They say electric cars are good for the environment because they don’t consume fossil fuels that expel CO2 into the atmosphere. Of course the ideal use of electric vehicles is in tandem with charging the electric vehicle from renewable energy sources, otherwise the energy and CO2 you saved with not gassing up just increases the demand to the fossil fuel based powerplant to burn more fuel in order to generate electricity for charging.
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This concept to build solar cells from semi-organic materials is quite interesting. Developed at the University of Notre Dame it works because the powdered sugar in the donut contains titanium dioxide nanoparticles. When the powdered sugar is coated with an organic dye it can be used as the light-absorbing layer of a photovoltaic device.

Check out the video:
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I found a great tutorial on the net on how to make a solar cell using a copper sheet and some materials that you can easily find around the house.

The only hi-tech tool you’ll need for this endeavor is a micro-ammeter. The rest are fairly common, like a cooking stove, insulated copper wires, used water bottles, salt, metal cutting tools (or you can just bend the copper plate to shape and remove excess pieces.) and water.
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When people say biogas feedstock, people will most often associate it to manure. Well that’s not entirely the case because basically anything that biodegrades can be turned into biogas (methane) and then used for energy.

Biogas harvesting involves placing organic waste products mixed with a set amount of water in an oxygen free biodigester. Via anaerobic digestion, the organic waste is broken down into methane and solid waste by bacteria living in the biodigester.
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Here’s a great set of video’s created by Graydon Blair over at expertvillage showing how one can go about making biodiesel for personal use. In a nutshell, making biodiesel is a process of putting catalyst to vegetable oil that will product a chemical reaction resulting in the separation of biodiesel from glycerin.

I do recommend not relying on just this information. It would be good to use the search engines and check for the possible caveats that people have experienced when they tried creating their own biodiesel. All these information was found on the web without guarantees, so please use at your own risk.
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I found this great article via Hack-a-day, which show’s how you can make your own LED solar tracker… this is useful for those who want to optimize their solar panels sun collecting position… if you don’t feel like assembling your own, you can always purchase ready built ones for $35.

Of course this is just the tracker and you will still need the actuator enabled tripod to mount the solar panel on which will make sun chasing possible…

If you have time, check out also this other do it yourself tutorial on how to make a solar cell.