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Honda, Toyota Beat Detroit Across the Board on Emissions

Honda and Toyota left Detroit’s Big Three in the dust in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) biennial ranking of the greenest automakers. For the fourth time in a row, Honda topped UCS’s rankings as the country’s greenest automaker. But Toyota lost by only a nose, surging to second place by making significant cuts in global warming pollution. Hyundai-Kia, Nissan and Volkswagen were in the middle of the pack, coming in third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Ford and General Motors, meanwhile, were at the back, and DaimlerChrysler placed last, earning the Rusty Tailpipe Award for the dirtiest automaker. “There is a huge gap between the cleanest and dirtiest automakers,” said Don MacKenzie, author of the report and a vehicles engineer with UCS. “The winners are using clean technology across their entire fleets. The losers are installing it piecemeal, or not at all.” MacKenzie analyzed the performance of 10 classes of vehicles produced by the eight automakers which comprise 96 percent of the U.S. car and light truck market in model year 2005. Each automaker was rated on how its vehicles compared to the industry average on global warming and smog-forming pollution. Cars and light trucks account for 25 percent of […]

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Colorado State University to Build Wind Farm

Colorado State University plans to run its Fort Collins campus on 100% wind power from its own wind farm. It will located on the university’s 11,000-acre Maxwell Ranch. The wind farm will generate about 65 MW (megawatts), exceeding the 16 MW of power it needs at peak demand. The Colorado State University Research Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the university, finalized a deal with Wind Holding LLC to develop the facility.

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NREL Ranks Leading Utility Green Power Programs

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released its annual ranking of leading utility green power programs. More than 600 utilities across the U.S. now offer customers the option of supporting electricity production from renewable resources. In 2006, utility green power sales exceeded 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), about a 30% increase over 2005. More than 500,000 customers are participating in utility programs nationwide, up more than 10% from 2005. Using information provided by utilities, NREL develops Top 10 rankings of utility programs in the following categories: total sales of renewable energy to program participants, total number of customer participants, customer participation rate and the lowest price premium charged for a green pricing service using new renewable resources. Ranked by renewable energy sales, the green power program of Austin (Texas) Energy is first in the nation, followed by Portland General Electric, Florida Power & Light, PacifiCorp and Xcel Energy. Ranked by customer participation rates, the top utilities are City of Palo Alto (Calif.) Utilities, Lenox (Iowa) Municipal Utilities, Montezuma (Iowa) Municipal Light & Power, Portland General Electric, and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. (See attached tables for additional rankings). Website: [sorry this link is no longer available]     

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