Listening to an old Scientific American podcast while taking the ferry to work today — that’s right, the ferry!  What a great, green, experience– I was reminded of the MIT Clean Energy prize which only began a few years ago.  Last year’s winners were pretty interesting. They included the grand prize winner, Husk Insulation, which turns agricultural waste into high efficiency insulation; Levant Power, which captures and uses kinetic energy in vehicular suspensions — think, using car shock absorbers to charge a battery; Sun Point, which mimics the sunflower to allow solar reflectors  and panels to follow the sun.  Several others are described here.

It turns out that the 2010 competition was announced earlier this month.

The MIT Clean Energy Prize (MIT CEP) organizing team today announced a $200,000 grand prize to be awarded in May 2010 for the most innovative clean energy solution. This third annual venture creation competition is open to graduate and undergraduate students across the United States.

Deadline for applications is February 25, 2010. Teams that make it into the semifinals will receive one-on-one mentoring from experienced industry leaders and entrepreneurs.

The competition has proven to be a launching pad for clean energy companies. The 2008 Grand Prize Winner FloDesign Wind Turbine and 2009 Energy Efficiency and Infrastructure semifinalist FastCAP Systems recently were awarded more than $13 million by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

The competition is organized into five tracks: Energy Efficiency & Infrastructure; Renewables; Clean Non-Renewables; Transportation; and Deployment

So go check it out!

[Updated on 11/28/09 to add last year's winners. wbk]