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conservation

oPower's Gaming Technology Gets Neighbors to Compete to Save Energy

November 3, 2011 by Gernot Wagner
with 255 views
0

Wasting time Playing games online is fun. Even staid old utilities are catching on by now. In truth, ConEd didn’t come up with much of a game. It’s more like a guided tour of energy savings around your house, even though the link may say “play now.” Other companies, however, are designing real online games. oPower is famous for getting... [read more]

Time for Ontario to widen peak/off-leak rate gap in TOU pricing

February 16, 2011 by Tyler Hamilton
with 494 views
0

Results from a pilot project in Oklahoma show that having a wider TOU price gap will encourage more peak-period conservation and shifting of electricity use, a finding that contrasts with the experience in Ontario, where the price gap and the market signal it sends is very weak. In the Oklahoma trial, pricing ranged from 4.2 cents (... [read more]

Energy Efficiency Adventures

June 24, 2010 by David Levy
with 932 views
4

True stories of the hidden barriers to residential energy efficiency “In essence, the rebate on the boiler (which I’ve already paid for via a surcharge on my electricity bill) is captured by the plumber” by David L. Levy This week the temperature hit 90F in Boston, and after appropriate procrastination, I finally started replacing the... [read more]

Five Energy Backward Things We Do … and their Head-Slapping Solutions

September 11, 2009 by Peter Troast
with 92 views
0

Smarter than you: Bits Smart Power Strip As thoughtful as we are - and as conscious as we are of the environmental and economic impact of our failure to be energy efficient -  we’re human, and periodically we goof up.  Yep. We do.  We lead time-starved lives, we’re pulled in a thousand different directions, and we’ve... [read more]

Don’t Flush an Energy Opportunity

April 4, 2009 by Joseph Romm
with 103 views
0

Congress now has several opportunities to further our understanding of the nexus between water and energy use and to promote water conservation efforts that can also achieve significant energy savings. A recently introduced energy and water bill combined with financial incentives in the omnibus energy bill due later this year could... [read more]

Ontario Demand Forecast

August 6, 2008 by Glen Estill
with 288 views
1

The Toronto Star recently reported that electricity demand in Ontario so far in 2008 on a temperture adjusted basis was 1.2% lower than a year ago. This has profound implications on the future supply requirements for the province. Demand by directly connected large customers was down by 3.9%. This would reflect the difficulty that... [read more]

Obama Was Right

August 6, 2008 by Robert Rapier
with 169 views
2

I was traveling the past couple of days, or I would have been all over this story. As it stands, I certainly won't be the first one to make this point.You may know that Barack Obama recently suggested that if all Americans kept their tires properly inflated and their cars correctly maintained, this would save as much oil as we could get... [read more]

Breaking news — A real energy plan for America: Efficiency now, 10% renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015

August 4, 2008 by Joseph Romm
with 112 views
0

Senator Barack Obama has fulfilled the promise of his earlier climate plan with a detailed and comprehensive “New Energy for America” plan. He will be giving a major speech on this plan at 11 a.m. EST. in Lansing, Michigan. This is easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party: Increase Fuel Economy... [read more]

Watching the Change and Getting the Message---Why WALL E matters

July 7, 2008 by Henry Gentenaar
with 380 views
5

For those who don’t have a youngster in the house, aren’t a fan of cutting-edge animation, or just don’t get out much, you may be interested to learn that the movie WALL-E is perhaps the greatest environmental film of all time. I write this not as a steadfast environmentalist (which I am) or a shill for the Disney Company (which I... [read more]

Australia today = U.S. southwest by 2050

March 4, 2008 by Joseph Romm
with 58 views
0

The brutal drought has ended over large parts of Australia — and consumers are obsessively reducing their demand for water — and yet water “prices are set to double in the next five to 10 years,” Water Services Association Australia executive officer Ross Young told a drought briefing in Canberra. The focus on water conservation has... [read more]

Warm sweaterday gets cold sweat

February 15, 2008 by Eddy De Clercq
with 79 views
0

The schools in Flanders (Belgium) and the Dutch speaking schools in Brussels organize today a warm sweater day. The goal is to show that they support the Kyoto protocol, signed on February 16th. 400 schools will cut down the heating by at least 1 degree Celsius (or to 19oC). The Milieuzorg Op School (MOS, Environment [...]Link to... [read more]

Use Those CFLs, ‘Merica

January 8, 2008 by Jonathan Smith
with 93 views
0

Subtitle: Because We’re Not Going To Stop With The Coal First off, this blog agrees with Amory Lovins that “it is cheaper to save energy than to buy it.” And, it doesn’t take a Beltway Democrat to tell me that “Congress is a creature of constituencies, and the money and power of the constituencies are almost all on the supply side.”... [read more]

Green thinking

December 19, 2007 by David Tebbutt
with 99 views
0

One of my responsibilities at Freeform Dynamics is covering environmental issues in the context of ICT. Of course, like everyone else, I get bombarded from all directions with people with wonderful solutions, most of which require customers to fork out for more kit.It really is an attractive option too. First of all, most of us are... [read more]

Peak electricity pricing

December 12, 2007 by Tim Haab
with 39 views
0

What would an optimal electricity pricing scheme look like?  It would probably have some way of adjusting rates on the fly...depending on the current usage.  If you decide to play video games at 5:00 PM, when everyone else is coming home from work, cooking dinner, turning on the lights for the evening, you would pay more than... [read more]

Are there alternatives to electricity rate hikes?

December 12, 2007 by Tim Hurst
with 54 views
0

<?xml:namespace prefix="st1"?>Ft. Collins, CO – The electric co-op that serves over 30,000 residential and business customers in rural portions of Larimer, Weld, and Boulder counties in Northeast Colorado, has increased its electricity rates 24 percent over the last three years. But the Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association (PVREA... [read more]