sport," he said near the end of his hour-plus address, using the sort of sweeping language that characterized his remarks.

An Orlando, Fla., company, Hydromatic Technologies, has been drawing blogosphere attention this week for what seems like a no-brainer, why-didn't-anyone-do-this-years-ago development for the clothes dryer, one of the home's worst energy hogs. It is so power-mad, in fact, that Energy Star doesn't list a single one.

I'm still a green neophyte, so I can't wax eloquent about Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, who has popped up on my radar a couple of times in short order. But E.O. Wilson, whose imprimatur I'll accept on any topic, says this...

It's hard to know what's up with the Bush administration's decision to pull funding for the so-called "FutureGen" coal plant that was awarded only a couple of months ago to downstate Mattoon, Ill. The reason given by Energy Secretary Sam Bodman is that costs have grown beyond reason, but not surprisingly, the coal and oil companies behind FutureGen are disputing that.

Popular Mechanics has a 6-minute video on a three-wheeled electrical vehicle that's either a wave of the future, or a fairly interesting trifle on the road to somewhere else. Link via Ecogeek.org.

I was pleased to read in the Globe this morning that the state is announcing today a $68 million effort to subsidize the installation of solar cells on homes, businesses, and schools in the state.

While trumpeting its own audio presentation, Treehugger this week pointed to The Green Room, where the iTunes Music Store has aggregated 23 green-topic podcasts. That is, 23 shows, all of which offer multiple episodes.

In case you missed it, Australia ratified the Kyoto accords, leaving only one industrialized country — US — refusing to join. Slightly amusingly, Andrew Revkin of the Times initially said that only two countries remained — the behemoth US and tiny Liechtenstein. But in this post, he apologizes to the postage-stamp European nation. It is, indeed, only US.