Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Raleigh, North Carolina, is setting out to see whether it can go all LED for its lighting. The initial effort will go into a parking lot, where they see a 2-3 year payback period.  After that, they will move to streetlights.  Now, CFLs/fluorescents are several multiples in price to incandescent bulbs.   LEDs are often an […]

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Congressman Tom Udall (D-NM) just introduced House Bill 969 which, to put one to sleep like all good legislation, proposes to “amend title VI of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to establish a Federal renewable energy portfolio standard for certain retail electric utilities and for other purposes.”

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One of the key Energize America principles is to strive to Make the right choice the easy choice. Right now, throughout the United States, structural issues of regulation, financing, taxation policy, and otherwise make it difficult for individuals, businesses, communities, and governments (at all levels) to make the right choice when it comes to holistic […]

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Ergosphere is the blog space of a very thought-provoking blogger on energy issues, Engineer Poet.  EP will show up and comment throughout the blogosphere on energy issues — with a thoughtful and critical eye, without question a pointed barb for calling out BS when perceived as BS.  But, perhaps more interesting, EP raises interesting concepts […]

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One of the best know stories of solar power — a true story — is how, in 1986, Ronald Reagan had the solar hot water panels taken off the White House roof. Panels that Jimmy Carter had had installed.  This was a symbolic culmination of the cut-off of tax incentives and drastic cut-backs in research […]

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Well, we could simply overwhelm here if every single energy releated news item that we bumped into made it into these electrons.  But, there are tremendously interesting things going on in a huge range of domains.  Just discussed blogged a discussion of algae bio-diesel the other day and today I bump into PetroSun’s plans to […]

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When people talk about X million target solar roofs, I sometimes interject that I really want solar car ports and solar cell covered parking lots. I’ll be happy with the roofs being white reflective, with good skylights, and rain capture. When it comes to office buildings and stores, I would prefer the solar cells to […]

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Truly, plug-in vehicles look to be a key near term leap forward toward a better energy future in the transportation system.  The Chevy Volt made a splash as a potential PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) for the passenger market.  Now, an effort is surfacing to do this with utility vehicles and vans in southern California. […]

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Algae bio-diesel has been gaining increasing attention in the past several years.   Algae has relatively high oil content, after processing the remnants can be used for other things (even burning for electricity, with the ash as fertilizer), and the path to producing algae ‘seems’ so straightforward:  water, sunlight, and nutrients.  And, one of algae’s great […]

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Perhaps the name is right — Diesel, as in diesel fuel that is helping warm the world, has an aggressive and ever so hip ad campaign that shows us that living in a world suffering the havoc of Global Warming doesn’t, after all, need to mean that we won’t be fashionable.  After all, one of […]

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