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Interior Department Finds No Major Impact from Cape Wind Project GM, Toyota, and Fisker to Launch Plug-In Hybrids by 2010 Chrysler Unveils Electric-Drive Concepts and Diesels in Detroit Ford Vehicles to Employ the Fuel-Saving "EcoBoost" Engine Detroit Goes Small with Ford Verve, Daimler Smart Car Fuel-Cell-Powered Cadillac Provoq Unveiled at Electronics Show Report: Electric Utilities Investing Billions in Transmission Interior Department Finds No Major Impact from Cape Wind Project The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has issued a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the Cape Wind Energy Project and finds no major environmental impacts from the proposed project. The MMS is the lead federal permitting agency for the Cape Wind project, a 468-megawatt wind power plant proposed for Horseshoe Shoal, a shallow part of Nantucket Sound located about five miles from the shore of Massachusetts. Cape Wind Associates, LLC first filed a permit application for the plant with the Army Corps of Engineers in November 2001, but the Energy Policy Act of 2005 shifted the permitting authority to the MMS. The company plans to begin construction on the project in 2009 and start operating the plant in 2009. The MMS filed the report with the U.S. Environmental Protection […]
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There is no good solution to the pain of Iraq, and there may be no good or sufficient solution to the enormously greater problem of atmospheric carbon and climate change. Mitigating climate change must be at the core of everything our society does for the foreseeable future – including the way the U.S. does foreign policy and foreign assistance. That includes America’s plans for ending the war in Iraq and addressing the challenges of the Middle East. One of the Iraqi peoples’ greatest burdens is lack of sufficient, reliable electricity, a worse problem now than before the U.S. invasion. In the violence-ridden heat island that is much of Iraq, lack of electricity for cooling, refrigerating, lighting and running computers and TVs makes their lives even more grueling. "Deploying additional forces [won’t] solve Iraq’s problems, but providing jobs, electricity and drinkable water [will]," U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, then commander of the Multinational Corps of Iraq, said in 2006. According to a March 8 CBS News report, at the start of 2007 the U.S. had already spent over $4 billion on restoring electricity in Iraq – with very limited progress. How much solar electric generation capacity could $4 billion buy? […]
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Energy Efficiency in New Federal Buildings to Increase by 30% Most EERE Programs See Increased Funding in Appropriations Bill Idaho’s First Geothermal Power Plant is Now Online New Cargo Ship Cuts its Fuel Use using a Kite-Like Sail Oil Prices to Hover Near $100 per Barrel in 2008 Energy Efficiency in New Federal Buildings to Increase by 30% DOE has established regulations that require most new federal buildings to achieve at least 30% greater energy efficiency than that of the prevailing building codes. The new standards, which were published in late December, are also 40% more efficient than the standards in the current Code of Federal Regulations and will help federal agencies meet Executive Order #13423, which mandated increased federal energy efficiency. Over the next ten years, the standards could save more than 40 trillion Btu and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2 million metric tons. The new regulation updates an interim final rule that DOE issued on December 4, 2006, and which applied to any federal building that entered the "design for construction" phase by January 3, 2007. The new regulations take effect on January 22 and apply to new federal commercial buildings, multi-family high-rise residential buildings, and low-rise […]
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Green Building is a success story. It has passed the hurdle of acceptance and is now spreading throughout the supply chain. Example: Last year, CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), which publishes the largest for-lease and for-sale commercial real estate database, began highlighting LEED-certified commercial properties in its 2 million –plus listings database so that realtors and other professionals could pinpoint high-performance green buildings. There are about 200 LEED-certified properties in the database so far; now they’re adding Energy Star ratings. In February, green home listings were added to the Regional Multiple Listing Service for the Pacific Northwest. This enables real estate agents and appraisers to compare properties with and without efficiency and green features to see how they affect sales prices. It may eventually encourage lenders to offer larger loans to borrowers with resource efficient houses because of lower utility costs. As more green buildings come on the market and as more tenants and homeowners demand them, the realtor community has taken notice. Now viewed as the next big trend in the industry, green building was the theme at this year’s Northeast Real Estate Conference & Expo. 200 realtors attended an introductory seminar on green real estate and clearly wanted […]
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The time is ripe for a return to the sanity of a slower, steady-state economy that celebrates ‘human beings’ rather than ‘human doings’, says Satish Kumar, editor of UK-based Resurgence Magazine and founder of Schumaker College. On a recent visit to Australia, he noted a change in awareness from his visit a decade ago. Rather than a total fixation on short-term economic growth, he was heartened to find that people are more cognizant of the urgency of climate change and of the failure of the West’s social, political and economic systems to deal with conflict, poverty and resource depletion. ”People are ready for some more deep and profound transformation. This is a very encouraging and hopeful sign. Some pessimists say we are at the point of no return, but I say it’s a return to a more sustainable, more joyful, a more elegantly simple lifestyle.” So long as we avoid disempowering attitudes of doom and gloom, this awakening could lead to a new world order that makes the economy subservient to ecology, and no longer the other way around. How we are to realize this, he suggests, is by creating a culture of non-violence toward the earth and toward one’s […]
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by Lester R. Brown Building a new economy, one that can sustain economic progress, involves phasing out old industries, restructuring existing ones, and creating new ones. This new economy will be powered by renewable sources of energy, will have a more diverse transport system–relying more on rail, buses, and bicycles, and less on cars–and will recycle everything. For example, coal use will be phased out, replaced by efficiency gains in many countries, but also by natural gas, as in the United Kingdom, and by wind power, as in Denmark and Germany. The world automobile industry will face a modest restructuring as it shifts from the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine to the gas-electric hybrid, the diesel-electric hybrid, plug-in hybrids, or high-efficiency diesel. This will require a retooling of engine plants and the retraining of automotive engineers and automobile mechanics. The new economy will also bring major new industries, ones that either do not yet exist or are just beginning. Wind electricity generation is one such industry, incorporating three subsidiary industries: turbine manufacturing, installation, and maintenance. Now in its embryonic stage, this promises to become the foundation of the new energy economy. Millions of turbines soon will be converting wind into cheap […]
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– Report: Global Renewable Energy Experiencing Double-Digit Growth – Southwestern Utilities Team Up on Massive Solar Power Project – Shell and HR Biopetroleum to Grow Algae for Biofuels – Report: States Falling Short on Interconnection and Net Metering – New York City Orders 850 Hybrid Buses, Switches to Hybrid Cabs – DOE and GM Launch EcoCAR Competition to Follow Challenge X – Renewable Energy Growth Boosted in EIA Outlook Global Renewable Energy Experiencing Double Digit Growth Renewable energy use is growing much faster than 10% per year throughout the world, according to a new report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). Excluding large hydropower, the global electric generating capacity of renewable energy facilities reached 237 gigawatts (GW) this year, up 15% from last year. That’s about 5.5% of the electric generating capacity throughout the world. At 93 GW, wind power provided about 40% of that renewable generating capacity; wind power capacity increased by 25% over 2006. Grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems reached 7.8 GW in capacity, a 56% increase, while the global production of photovoltaic systems reached 3.8 GW per year, a 52% increase over 2006. Among non-electric renewable energy sources, solar hot water capacity increased […]
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The success of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED certification system is spawning a revolution in green building. Green building currently stands at a $2 billion market expected to double in the next few years. There’s an avalanche of new green buildings websites and organizations, and the entry of competing certification schemes. What’s needed now is the training and accreditation of legions of building professionals interested in learning how to apply green building techniques. The USGBC has created a new organization to take charge of developing and implementing credentialing programs – the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). You can learn about LEED Professional Accreditation, register for a LEED AP Exam, find LEED Accredited Professionals in your area and list your business in the LEED AP Directory at the GBCI website. The USGBC has also been working with the American Society of Interior Designers Foundation to create the first nationwide green renovation certification for existing homes. Its “Regreen” program will offer guidance on everything from simply painting a room to gutting a house down to its framing and rebuilding it from scratch. There will also be guidelines that focus on specific areas of the house, like the kitchen or bathroom, […]
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A new partnership will result in 10 million clean-burning stoves sold in five countries over the next five years. U.S. nonprofit Envirofit International and UK charity Shell Foundation are working together to significantly reduce the number of deaths caused by Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) – the smoke generated by traditional fires and stoves used in developing world homes. Over half the world’s population – three billion people – burn wood, dung and crop waste to cook their food, breathing in lethal fumes. According to the World Health Organization, IAP claims the lives of 1.5 million people a year worldwide, mostly women and children. Envirofit is tasked with handling the scale-up and spin off of the Shell Foundation’s Breathing Space program, which was founded in 2002 to achieve significant global reductions in IAP. The Foundation is providing Envirofit with investment and organizational support to form an independent global entity. In turn, Envirofit, working with its technology partner, Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory, is designing, developing, marketing and distributing clean cook stoves that are engineered to emit significantly less toxic emissions and use less fuel.Envirofit’s commercial model represents a new, more sustainable approach to tackling IAP, relying on market […]
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Lucky shareholders who bought First Solar (Nasdaq: FLSR) shares at its IPO last November have seen the stock skyrocket from $20-$250!
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