Even the greenest wannabes can only roll their eyes when overly enthusiastic marketing departments get behind these gems.

Some highlights gleaned from the musings of Web bloggers since the green thing really exploded in the last couple of years.

Bad idea #1: Reusable grocery bags. Sure the idea sounds like a great way to get away from the plastic bag. But as one blogger pointed out: Where else can you get a free source of trash-can liners and plastic bags to carry home a wet bathing suit or to pick up after your dog? She also discovered that reusable bags totally outperform paper and plastic. They’re so strong and durable that she ended up buying way more groceries than she planned and needed help getting them out to her car.

Bad idea #2: The computer-powered flower pot. Relying on the basics, like sun, soil and water is too much bother. What busy exec has time to remember to water the thing? Why bother when your computer can do all the work and just tell you about it? That’s the thinking behind the plastic flower pot that hooks into your computer’s USB port to supply light and monitor growth. Computer gets to run 24/7 on your dime, to do what the sun did in only half a day for free.

Bad idea #3: Green anti-virus spyware. Oh, think you can save the planet by somehow cutting power usage of your computer while you’re working away? Don’t bet on it. There’s a new computer bug linked to the “Eco Anti Virus” software that claims to hunt down evil software while improving the efficiency of your computer. Don’t touch this one. It is a virus and will deluge you with fake security alerts and force you to go to the Eco Anti Virus Web site to buy its product.

Bad idea #4: Solar powered necktie and jacket. Haven’t seen one yet in church, at the diner or while waiting in a Wal-Mart checkout line? What’s the power for? To hold the tie flat in a breeze? Maybe it really does repower your cell phone, but it didn’t win any kudos from the green movement. Maybe if they had made a solar-powered fork and spoon to go with the electric knife it might have caught on.

Bad idea #5: The Energy Curtain. What a great idea, this solar powered window shade collects enough juice during the day to provide free light at night. Unfortunately, the shade must be drawn all day to soak in the sunlight, so anyone in the house has to turn on a light to get this electric glow at night. Hmmmm.

Seen any other oddball green ideas? Share them in the comments section for everyone to enjoy.

Some of the biggest energy savings for small business operations are right in front of you, but you can’t actually see them.

Reason: They’re in the latest computer chips inside cash registers. Or if you’re past accepting cash, then the lingo is point-of-sale (POS) terminal.

Companies looking to rack up savings and credits for reducing their carbon footprint can achieve both when they’re ready to upgrade. Just make sure you compare the energy efficiencies of the products you’re considering.

These new POS systems are a whopping 40% more energy efficient than previous models, thanks to huge efficiency leaps made by semiconductor maker Intel, Inc. That translates into 40% cuts in your electricity demand.

For example, Fujitsu America is promoting its upgraded line of POS terminals, the TeamPoS 3000 XL2, which features the latest Intel chips. Fujitsu won a contract to supply shoe and hat retailer, Genesco, Inc., based in Nashville, TN, with its cost-cutting (electricity-wise that is) POS terminals in 1,000 stores.

Since the highly efficient Intel chips produce much less heat than earlier versions, new POS terminals don’t produce nearly as much heat as before, so they don’t need side ventilation. This also lets retailers set up their cash registers in tight spaces.

Genesco says it will not only save money by reducing its electric bill, but it also expects to spend less on maintenance and replacement costs.

Increasingly businesses can expect to see significant gains in energy efficiencies from various computer-based products, especially those that rely on Intel’s chips.

Reason: Intel and all manufacturers with global markets are under tremendous pressure from the European Union (EU) to reduce their direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To the EU, that means not just GHG emissions from Intel’s manufacturing facilities, but from Intel’s entire supply chain as well, from parts suppliers to those using its products.

So, due to the pressures on Intel to green its supply chain, products with Intel chips will increasingly be more and more energy efficient, and businesses that purchase those products will reap the energy savings benefits.

Editor’s note: Website hosting is another example of an industry that’s profiting from going green. Many in the industry are taking green web hosting to a new level – and reaping the benefits of a growing customer base along the way. Not only are their data centers running on wind and solar direcly, they are also focusing on efficient data center operations with the latest in high-efficiency hardware and cooling systems.

The clean energy industry is off to a hot start this year with a lucrative set of tax credits to create those green jobs that President Obama likes to talk up.

We’re talking $2.3 billion dollars in federal tax credits handed out by the Department of Energy (DoE) to create green manufacturing jobs in 43 states.

DoE says the credits will generate 17,000 clean energy jobs and provide a boost to 183 renewable energy projects. The 30% tax credit approved by the energy agency is expected to pull in another $7.7 billion in private investment to help companies make:

1. solar cells, panels and arrays
2. wind turbines and microturbines
3. fuel cells for homes and businesses
4. high-tech batteries
5. electric cars
6. energy efficiency upgrades
7. smart grid technology products, and
8. pollution control equipment that captures carbon dioxide.

Some of the tax credits approved by DoE:

• AAF-McQuay, Inc., won $2.7 million to produce more efficient industrial chillers and filtering equipment in Kentucky and Virginia,
• Abound Solar, Inc., won $12.6 million to expand production in Colorado of solar panels made with cadmium telluride semiconductor technology,
• Brevini Wind USA, Inc., won $12.5 million to build a factory in Indiana that will make the gear boxes for wind turbines,
• CaliSolar, Inc. won $53.6 million to build a California facility that will make silicone used in solar cells,
• DuPont won $50 million to produce film coatings used to make solar cells,
• General Electric received more than $92 million to make Energy Star heat pumps, refrigerators, dishwashers, gas turbines, a heat-pump powered clothes dryer and a more fuel efficient airline engine. GE’s also getting credits to relamp some of its manufacturing facilities with fluorescent lighting systems,
• SolarWorld Industries America, Inc., won $82 million to make solar components and materials in Oregon, and
• United Technologies Corp., won $110 million to produce a more efficient jet engine in Connecticut.

All of the Section 48c Manufacturing Tax Credits approved by DoE must be completed by 2014. Roughly 30% of the projects will be ready in 2010.

Who’s making money by going green? Here’s a look back at some of the best ideas companies adopted in 2009 to boost the bottom line.

Some eco-innovations are based on new technology, but many others are simply tweaking existing everyday business activities to produce green innovations that make economic sense right now.

1. New wind generator fits on company rooftop
2. Spreading wild lies about bottled water
3. Turn ‘em off! Idle computers burn $2.8 billion overnight
4. Why Republican Lindsey Graham wants global warming legislation
5. Can a gas-hog really turn into a super model?
6. What’s so great about the electric car, anyway?
7. Where to start creating your green office? The PDF file
8. Cap-and-trade’s latest hurdle: It’s a Democrat
9. Green IT: Is your company leaving too much on the table?
10. Can it be true? A cheap solar panel?

The first attempt to stop EPA from regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions gets underway when the Senate returns from its Christmas and New Year’s vacation.

To stop EPA, Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) is pushing a Senate resolution to stop EPA from implementing its endangerment finding that declared carbon dioxide (CO2) is a dangerous pollutant that needs to be regulated.

She says the real danger is that EPA action will “endanger jobs … and economic growth, and it endangers American competitiveness.” A vote on stopping EPA is expected by Jan. 20 as part of a larger debate over expanding the U.S. debt.

She’s upset that the Obama administration is letting EPA regulate GHGs as a ploy to force the Senate to adopt cap-and-trade legislation. Murkowski opposes cap-and-trade legislation.

Meanwhile, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and  Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are drafting a climate change bill designed to convince pro-energy Senators to support a GHG cap-and-trade program. In exchange for limiting GHG releases, Kerry and Graham are talking about also expanding:

• offshore oil-and-gas drilling
• federal financing for nuclear power, and
• funding for various clean coal projects.

If Murkowski’s stop-EPA bid fails and the Kerry/Graham compromise bill stalls out, then industry faces GHG regulations from EPA in 2010.

Starting in January, facilities releasing more than 25,000 tons of GHGs a year have to track and monitor these releases. These facilities — more than 13,000 of them — must then file annual GHG emission reports. The first report, for 2010 releases, is due in 2011.

This spring, EPA will issue its first Clean Air Act rules to force large facilities to reduce GHG emissions when they renew or apply for emission permits.

Have U.S. companies dodged a bullet now that the Copenhagen climate action summit ended without any mandatory agreements? Is it time to forget about going green?

Hardly.

The green push continues unabated, though you’d hardly know that if you read the environmental blogs or if you listen to the lamentations of companies salivating at the commissions they’ll make in the emission trading game.

As Richard Gledhill, head of carbon markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s very frustrating at this stage that we haven’t got a more-comprehensive agreement.”

But for most companies, the big dud that was Copenhagen merely means EPA and states, not Congress, are in charge of the U.S. effort to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They’re not waiting around for Congress to come up with a cap-and-trade bill.

California’s leading the way. On its own, it’s going to reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Oregon and Washington are planning similar actions to create the GHG emission inventories that will set emission benchmarks to measure reductions from. All three are members of the Western Climate Change Initiative to reduce regional GHG emissions. The Midwest has the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord and in the East, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

And, while the Senate debates cap-and-trade legislation, EPA will be calling the shots to reduce GHG emissions and force companies to reduce their carbon footprints.

EPA’s regulatory action is already underway. On New Year’s Day, facilities with large levels of direct carbon dioxide emissions — more than 25,000 metric tons a year — have to keep records of their 2010 GHG emissions. They start filing these GHG emission release reports with EPA in 2011.

In the spring, EPA will issue final Clean Air Act permitting rules, the so-called tailoring rule, to force facilities to reduce GHG releases when they build new facilities or modify existing plants.

This is in addition to EPA adopting GHG tailpipe emission standards for new cars and trucks.

One consolation: The U.S. retained its right to adopt border tariffs on imports from China and India if those countries fail to take concerted action to reduce their GHG emission levels.

Has the action (or lack of it) in Copenhagen had any effect on your company’s green plans? Share what’s going on in your area.

Yes, EPA will regulate the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, mostly coal-fired power plants and large industrial facilities that release more than 25,000 metric tons a year of those global warming bad guys.

But that doesn’t mean smaller companies are off the hook, not at all.

The challenge ahead for small businesses will come from your big corporate customers — from auto makers, food and beverage companies, electronics manufacturers, and giant big-box retailers. They’re counting on you to cut your direct and indirect GHG emissions so they can claim credits for reducing their corporate carbon footprints.

Wal-Mart’s already made waves with its plan to create a Sustainability Index to rate the greeniness of all the products it sells. But other companies are also planning to green their supply chains.

For example, Coca-Cola’s announced this bombshell at the Copenhagen conference: It will reduce its own corporate carbon footprint by requiring Coca-Cola suppliers to reduce their GHG emissions. This means suppliers will have to account for their GHG emissions created during manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal of the products they sell to Coca-Cola.

The company was one of many corporations hosting booths in Copenhagen urging conference delegates to come up with an agreement that commits every country, and therefore every company, to reduce their GHG emissions, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The paper reports that the companies went to Copenhagen to call for huge investments in clean, renewable power from solar and wind power to offset the rising costs of coal-fired electricity.

This comes as Coca-Cola’s UK operations and Unilever both warned that failure to put a cap on emissions will put a huge dent in their profits. The U.K’s Telegraph reports that the two companies will avoid this by significantly reducing their GHG emissions.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is doing what it can to reduce its direct GHG emissions.

It plans to stop using GHG refrigerants in its nine million vending machines around the world. The company says it will eliminate 100% of vending-machine GHG emissions by switching to hydrofluorocarbon-free refrigerants by 2015.

Now that EPA officially says carbon dioxide (CO2) is a dangerous air pollutant, what’s it mean for business?

It’s high time to embrace concepts like energy efficiency or energy conservation or whatever you want to call it. Most smart money’s on those who are looking for ways to use less energy and rely more on power made by renewable sources like solar, wind and geothermal to reduce their company’s carbon footprint.

Reason: EPA’s action gives the Obama administration the ticket to force radical changes throughout the American economy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. So, the fewer GHG emissions your facility creates directly, or indirectly by buying electricity produced by burning fossil fuels, the cheaper it will be for you to operate and the fewer regulatory hassles you’ll have to deal with.

Benefit: Whether your company makes these changes willingly or not, everybody can claim green credits for reducing GHG emissions and helping fight climate change.

In the short term, the biggest changes flowing from this “endangerment” finding is that it clears the way for EPA to:

1. impose tailpipe standards on GHG emissions from cars and trucks.  It will be the first time EPA sets GHG tailpipe emission standards, and
2. force industrial facilities to actually control and reduce their GHG releases by installing what’s known as best available control technology.

EPA is expected to break regulatory speed records to get both Clean Air Act rules out in final form by March 2010.

At first, EPA says regulation will be limited to the 13,000 largest facilities — the ones that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of GHGs a year. But many fear EPA will be forced to regulate smaller facilities as well, and all EPA has to do is to lower this 25,000 ton threshold.

There’s already precedent to do this. Oregon’s GHG reporting rule, for example, starts by regulating those that emit 25,000 metric tons per year. But in year two of the program, the reporting threshold falls to 2,500 metric tons per year. The reporting threshold in Washington state is 10,000 metric tons per year.

The tailpipe GHG emission standard will force U.S. automakers to make more fuel efficient vehicles.

Normally, the auto industry would raise all kinds of ruckus to avoid making more efficient cars. However, now that GM and Chrysler fell into bankruptcy and were bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer, President Obama gets to call the shots on this issue, so they won’t be able to oppose the new standards.

Most agree that EPA’s regulation will be far tougher on industry and business than the proposed cap-and-trade program being negotiated in Congress.

Obama has said he prefers the national cap-and-trade program and will restrain EPA if Congress approves emission trading program legislation.

The cost of solar and wind power installations should be dropping sharply in 2010. Solar prices are supposed to fall by half.

That’s the encouraging prediction in a report from renewable energy consultants, New Energy Finance.

The firm predicts that the cost of solar power will be 50% cheaper in 2010 than it was in 2008, while wind power projects will fall by up to 20%  — based on the lifetime cost of a kilowatt produced by these clean, renewable energy sources.

Solar projects will be much more affordable, the research firm predicts, because of the steady decline in the cost of equipment. Also driving capital investment costs down is the falling price for financing, according to a statement by New Energy chairman Michael Liebreich.

The cheapest solar technology is a thin-film system, which is expected to produce electricity as cheap as $3 per watt of installed capacity.

While the New Energy report focuses on major capital investments, other technological breakthroughs are expected next year to bring cheap solar within the reach of the average Joe business owner and homeowners.

Dow Chemical says it will introduce a new solar panel next year that will be as easy to install as everyday asphalt roofing shingles. Dow says it has developed a low-cost production technique to make solar power available by mid-2010. The company hasn’t announced pricing just yet of its Powerhouse™ Solar Shingles, but some expect the panels to be up to 40% cheaper than some rigid solar panel arrays.

While prices for wind energy technology are also falling, the report notes that the overall cost of these projects will be offset by huge construction costs as energy developers try to build offshore wind power installations.

The cost-advantages of opting for a geothermal energy project won’t match the sustained declines in costs for solar and wind technology. The problem is that geothermal drilling costs, which have fallen by up to 50% due to the recession, will rebound when worldwide demand for oil and natural gas production picks up.

Even those who don’t want to be part of the green revolution can pocket fuel savings. The secret? Retraining employees how to properly drive company vehicles.

By getting employees to drive smarter — by eliminating jackrabbit starts and minimizing idling — companies of all sizes are cutting fuel costs and saving money.

It doesn’t matter whether companies are interested in protecting the planet or the corporate wallet, they end up doing both when their drivers learn how to drive economically. They usually cut fuel costs by 4%, according to Jason Mathers, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Green Driver project manager. Emission reductions can be as high as 14%.

The savings are obvious. What managers may not recognize, Mathers told the Chicago Sun-Times, is that for every gallon of fuel not used, a company avoids creating 19.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

EDF has expanded its Green Driver program to target company fleet operations. The program is geared for both executives that get vehicles as company perks and workers driving various delivery vehicles.

The city of Chicago, with more than 10,000 city vehicles, cut fuel costs by $1.2 million a year by adopting an anti-idling campaign. It also installed devices on some city vehicles that shut off the engine when it idles more than three minutes. Building product manufacturer The Johns Manville company has enrolled 200 of its drivers in the EDF driving course.

EDF’s green driving program recommends that companies:

1. measure vehicle emissions and set reduction goals
2. improve vehicle selection process (for example offer hybrids instead of SUVs to company execs)
3. improve vehicle use
4. purchase carbon offsets, and
5. report on your progress.

The EDF Green Driver Web site also includes a calculator that lets you estimate fuel and carbon dioxide reductions. EDF also offers a fuel-smart driving handbook for free online.