Instead of a standard fuel tank, the ENV (short for Emissions Neutral Vehicle) contains an onboard fuel cell that can be filled with hydrogen in just three minutes. The cell then converts the hydrogen to electricity, enabling speeds of over 50 mph, and a range of 100 miles, with no emissions except warm air and water.

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Governor of New Jersey since January 17, 2006, Corzine wants the Garden State to triple the total amount of wind generated power that it plans to use by 2020. This would bring its total up to 3,000 megawatts, measuring out to be 13% of New Jersey’s total energy, and enough energy to power anywhere between 800,000 and just under a million homes.

This comes just days after the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced that it had chosen Garden State Offshore Energy (GSOE) as the preferred developer for a 350-megawatt wind farm off the NJ coast.

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After two years, an oversized yellow buoy floating five miles off the southern tip of Long Beach Island has definitely proved its technology feasible. With the rise and fall of each wave, pistons slide up and down inside a cylinder within the buoy, generating electricity.

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The first announcement saw Oglethorpe Power Corporation (OPC) announce plans to buld as many as three 100-megawatt biomass electric generating facilities in the state of Georgia. The second, was an announcement by SBD International promising the future construction of a small solar farm in Florida, capable of generating up to 20 megawatts.

And these sorts of announcements come across our desks almost every day. But there are only so many articles we can write that would be as long as this introduction.

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“However, the looming expiration of the federal renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) less than four months from now threatens this spectacular progress,” said Randall Swisher, AWEA’s executive director.

Subsequently, wind energy is well on track to providing the 20% of US electricity by 2030, as envisioned by the US Department of Energy (DOE).

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If you take a look at a map of the pipeline, you will begin to understand the geopolitical importance of the effort to provide a path out of the Caspian Sea region - home to a large oil and gas reservoir - that does not pass through Iran or Russia. Until the BTC was completed, there was no way to move Azeri oil out to the rest of the market without going through Russia.

(Aside: The map indicates that a path through Armenia could have been chosen instead of through Georgia, but apparently Armenia and Azerbaijan have a long-standing conflict over a region known as Mountainous Kharabakh.)

Unfortunately, western leaders underestimated the strength of Russia’s objection to losing control over Azerbaijan’s oil and gas resources. They also underestimated Russia’s ability to do something about its desire to reassert control. By biding its time and working in the way of the excellent chess players that they are, Russia has put itself in a position to control (stop?) the flow and there are few acceptable actions that can be taken to change the situation.

One of the few things that has a long term chance of success is a focused program of reducing the importance of oil and gas in the world economy.

My input on that front is to steadily increase the use of uranium and thorium fuels whose supply cannot be severed by an aggressor sitting astride a key delivery path. When electricity and ship propulsion is powered by heavy metal fission instead of natural gas or oil, the importance of owning the valves that supply heat and power gradually dims to insignificance.

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In a slew of announcements this week, a picture of what the future of plug-in vehicle charging might look like is starting to emerge.

The Problem:

There are 54 million garages for the 247 million registered cars in the US, meaning that the majority of cars are parked overnight in parking structures, parking lots or curbside.

As a result, most potential plug-in vehicle consumers do not have an adequate place to charge their vehicles. This problem is even more pronounced in urban areas like San Francisco, where only about 16% of cars are parked in garages overnight and the rest end up curbside or in parking lots.

Also, although the US power grid probably has enough overall capacity to supply energy to a nation of plug-in vehicles, it may not have the ability to charge them when they all plug-in and demand energy at the same time — say 6 pm every weekday.

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Biopower Systems is just one of the wave-energy developers gaining attention by meeting its technological goals and backing this up with investment support.

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I have a wacky idea: it involves the photo above (from the National Geographic archives, taken 21 Sep 1938 by The Day, New London, CT), the designer Mitchell Joachim, the PDF here from the Global Citizen Center, and an article in New York magazine, dated 2/7/05.

See if you come to the same conclusion — or something better! 

Citing green hotels, coconut oil fuel for airlines and even recyclable golf tees, executives in one of the world’s largest industries say they are urgently trying to shrink tourism’s oversized environmental footprint.

But with global travel projected to keep soaring, and those very leaders still eager to expand their own ventures, some doubt such efforts can significantly lessen global warming and other ecological woes.

“There are no simple solutions,” Anna Pollack, head of a British tourism consultancy, told a two-day conference which ended Wednesday. “Tourism is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change.”

Online you can read the a lot guides about how to reduce global warming. As you can see travel is only a little part of the main causes of global warming.

Below, I list of useful guides. You can use to reduce global warming.

Global warming refers to the Earth’s air and oceans gradually heating up to a point that disrupts balance, a problem that is continually getting worse. It sounds like a problem too massive for any one individual to take on, but it really isn’t. Combining any few of these suggestions can make more of a dramatic effect than most people understand. The goal is to emit less carbon dioxide into the atmospher

The part of Global warming caused by travel, is especially the ecotourism, practiced in remote destination. It’s so because it requires the use of air travel to land is those countries.

Some times ago an airline company used to travel with biofuel.

IN February, on a chilly, clear Sunday morning, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with the co-sponsors Boeing and GE Aviation, lured more than 200 journalists to a hangar at Heathrow Airport near London to witness what they said was airline history. Over flutes of Champagne and plates of mini-bagels filled with salmon, everyone’s eyes were fixed on a 747 as it took off on the world’s first biofuel demonstration flight.

Never mind that only one of the plane’s engines used biofuel, and that was about 25 percent mixed with standard kerosene jet fuel. It was still significant, given that air travel is the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gases, and the race to find an alternative to kerosene is now crucial. The biofuel used — a combination of coconut and babassu (a Brazilian tree) oil, which Mr. Branson pretended to drink that day like an island cocktail from a coconut shell — worked in this very small test. But even its developers, Imperium Renewables, are aware it could never become a substitute for what John Plaza, president and chief executive of Imperium, another sponsor, says is the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airline fleet.

“This is just a first-generation product,” Mr. Plaza said. “But the test was meaningful in that it showed that a biofuel was viable with the infrastructure in a commercial jet.” Imperium created the fuel from oils harvested from existing plantations, but Mr. Plaza said he believed that algae was the fuel of the future. “You would only need the landmass of West Virginia,” he said, “to make enough fuel to replace aviation’s demand for kerosene.”

So I’m not scared about the future, because change is happened. I think that most airlines will become more green so traveling in foreign countries will be less environmental damaging.

I cover a lot of upcoming or future technology, but it’s time to step into the present and aim for the past. Today we’re going to look at a technology available right now that can make some wanton energy waste history. It’s a surge protector that stakes the hearts of vampire electronics without hassling you, the sleeping victim.

Vampire appliances are pretty much anything you can plug in that still sucks energy when it’s supposedly turned off. Some are pretty obvious - the clocks on your microwave or VCR/DVD player burn all day, everyday. We know they’re not “off” because we cans see their LEDs glow. But other electronics, from your television to your cell phone charger also draw power when they’re plugged in but not in use. Check out a handy graph from Good Magazine. Some gadgets are notorious, like your plasma TV. Estimates claim that 5% or more of U.S. energy usage is insidiously wasted by “stand-by mode” or certain misleading “off” buttons. A whopping 5% may not sound like much, but it adds up to about $1 Billion dollars per year - and energy prices will probably continue to rise.

Be honest - how many times would you go around the house unplugging everything before it got old? Smart greenies have been switching off their surge protectors, but it’s easy to forget while watching your favorite late-night TV show or blogging at 4am. So what can we do about these metal-toothed Nosferatu in our midst? How about a surge protector that turns off all your appliances for you?

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In January, Scientific American writers unleashed an ambitious plan to halt global warming, eliminate our dependence on petroleum and the substantial trade deficit, boost the economy and create 3 million jobs, and brighten the dismal forecasts for the mid twenty-first century.

The plan is conceptually simple but would be substantial to implement:

• Construct a 30,000 square mile array of solar panels in the Southwest,
• along with concentrated solar power arrays and,
• a massive direct-current power transmission backbone to distribute electricity throughout the country.
• Excess power produced by the photovoltaic arrays would be distributed and stored as compressed air in below-ground caverns.

Development of such a system could provide almost three-quarters of the nation’s electricity by 2050.

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/03/25/how-solar-panels-could-power-90-of-us-transportation/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/02/20/coal-expansion-in-kansas-receives-a-boost/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/02/20/coal-expansion-in-kansas-receives-a-boost/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:03:15 +0000 Joshua S Hill http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/02/20/coal-expansion-in-kansas-receives-a-boost/ In what continues to be a disappointing view of how the world views the environment, Kansas lawmakers have overturned a 2007 decision rejecting a coal-fired power plant expansion in the state. Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby rejected the expansion of Sunflower Electric Power Corp’s western power plant last year, citing health concerns associated with carbon dioxide emissions and global warming concerns.

This decision immediately caused outrage amongst Republicans who cried that by rejecting the plant it would stop the creation of jobs, and strip the area of needed energy that would help keep electricity rates in check.

The bill passed through the Kansas House with a 77-45 margin, which thankfully at least falls short of it being veto proof.

Sunflower Electric Power Corp wants to add two 700 megawatt units to their existing facility in western Kansas. Their decision to do this, followed by Bremby’s decision to overrule their ability, pushed Kansas to the forefront of a national discussion on coal-fired power plants and their impact upon the environment.

Environmental groups hoped that the decision would influence further states to follow in their steps. They are thus, naturally disappointed with the recent decision, though they hold on to hope that the bill will still be vetoed when it comes back out of committee. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, has pledged to veto the bill, but Republicans are hoping to rally enough votes to make the bill veto proof.

“It is very unfortunate that legislation like this was pushed through so quickly,” said Chris Cardinal, spokesman for Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy. “We need to sit down and have a proper discussion about our energy policy in Kansas, and not be engaging in all this gamesmanship and political maneuvering.”

Photo Courtesy of Mikko Itälahti via Flickr

]]> http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/02/20/coal-expansion-in-kansas-receives-a-boost/feed/ http://sustainablog.org/2008/01/06/south-african-farmer-pulls-power-from-poop/ http://sustainablog.org/2008/01/06/south-african-farmer-pulls-power-from-poop/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:02:13 +0000 Jeff McIntire-Strasburg http://sustainablog.org/2008/01/06/south-african-farmer-pulls-power-from-poop/

Chicken poop ain’t pretty, but it’s potential as an energy source has a number of large-scale poultry operations taking a second look at the smelly stuff. The price tags on such projects can climb pretty high, though: Georgia’s Green Power EMC project, for instance, was projected to cost $20 million when announced in early 2006. These costs may make such projects prohibitive in the developing world, where they could raise living standards of impoverished people while helping them “leapfrog” over Western development patterns based on fossil fuels. South African farmer Shelby Tyne (shown above) believes he’s hit upon the cost-benefit sweet spot for this technology: for $37,000 dollars, Tyne and partner Derrick Hilton have built a biogas plant that powers the entire farm… without even pushing maximum capacity.

Tyne tells the story of the biogas plant in this Facebook video (note: you do have to be a member of Facebook to watch it). His and Hilton’s Greenways Farm had taken chicken poop off of a neighboring farmer’s hands for a number of years to use as fertilizer, but stockpiling the litter created pollution problems. Tyne’s solution: put the poop into methane digesters, and use the resulting gas as fuel for both cooking stoves and a generator. He quickly figured out that with the amount of chicken litter they normally used, the farm could create 11,000 kW h of electricity per month: more than three times what it normally consumed. On paper, the project looked like a no-brainer.

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]]> http://sustainablog.org/2008/01/06/south-african-farmer-pulls-power-from-poop/feed/ http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/google-going-greener/ http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/google-going-greener/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:19:08 +0000 Joshua S Hill http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/google-going-greener/ It’s true. I’m in love with Google, and everything they do! From the rumored GPhone, which is apparently to be announced soon, to the simplicity and reliability of their search engine. But, most importantly, and relevant to my role here at Green Options, is their role in leading businesses towards a greener tomorrow.

Boston, Massachusetts, hosted the 3rd annual Conference on Clean Energy this past Monday and Tuesday. Panel discussions by clean energy investors, entrepreneurs developing emerging clean energy technologies for startups and more were on the agenda, along with Robyn Beavers, Director of Environmental Programs at Google.

Google, who already has the largest corporate installation of solar-powered electricity, is apparently not satisfied… and well it shouldn’t be. According to Beavers, Google intends to generate a total of 50 megawatts of electricity from renewable sources, for all its operations, by the year 2012.

Beavers outlined a number of steps that Google is taking towards those goals. A 1.6 megawatt solar installation at its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif, and solar panels on building roofs are just the beginning. Not to mention the solar-panel-roofed carports, under which their plug-in hybrids are charged.

"Wind, solar, geothermal, fuel cells — you name it, we’re looking into it," Beavers said.

You may wonder though, why it is that Google are so invested in going green. Well, run by youngin’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company consumes a massive amount of power. Consider just how much you see Google online, and then trace that back to what is powering all that online presence. The power requirements for their operations and data centers are not small.

But the investments that Google has put in to these green initiatives will pay themselves off in 7 years — not that they need too, with shares selling for just under $700, and stockpiles of cash in back rooms. They have already managed to reduce their consumption from the power grid by 30%, and a subsequent reduction of 30% on their bills.

Why go green? Because it’s cheaper! Why else? Because someone has to lead the charge, and I’ve said all along it has to be big business. We know it won’t be governments! We’ve seen that time and time again. The big moves will only come when the big businesses make the move, and with Google and, more recently retailing giant Wal-Mart, investing in green and renewable initiatives, that leap forward is coming soon.

News.com — Google’s love for solar may extend to other renewables

Conference on Clean Energy

More from GO

Google Flips The Switch On Largest Corporate Solar Installation In U.S.

Tech Industry Goes Greener and Greener

]]> http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/google-going-greener/feed/ http://celsias.greenoptions.com/2007/10/13/celsias-energy-bookshelf-the-power-of-poop/ http://celsias.greenoptions.com/2007/10/13/celsias-energy-bookshelf-the-power-of-poop/#comments Sat, 13 Oct 2007 15:56:04 +0000 Celsias http://celsias.greenoptions.com/2007/10/13/celsias-energy-bookshelf-the-power-of-poop/ Editor’s note:  Our weekly post swap with Celsias continues with a subject most people would rather not discuss: poop.  Celsias writer A. Siegel reviews Dave Praeger’s book Poop Culture, and muses on the  waste involved in dealing with our wastes.  This post was originally published on  October 11, 2007.

To carry the book openly or to stash it away, that is a question one faces when reading Dave Praeger’s Poop Culture: How America is Shaped By Its Grossest National Product. That is an unusual reaction when reading something that, at its core, deals with a quite serious subject and deals with it well. And, that discomfort proves one of the core points of the book — about how American (and much of modern) culture seeks to suppress understanding and discussion of what is, at the end of the day (or whenever you hit the can or release gas or …), one of the most shared human experiences (after, perhaps, breathing …).

Reading this book provided an interesting experience, ranging from outright laughter to points that challenged thinking about daily activities to squeamish discomfort about the subject matter. I learned, in some ways too much, about feces and humanity’s relationship with it. Simply put, Poop Culture is a recommended read (and, if you wish, you can check out the website that started it all, PoopReport.com).

But this review, is about Energy … and, well, poop and energy and what we can learn from Poop Culture….

On consideration, there are several key arenas where Poop Culture relates to critical energy issues:

1. Sewage systems are a huge infrastructural investment, that take major energy investments to create and operate.
2. The system is quite wasteful in terms of resources and opportunities exist, in some ways, to turn this around toward a more fruitful energy path.
3. The sewage system is an excellent example of how decisions made decades, even century+ ago, related to infrastructure drive our choices today and into the future, constraining options. And, well, it is not just physical but cultural as well — our mental constructs sometimes constrain even more than the physical. (For example, how many of you recycle and do composting yet do not (as I do not) do Humanure using some form of a composting toilet?)

Think about the following, as Praeger discusses the infrastructure costs of "poop," opening with a discussion about a play in which every visit to a toilet had to be paid for,

"a hilariously terrifying universe in which peeing and pooping cost money

"It made you glad to live in a society where the most important things in life are free

"But they’re not. Glistening in the stark bathroom light, bobbing gently in the toilet bowl, framed by a chocolate halo on the water’s surface, your poop is unneeded by your body and unwanted by society. You need only flush to remove it from the consciousness of both. But the simplicity of that mechanism belies the intricacy of the infrastructure and the magnitude of the capital invested in the sanitary-industrial complex that makes it so easy. The effortlessness of pressing a little lever to remove a fresh poop from any bathroom anywhere in the country at any time of the day maybe be the birthright of every single American, but it is not free." [p. 90]

This an example of Praeger’s amusing and insightful style. And, he is raising an important point — just how many Americans consider the cost implications when they flush? Quite roughly, based on one analysis, the average household flush (from construction, to water, to toilet paper) costs $0.41 or a total cost of perhaps over $26,000 over an eight year period. [p. 93] As Praeger comments, "The financial cost of all this is staggering; just as shocking is the general ignorance of the cost."

This is all too similar to the question of Cost to Buy vs Cost to Own when it comes to energy. Do you ever consider the life-cycle cost of owning a toilet? I have to say it hasn’t been on the tip of my tongue for cocktail conversations….

But, this fiscal cost is really just the start. Due to how the sewage system works, the organic materials of human waste end up mixed (in general) with other wastes (toxic metals, chemicals, etc), making it difficult to safely return it to the environment. Contaminated sludge isn’t the most fruitful way to fertilize food for the kitchen table (sadly, there are many parts of the world where contaminated water/contaminated sludge is a principal source of irrigation water).

Yet, does it have to be?

Americans flush 108 million pounds of plant food down the toilet every day. … the US uses 12 billion tons of nitrogen fertilizer alone every year, 65 million pounds a day, 55% of it is imported. Our poop is being wasted.

Yes, our poop. We spend a huge amount of money, a huge amount of energy to support a sewage system that requires extensive amounts of clean water and ends up throwing out something that could be fruitfully used.

Praeger advocates composting, "the process through which bacteria and heat break down organic materials into humus." He then discusses composting toilets and The Humanure Handbook, discussing how some already are composting (and getting great vegetables from this soil).

But the foresightful and industrious few cannot avert the coming crisis. To drastically reduce our water usage and to stop contaminating our farmlands, we need a poop composting system that every American will use. It must accommodate city dwellers without backyards, the elderly and those who can’t lift 20-pound buckets, the lazy who would empty their bucket out the window to save a trip to the pile, and the indoctrinated — the vast majority, loyal to the institutions of fecal denial who would fight like hell in their refusal to deviate from it. It’s conceivable that society can be persuaded to accept a neighbor’s poop compost pile if it doesn’t smell or attract vermin, but it’s hard to imagine most Americans giving up their beloved porcelain thrones for sawdust-filled, manually-emptied five-gallon buckets.

The infrastructure challenge is huge — to figure out how to and then invest to shift from over a century of investments in the current (and planned) sewage system to something that doesn’t waste over 54,000 tons of plant food every day — and, concurrently, reducing water and energy use to match. But, compared to the social/cultural challenge, this daunting engineering challenge could be easy.

And, well, this is a parallel for the entire energy question. We can move toward a far more environmentally friendly and fiscally sound energy system, rather quickly, but the challenge is — in no small part — cultural. Are people ready to drive smaller cars or are SUVs an inalienable human rights issue? Ready to turn off some lights? Set the air conditioning at a higher temperature? Fly less frequently? As Royal Dutch Shell’s CEO wrote

More than half the energy we generate every day is wasted.

What’s the point of producing even more energy if we continue to waste most of it? Instead, we should aim to become twice as efficient in our use of energy by the middle of the next century. That is entirely feasible, provided that the will is there.

And, well, the same is true for our sewage system. We can move to a less wasteful, more sensible sewage system, "provided that the will is there." Sadly, based on the unease which readers encountered with Poop Culture, that will might be far away.

]]> http://celsias.greenoptions.com/2007/10/13/celsias-energy-bookshelf-the-power-of-poop/feed/ http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/09/24/us-power-requirements-solved-in-92-miles-square/ http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/09/24/us-power-requirements-solved-in-92-miles-square/#comments Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:55:31 +0000 Joshua S Hill http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/09/24/us-power-requirements-solved-in-92-miles-square/

Editor’s note: As commenter pointed out, there was an error in the post originally — the land space presented in Mills’ presentation is 92 miles square, not 92 square miles. We apologize for the mistake, and have corrected it.

Throughout the past decade or so, whenever anyone has proposed the idea of implementing a solar power generation system, they have been mocked and scorned, especially within the United States where it was believed that the landmass needed to power the entire country was simply unfeasible.

A scene from The West Wing depicted the solar power proponent placing a small square over the entirety of Nevada, suggesting that was all that would be needed.

Speaking at the International Solar Energy Society conference, chairman and chief scientific officer of solar company Ausra David Mills presented a paper (PDF) that proposed solving the United States energy problems by switching entirely to solar. He even promised solving night-time energy problems with solar power.

His company has been perfecting the solution presented, but it would not be a small change by any stretch of the imagination.

Using a Fresnel configuration — essentially based upon the lens design of the same name, which allows for thinner and lighter lenses to capture light in, say, lighthouses — the mirrors would collect heat to warm tubes of liquid, rather than solar cells. The liquid turned to steam by the solar energy would thus power nearby turbines, and create electricity.

It’s not a new technology, and Mills accepts this, but he believes it to be the best technology, because he believes that the tubes will hold heat and still produce steam at night.

The paper that Mills presented also calculated the total land space needed to fulfill all of America’s power requirements: a total of 92 miles square.

The problem arises in what would be the next step of the process: integration with the current electric infrastructure. In fact, the entire system would have to be revamped. The current AC grid would have to be converted to High Voltage DC, so that the 50% loss of power across transfer lines would be reduced to 3%.

Mills believes that this is a necessary, yet huge, undertaking, but would move the country from "capital-intensive fossil fuel plants that need to run 24/7" to "electricity created by people’s and the economy’s daily rhythm." Renewable sources such as solar and wind both follow this latter description closely.

The company knows that their proposal is more of a thought experiment rather than a plan near implementation, but they are doing their part to move us forward. In fact, in addition to their "thought experiment," Ausra is developing a 175-megawatt solar power plant which will utilize their solar liquid tubes, hopefully hitting the market by mid-2009.

Their business is based around solar power generation and solar power storage. It is the future, they believe, and a future that will grant humans a safe environment to live in. The US Southwest is all but calling out for such an experiment to be implemented, with its constant sunshine. And though California’s Mojave Desert power stations are nothing more than power generation for peak times, one day, maybe, we could see the integration of solar as the main power source, rather than a back-up.

"We’re hoping to make announcements at the end of the month for multiple projects," Mills says.

Here’s hoping!

Green Wombat - Solar Nation: Can the Sun Power the U.S.? via EcoGeek - 92 Miles Sq. of Solar Could Power the USA

Ausra’s ISES Paper (PDF)

International Solar Energy Society

More from GO

Costco, Safeway Get on Board with Solar

]]> http://joshuashill.greenoptions.com/2007/09/24/us-power-requirements-solved-in-92-miles-square/feed/ http://amystodghill.greenoptions.com/2007/08/08/daily-tip-save-energy-at-home/ http://amystodghill.greenoptions.com/2007/08/08/daily-tip-save-energy-at-home/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:21:16 +0000 Amy Stodghill http://amystodghill.greenoptions.com/2007/08/08/daily-tip-save-energy-at-home/ Saving energy at home will not only create less demand on the power grid, but will also save you money in electricity costs. Here are some simple things you can do to reduce your energy use.

Unplug. Whether it is the cell phone charger or the TV, when it is plugged in it is using electricity. Simply unplugging electronics and appliances while not in use will cut that phantom power load.

Turn off the light. Just flip the light switch off when you leave the room or keep it off if there is adequate daylight.

Buy Energy Star. If you’re upgrading to a new appliance, check for the Energy Star label. They work the same as (or probably better than) the older models but suck up far less power.

Switch to CFLs. Traditional incandescent light bulbs are inefficient and spend most of their energy creating heat rather than light. The next time a bulb burns out screw in a compact flourescent instead. They save energy and last a lot longer.

Mind your refrigerator. You can thank the fridge for taking up most of the energy in your home. Lighter Footstep’s Chris Baskind lists the ways you can get the most from your refrigerator.

Don’t overwork your AC. The air conditioner is also a big energy sucker in hot weather months. Keeping the thermostat at a set temperature, and simply turning it off when you’re not at home are among the ways you can keep the AC costs down.

Here is some more information from Green Options on ways you can save energy in your home:

Daily Tip: A Bright Idea

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Guest Post: Cut Your Energy Bills in Half (Part 1 of 2)

Guest Post: Cut Your Energy Bills in Half (Part 2 of 2)

Home Energy Audits

Environmental Defense: Why Today’s CFLs Are So Much Better

Lighter Footstep: Ten Cheap Ways to Chill Your Refrigerator

Tip o’ the Day: Get the Most From Your Air Conditioner

Programmable Thermostats

Daily Tip: Unplug that Cell Phone Charger

]]> http://amystodghill.greenoptions.com/2007/08/08/daily-tip-save-energy-at-home/feed/ http://greenbuildingelements.com/2007/02/05/household-co-generation-system/ http://greenbuildingelements.com/2007/02/05/household-co-generation-system/#comments Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:45:06 +0000 Philip Proefrock http://greenbuildingelements.com/2007/02/05/household-co-generation-system/ Co-generation is a systems approach for producing poth power and heat. Combined heat-and-power (CHP) plants produce electrical power, and use the heat from that production to also provide heat to local buildings (often through underground steam or hot-water piping systems). These systems have been most often found at hospitals and universities, where a large number of buildings can be efficiently served by a combined facility such as this. But new systems are bringing this same technology into the home.

Micro-CHP units are new to the US, with the first installations just beginning in the northeast. The technology for these units is not brand new, however. There are more than 30,000 homes with these units installed in Japan, where the gas utilities have been promoting them. In Britain, 80,000 under-counter micro-CHP systems are on their way and will be installed in the coming years.

Household micro-CHP systems use a natural gas powered electrical generator to produce electricity. The heat produced from that part of the system is used either to create hot air (as with a traditional forced-air furnace system) or to create hot water (for radiator or radiant floor heated homes). Because the heat is being productively used, rather than going up the chimney of a distant power plant, and because the electricity is being locally produced, rather than being subjected to the losses inherent in power transmission, the micro-CHP is "triple the efficiency of power delivered over the grid."

Micro-CHP systems are most likely to be used in states that offer net metering to their customers, since they will likely produce more electricity than the household needs while they are cycled on.

Having your own power plant in your basement also means that, with the right connections to properly operate the system, blackouts are no longer a concern. Micro-CHP systems are not inexpensive, however. They can be as much as double the cost of a comparable high-end furnace. But, with the electrical savings, they can pay for themselves within a few years at present rates.

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