It may not stop Fido from tracking in mud on his paws, but this doghouse can reduce your best friend’s carbon footprint while providing different levels of entertainment (plus bonus treat storage drawers).

Topped with a green roof (accessed by a sod-covered ramp), the house features a built-in water fountain that can be used both to irrigate the upper lawn and quench a pup’s thirst. A solar-powered fan also provides indoor cooling for hot dogs.

That green roof ramps down to connect to a lawn below, tying it in functionally and aesthetically to the surrounding yard. All in all, the place combines the aesthetic of a traditional dog abode, a cozy cabin and a modern house.

On the side of the home, a hidden drawer opens to reveal food, toys and other rewards for good dogs, making use of the space under the ramp (much like under-stair storage in a normal house).

Best of all: this sustainable dog house was auctioned off to a good home by Carmel Canine Cottages, its proceeds going to benefit the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Meanwhile, no one is stopping dedicated pet owners from building their own!

When in India, do like the Indians do — at least that seems to be IKEA’s approach — which in this case means spinning up an array of small, nimble vehicles able to duck and weave through traffic on crowded and narrow streets.

The company’s first store to open in this country is staffed with some ordinary vehicles as well, but 20% of its fleet consists of electric rickshaws. Given that tens of thousands of shoppers showed up on the outlet’s first day, the drivers have been busy (not to mention the rest of the staff).

The electric vehicles are powered up by 4,000 solar chargers fitted to the roof of the store, which also supply energy for lighting and other uses indoors. IKEA aims to open an additional two dozen stores in India by 2025. The use of solar is part of a larger strategy, too, not limited to this country — over 90% of their stores globally use solar power, charging stores as well as vehicle fleets.

Electric vehicles are often limited by recharge options, a design problem this Dethleffs camper tackles with solar panels and German engineering.

Their E.Home concept vehicle has a maximum range of over 170 miles but can potentially run indefinitely (at least by day) thanks to over 300 square feet of thin solar film covering most the exterior. These panels to generate up to 3,000 watts of electricity, powering up a sodium-nickel-chloride battery.

Of course, the less energy needed the better the range, so the camper company has also added phase change materials to store heat by day and release it at night. Infrared heating panels in the floors, walls and furniture also provide targeted supplement heating on demand.

Thinking forward, the camper includes various other cutting-edge technologies, like driver assistance and vehicle monitoring systems. Give it a few more years and these things will presumably end up driverless, too — the ultimate in automatic, go-anywhere mobile homes (with even more room to relax without a driver’s seat!).

The world’s largest solar power-producing nation is showing off its record-setting green energy production through an adorable new array shaped like a giant panda bear, the national animal of China.

This Panda Power Plant in Datong, China, was developed by Panda Green Energy in partnership with the United Nations Development Program. And this first sections of this huge creature-shaped station mosaic have just been hooked up to the grid.

The plant also going to grow — currently at 50 megawatts, the installation will have a capacity of 100 MW upon completion. Over the next 25 years, the array is estimated to provide as much power as 1 million tons of coal and to reduce CO2 emissions by over 2.5 million tons.

The whole panda figure is part of the power production process: darker parts of the animal shape (like legs and arms) are made up of monocrystalline silicone solar cells — gray areas (face and torso) are thin-film solar cells.

An educational center alongside the Panda Power Plant aims to teach children about the advantages of solar power and other forms of sustainable energy. Meanwhile, more panda plants are in planning phases as well across China, and some may also end up outside the country.

Developed by Wattway and deployed on the streets of Tourouvre-au-Perche, a 1,000-meter-long solar-paneled roadway in France is the first stretch of a 1,000-kilometer endeavor.

The technology along this initial pathway is designed to generate enough energy to light up the streets of a 3,400-person town, and it is just the first step in a five-year plan.

France ultimately aims to pave 1,000 kilometers of solar roads over the next half-decade, supplying renewable energy to 5 million people (close to 10% of the population).

The flat and smooth surfaces of existing streets are perfect places to serve a double function and harvest clean energy as long as the issue of durability is taken into account.

The solar brick-like sheets are covered in multiple layers of silicon resign designed to allow light to pass through while protecting the panels from damage. The panels are engineered to withstand the weight of six-axle trucks and to stick directly onto existing road surfaces.

The goal for this first phase is to produce 280 megwatt hours of power per year and to test the durability of the tech under real-world experimental conditions. Under controlled conditions, the panels survive a “cycle of one million vehicles, or 20 years of normal traffic a road, and the surface does not move.”

“We are still on an experimental phase,” says the company. “Building a trial site of this scale is a real opportunity for our innovation. This trial site has enabled us to improve our photovoltaic panel installing process as well as their manufacturing, in order to keep on optimizing our innovation.”