With two laptop-loving children and a Jack Russell terrier hemmed in by an electric fence, Peter Troast figured his household used a lot of power. Just how much did not really hit him until the night the family turned off the overhead lights at their home in Maine and began hunting gadgets that glowed in the dark.

“It was amazing to see all these lights blinking,” Mr. Troast said.

As goes the Troast household, so goes the planet.

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For Audi’s latest advertising campaign, the automaker says it’s promoting a cause, not just its cars. With a motto of “Diesel: It’s no longer a dirty word,” the “Truth in Diesel” campaign aims to convince consumers that diesel is the greenest solution, said Scott Keogh, Audi of America’s chief marketing officer.

“You get behind a cause, you don’t get behind an engine option or a feature,” Keogh said. Switching to a diesel-engine vehicle “is something that you can do that’s realistic and right now and practical.”

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Apple is now calling its MacBook laptops “the world’s greenest lineup of notebooks” instead of “the world’s greenest family of notebooks” in response to a recommendation by the Better Business Bureau’s advertising division.

The division came to the recommendation after rival computer maker Dell (DELL) challenged Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook marketing, which refers, among other things, to the devices’ energy usage, packaging and recyclable components.

Dell’s complaints, according to a report published by the Bureau’s National Advertising Division, include Apple’s reference to its gold ratings by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT — ratings Dell said it and other PC makers have also received.

It also pointed out four “pillars” in Apple’s MacBook ads — recyclability, reduced packaging, less toxic materials and increased energy efficiency — and claimed that “Apple must, but does not, establish superiority over all of its competitors in all four pillars to support its broad superiority claim…many competing laptops offer the same characteristics it cites as the basis of superiority (e.g., recyclability).”

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To advertise its third-generation Prius hybrid, Toyota is playing a bit of word association with potential customers.

With help from advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, the car maker is working with Dictionary.com for ads targeted to the definitions of words such as “sustainability,” “green” and “moonroof.” Those keyword-based ads launched last week, but Prius also took over the online dictionary’s home page Wednesday and Thursday, with another two-day takeover planned for July. Dictionary.com has also included Prius ads in its word-of-the-day emails, which reach 1.3 million subscribers.

Doug Frisbie, Toyota’s national media manager, said the company was active with search engines before (and this campaign ties with partnerships with MSN (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), as well), but never before a dictionary site.

The objective of the Prius campaign is to integrate the ads with Dictionary.com content — to “enhance, rather than interrupt,” he said.

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Cisco (CSCO) on Monday announced an initiative to sell high-tech gear to utilities, a market the company says could be a $20 billion-a-year market by 2014.

Political junkies may have heard the term “smart grid,” which is one of the areas that the Obama administration has targeted with its stimulus package. The government is committing billions to facilitate building a next-generation electrical grid that’s more energy efficient.

Cisco looks at all this talk about green and sees, well, green. In order to improve their networks, utilities will need to buy routers and switches and other gear that Cisco just happens to sell. Cisco introduced energy-management software in January, and it will no doubt come out with other products that it will package together for utility companies.

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As companies like Intel Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have made moves in the solar power space, many have wondered if these high-tech heavyweights could use either their manufacturing or intellectual muscle to push down costs and thereby lower the price of solar power. Perhaps eventually, but not quite so fast.

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If corn-based biofuels are the Britney Spears of the cleantech world (a fallen star but still all over the place), fuel made from algae is the next great “American Idol” winner (major potential in the pipeline). And despite the fact that algae-to-biofuel start-ups have been taking their sweet time bringing a pond-scum fuel product to market, some inroads have been made recently–GreenFuel is building its first plant, PetroSun starts producing at their farm on April 1, and big-oil Chevron and Shell have made some early bets as well.

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You’d think that with a name like “One Laptop Per Child,” NickNeg and company would have stress-tested their laptop with some actual children, but it looks like everyone’s favorite green machine just isn’t up to the toddler challenge–OLPC owners are reporting that the laptop’s rubberized keyboard is easily destroyed by inquisitive kids, who are peeling the keys off like so many scratch’n’sniff stickers.

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Who says the World Economic Forum at Davos is just a lot of hot air? Sure, the occasional blind tastings hosted by well-known wine writers like Jancis Robinson and dinners by California cuisine doyenne Alice Waters happen. But serious work gets done too, and in keeping with the forum’s quest to make the world a better and cleaner place. Shai Agassi, the former executive at German software giant SAP AG, can attest. The idea behind his green company’s lofty plan to shake up how cars are driven–without gasoline–came from a serendipitous exchange of chats at Davos three years ago. “It’s origins were here back in 2005 from some conversations. The idea matured in 2006,” he says.

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