Archive for May, 2010

Recycling: we all know what we should do and we all know what we do do.  It is just so much easier to toss that soda bottle or can in the trash than it is to bring it home and then bring it to a recycling center. We are willing to toss all those nickels in the trash instead of making the effort to recycle. Read the rest of this entry »

According to ENERGY STAR™, kitchen lighting is responsible for a substantial amount of energy use in a home.  Cree is partnering with Habitat for Humanity with a 3-year commitment to provide high efficiency Cree LED downlights for the kitchens in all new Habitat for Humanity homes. Providing energy saving lighting will reduce energy use and cost for future homeowners.  The kitchen lighting packages feature Cree’s newest LED downlight, the CR6. The CR6 is designed to last 50,000 hours, which is more than 22 years if the lights are used six hours a day. These LED downlights exceed ENERGY STAR™ criteria, consuming 85% less energy than an incandescent and 55% less energy than a compact fluorescent.  The lights will be available for all Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the country and will make the homes more affordable and contribute to developing sustainable communities.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in partnership with Net Impact, has announced the launch of its third annual Climate Corps program, in which MBA students from leading business schools are matched with companies that need to develop cost-effective, practical energy efficiency plans. Results are win-win-win: companies are supplied with strategies to reduce energy usage and costs in their buildings, next-generation business leaders learn to incorporate energy efficiency as a standard management practice; and greenhouse gas emissions reductions are realized. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) announced that 48 research and development projects were selected as award winners of the Industrial Energy Efficiency Grand Challenge. A total of $13 million in grants, and an additional $5 million from private industry, will go towards funding projects that encourage breakthrough achievements in the development of energy-efficient technologies and practices that will lower industrial energy consumption. Read the rest of this entry »

Smart metering isn’t new but it also isn’t widely known about or widely used for energy use decision making.  Homeowners only think about energy use when the bill arrives and then they may not have the ability to make informed decisions on their energy consumption. Now, with IBM teaming up with energy consultant Hildebrand, the UK homeowner will have the tools to modify the amount of energy they use.  IBM is supplying the data management software which, when combined with  the Hildebrand monitoring system, will  enable real-time analysis of electricity usage for households, or even for individual appliances, to help people make better decisions about energy efficiency in the home and minimize their environmental impact.  Guido Bartels, General Manager of Energy & Utilities at IBM, can be seen discussing Hildebrand and energy use by viewing this video.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times recently reported that California’s crackdown on harmful materials in consumer products is getting some help from a nonprofit institute that plans to help manufacturers come up with safer alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »

In Newark, NJ, there is more going on at the Anheuser-Busch factory than just brewing beer: more than 3,000 solar panels are now adding power to the brewing facility. In the 2008-2009 Global Citizenship Report, the company outlines specific targets in their Better World Three Year Plan. Read the rest of this entry »

With a significant portion of items in our houses, the key to getting the most out of them – and being ecologically responsible – is keeping them and using them as long as possible. One exception, of course, is anything that uses electricity. When most people think of energy-efficient appliances, they usually imagine the obvious ones – refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, hot water tanks. But where most households – and most businesses – fail to spot significant potential for energy savings is in their computer equipment. According to some reports, PC ownership worldwide is expected to grow four-fold by 2020, with similar growth expected in ownership of other personal computing devices: smart phones, e-book readers, music players, and tablet computers. On the enterprise side, data centers are growing like weeds, as our business, consumer and personal lives become increasingly digital, and still-developing countries like India grab bigger shares of the business marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by the Detroit News, Wayne State University will be the site of nation’s first graduate program to train electric car engineers.  Launching in fall 2010, the program will offer a master’s degree in electric vehicle drive engineering, which will support automakers as they transition from traditional combustion engines to electric and electric hybrid engines. Students will learn how to power, put together, design, develop and promote electric and electric hybrid engines, school officials said. The program was developed in partnership with Macomb Community College and NextEnergy, a Detroit nonprofit agency that promotes energy technologies, and was awarded $5 million in federal money from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the stimulus package.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) released a report that defines and measures the size and scope of the green economy. Analysts used publicly available data, mostly from the 2007 Economic Census, on more than 20,000 products and services as the basis of the report. Read the rest of this entry »