Get Energy Smart! NOW!

The day before the 40th Earth Day, VP Joe Biden kicked off a series of White House actions and announcements with an excellent initiative:
selection of 25 communities for up to $452 million in Recovery Act funding to “ramp-up” energy efficiency building retrofits. Under the Department of Energy’s Retrofit Ramp-Up initiative, communities, governments, private sector [...]

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Try an experiment with paint. Paint one side of a piece of wood with low-VOC (volatile organic compound) paint and lay it to dry somewhere in the house. Wait a day or two, paint the other side with traditional. The difference will be clear.
When it comes to cleaning, however, too many of us have become [...]

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Clean Energy Jobs Go Home: $30 Billion to put 4.5 Million to Work
This is part of a series of brief posts on ‘clean energy jobs‘ opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States as discussed in Clean Energy Jobs: Stimulate Me.
Investing in building energy efficiency is one of the most effective ways to [...]

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This is part of a series of posts on ‘clean energy jobs’ opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States as discussed in Clean Energy Jobs: Stimulate Me.
Clean Energy Jobs Go to School: $50 billion / year to support 1,000,000 Clean Energy Jobs
America’s public schools are, in some cases all too literally, falling [...]

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With our ever mounting trade and budget deficits, unemployment above 10 percent (and, dependent on counting, un- and under-employment above 20 percent), looming peak oil and other resource (water, for example) limitations, enviornmental challenges, and ever-mounting climate chaos , we are in a very serious situation. Our serious challenges are, as the previous [...]

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Since diving into the deep end when it comes to energy issues, almost every day sees new fascinating concepts, approaches, and technologies. Fascinating … exciting … even hope inspiring at times. And, as well, as the passion builds, so many of these are truly Energy COOL.
When determining how to prioritize action using, [...]

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Sad-to-say, the air waves and oped pages and blog posts have been filled with Steven Levitt’s and Steven Dubner’s shallow, truthiness-laden Superfreakonomics.   The continued attention feeds on itself, as ignoring the deceptions and the mediocre interviews booked due to the authors’ Super(freaky)star status has the problem of giving it credence due to non-truthful truthiness [...]

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All too often, those engaged in examining options for “greening” a new or existing building are constrained in a stove-piped cost analysis which (in a very simplified fashion) goes something along these lines:

How much more will it cost to build?
And, how fast will energy and other operating cost (water usage/sewers, maintenance) savings pay for those [...]

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Last week, the New York Senate passed legislation to take revenues from New York’s ‘cap and tax’ on carbon emissions and leverage these funds into the private financing market to make energy efficiency improvements more affordable and more accessible to New York’s homeowners.
Passed unanimously in the New York House, a Republican Senator played a key [...]

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A guest post from Craig Severance at Energy Economy Online discussing Ed Mazria’s Architecture 2030 concept for job creation and economic stimulus through a massive energy efficiency investment in America’s buildings through a mortgage subsidy program. Quite simply, this is perhaps the most valuable W5 strategy (win economically (stimulus, competitiveness, etc), win on energy, win [...]

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