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Going Green for Drivers – How to Save Money and the Environment
More than 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide is discharged into the world’s atmosphere each year by the cars that we drive. According to the United Nations, “The transportation sector accounts for 30 percent of greenhouse fuel emissions in developed countries … and that share is rising.” By making small changes in your driving habits, you can help to reduce these numbers and save money at the same time. By driving smarter, you can reduce your fuel costs and your “carbon footprint” as well. Take a bill out of your wallet. Now light a match and watch the money burn up in smoke. Sounds crazy, right? Yet many of us do something similar every time we drive. We fill up our gas tanks, then burn extra fuel - and money - that we could be saving. Not to mention, we produce much more harmful air pollution than we should be. Continue reading →
The [Not So] Guilty Pleasure of Air Conditioning: Coming Soon With Solar AC
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of walking out of the oppressive heat of a midsummer day into the perfect chill of a well air-conditioned building. Air conditioning is one of those modern conveniences like the cellular telephone: it hasn’t really been around that long, but now that we are used to it we wonder how people ever survived without it. However, there’s a high price tag – in most modern buildings air conditioning accounts for the single largest energy expenditure for the summer months and in many places for much of the year. With conventionally powered electrical compressor heat pumps, that means that some of the first suggestions that an Eco Consultant is going to give a homeowner or business to reduce utility costs are going to have to do with optimizing the use of climate control systems in order to curb the appetite of these energy-hungry machines. But what if this wasn’t necessary? What if the hotter it got, the cheaper it got to run your AC? What if you could crank your thermostat to “cold” and let it rip without feeling the least bit guilty or apprehensive about what the bill at the end of the month was going to look like? Continue reading →
Explosive Growth on the Horizon for African Renewable Energy Market
Currently, California, USA is the hotspot for renewable energy development worldwide, with more open solar and wind projects in this small region than anywhere else in the world. However, experts expect this to change very soon and Africa is expected to be one of the most important new regions for renewable energy production. Up until now, Africa has been by and large left out of the renewable energy race despite prevailing weather conditions and geography that would seem to lend it perfectly to different types of renewables, particularly solar. In addition, the lack of a centralized grid system over much of the continent also lends itself to stand-alone renewable power generation as an avenue for individuals and communities who are in need of energy solutions to produce electricity in the long term while avoiding the high fuel costs and upkeep of traditional fossil-fuel systems. Continue reading →
US Voters Warm Up to Renewable Energy
It’s election season once again. One of the most important times of the year, where we get to decide the direction that our country is moving in. It looks like elections this year will hold good news for renewable energy. In a recent poll of voters conducted by Public Policy Polling for the NRDC Action Fund it was found that the majority of voters were in support of an energy bill with strong ties to renewable sources. The poll was conducted in 23 congressional districts and concluded that at least 52% of voters in these districts would be more inclined to support a candidate whose platform included energy policy that would cut pollution and reduce the effects of climate change. This is good news for the booming renewable energy sector. Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has already gotten the ball rolling by supporting renewable energy projects in the United States. Continued legislation in favor of renewables will only further cement the progress that has been made in the past 3 years. Continue reading →
ON LINE – Nevada’s Southwest Intertie Project: How it Demonstrates Commitment to Renewable Green Energy
The town of Apex, Nevada is normally just the location of the Apex Regional Landfill (the largest landfill in the state of Nevada), a small relief power station that comes online when nearby Las Vegas is overloading the grid and not much else. However last week brought red-letter days for this dusty, nondescript stretch of Hwy 93 situated just northeast of the city of lights. The One Nevada Transmission Line or “ON Line” (so clever!) project commencement was hosted at NV Energy’s [NASDAQ: NVE] Harry Allen Generating Station campus on Tuesday. It was a fairly star-studded event with U.S. Energy Secretary Ken Salazar and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid both in attendance, alongside a veritable who’s who of Nevada’s energy-industry brass to witness the beginning of a project that is being billed as a significant breakthrough in the support of renewable power and a major source of green collar jobs, as well as being symbolic of the new direction the state of Nevada is taking towards energy policy through the strong support of renewables. The One Nevada transmission line consists of a 500 kilovolt power conduit that will cover the entire length of the state of Nevada running north-south. It will eventually be extended as far north as Idaho. The portion of the line that will be completed in this first phase consists of a 235-mile line extending from the Harry Allen site to a new electrical substation that will be constructed northwest of the town of Ely, Nevada. The projected price tag for the project will top 0 million. Continue reading →
Cars Are Getting Cleaner, Faster
Taking a deep breath nowadays might just be a little bit healthier than it was just a few short years ago. It’s common knowledge that cars and transportation are a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and other airborne pollutants. However, according to recent figures new cars today are cleaner than ever before. Of course most consumers expect that cars will get cleaner as time goes on; as part of the natural progression of technology and the demands of continuing legislation regulating vehicle emissions. What might come as a surprise is how quickly the change is happening. Of course progress is most noticeable among the cleanest of the herd. Average carbon emission figures for the cleanest cars dropped by 21 per cent over the last four years. According to consumer information website Green-Car-Guide.com, cars in the low-emission group emitted an average of 102.8 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven for the 2010 model year (CO2 is considered to be the primary contributor to global warming). In 2006 the same group recorded an average emission of 131.1 g/km. The difference of28.3 g/km represents the 21 per cent drop. Continue reading →
5 More Green Living and Eco Friendly Apps for Iphone and Android
These days our phones are so much more than just simple communication devices. The Apple [Nasdaq: APPL] iPhone and Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] Android platforms are revolutionary. They are our lifelines, and they also provide us with help on things that many people would never imagine a phone can do. With that in mind, here are 5 more green related apps that Eco Institution found when researching our last article. Carbon Tracker – The Carbon Tracker app is a GPS-enabled program that helps users to actually calculate and account for their carbon footprint from daily commuting, business trips and vacations. The cool thing is that you can actually set goals for maximum emissions per month and then check up on your progress. It can also be networked for use by more than one person for businesses and universities. Continue reading →
Controversial Waste-Burning Renewable Energy Powerplant Moves Forward in Baltimore’s Fairfield Neighborhood
At the site of a former agricultural chemical processing facility in south Baltimore Maryland, Energy Answers of Albany, N.Y. is working on a different kind of renewable energy electrical generation facility. The power source? Trash. That’s right, garbage – the company hopes to take refuse off the curb and bring it right back to you through the meter. The generator would produce a moderately sized 120MW of electricity directly to the grid plus steam heat available locally to industrial consumers by burning up to 4,000 tons of garbage a day. The project is classified as a renewable energy venture because it won’t be using fossil fuels to generate power. Because of that it is eligible for lucrative federal funding. Instead of functioning in the capacity of a normal incinerator, the facility will use Processed Refuse Fuel (PRF) which is essentially sorted and shredded residential and commercial garbage. The PRF burns cleaner and hotter than refuse that is used as fuel in traditional incinerators. The boiler will also use moderate amounts of Tire Derived Fuel (TDF) because of the high energy density of the material. Continue reading →
Watchdog Group Releases Latest Scorecard of State Energy-Efficiency Rankings
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released their fourth annual State Energy Efficiency Scorecard last week. The poll is a broad, comprehensive analysis of a variety of different factors that contribute to progress in increasing overall energy efficiency including information about residential, commercial, industrial and transportation energy use in each state. It looks at laws, policies, programs and incentives that residents are exposed to concerning energy use and how that successful they are at increasing efficiency and reducing waste. According to their website, the ACEEE is an independent, non-profit watchdog group that is focused on the advancement of energy efficiency as a means of promoting economic prosperity, energy security, and environmental protection. The 2010 poll put California in the number one spot for the 4^th year running. The state has occupied the top spot since the ACEEE began publishing its findings in 2006. According to information in the report, California nabbed the top spot because of its efforts in consumer energy efficiency programs and incentives, utility decoupling, alternative business models, reward structures for consumer efficiency and policies establishing efficiency as a priority resource. Continue reading →
GroundedPower Combines Home Energy Tech with Social Media Tools to Help Consumers Rein in Electricity Use
As the technology has become more accessible and cheaper, a number of companies have brought home energy displays to the market that are designed to help consumers track electricity use in their homes in real time. However, few of their offerings have been quite as promising as the new power management suite being released by Massachusetts based company GroundedPower. Power monitoring devices have seen increased popularity recently as utility companies are making the transition to smartgrid configurations. Many power companies that are deploying smart grid technology have begun to supply power meters to their customers as a way of helping them to keep tabs on energy use. However the concern is that customers may not remain committed to using the monitors once the novelty of having the device wears off and they will fall back into old patterns. Continue reading →

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