Sign up | Login with →

Efficiency

A Closer Look at Cities As An Energy Solution

May 19, 2012 by Marianne Lavelle
with 178 views
0

/p>Hubert Klumpner, co-founder of the Urban Think Tank in Zurich, Switzerland and Sao Paulo, Brazil, discusses the challenge and promise of cities in addressing global resource stresses, at the Powering Progress business forum Wednesday in Rotterdam.    [read more]

Rethinking the role of government in cleantech

May 17, 2012 by Dallas Kachan
with 126 views
0

Arkady/Shutterstock

Another year, another wringing of the hands over tax credits and incentives for clean technology. It’s time to end government handouts in clean technology, policymakers need to focus on setting mandates and standards and start ratcheting back subsidies and credits. [read more]

What does Measurement & Verification mean?

May 16, 2012 by Bruce Thomason
with 150 views
0

Victor Correia/Shutterstock

M&V protocols vary from each utility to the next. What’s required in TX may not be necessarily required in Massachusetts. M&V plans are customized to each project, based on the scope work of the project, the technology, and the confidence level established by the utility with respect to the anticipated savings for the... [read more]

Senate bill aims to appraise value of home efficiency

May 10, 2012 by Dan Haugen
with 219 views
0

Say you were getting ready to put your home on the market and wanted to make a quick investment to boost the selling price. Would you be better off buying a granite countertop for your kitchen, or an ultra-efficient furnace that would lower heating bills by hundreds of dollars every year? [read more]

Norway Loves The Nissan Leaf … But Why?

May 9, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 874 views
2

image via Nissan

Nissan recently sent out a release to the automotive press touting the fact that the company had sold 1,000 Nissan Leafs in Norway in just six months. The company went on to claim that the Leaf became the second-best selling Nissan in Norway and the ninth-best selling passenger car overall in February, claiming almost 2 percent of the... [read more]

How CBO Got it Wrong on Fuel Consumption and the Highway Trust Fund

May 8, 2012 by Deron Lovaas
with 944 views
3

Artens/Shutterstock

The authors of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study released last week must have been sniffing gas fumes when they drastically overestimated the effects of the proposed fuel economy standards on the Highway Trust Fund. The study claims that proposed changes to the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards would amount... [read more]

Military moves ahead on smart energy investments despite political opposition

May 3, 2012 by Peter Lehner
with 305 views
0

Frontpage/Shutterstock

Last month, the U.S. Army announced the opening of a 30,000-square foot research facility in Michigan for developing fuel cells, hybrid systems, battery technologies and advanced alternative fuels for the next generation of vehicles. Under Secretary of the Army Joseph Westphal described the benefits of the lab in his dedication speech:... [read more]

Are Energy Efficiency Investments Being Discouraged by the Way the Federal Tax Code Treats Depreciation?

May 3, 2012 by Ethan Rogers
with 149 views
0

Is it possible that something as mundane as the treatment of depreciation by the federal tax code could be negatively impacting investments in energy efficiency? That is the question ACEEE attempts to answer in the new white paper, Depreciation: Impacts of Tax Policy. The paper is the third in a series of four working papers that examine... [read more]

Chrysler’s Electric Efforts Show Spark Of Life

May 3, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 314 views
0

It’s been a tumultuous few years since “Big Three” automaker Chrysler’s highly publicized 2009 bankruptcy and subsequent $14 billion bailout. Now, the company seems to be pulling itself from the wreckage thanks to a new alliance with European automaker Fiat, an ambitious and long overdue redesign of some of its stalwart models and... [read more]

Are Solar Subsidizers Making the Same Mistake as Oil Producers in the 30's?

May 2, 2012 by Alex Chapman
with 477 views
4

esbobeldijk/Shutterstock

Short-term thinking is the bane of the energy world. It has been so since the early days of the oil business, and it remains so with today’s market for solar photovoltaic power generation. In the former case, oil producers were guilty of the flawed thinking. In the latter, it is the producers of public energy policy.An oil reservoir is... [read more]

The Latest Publication from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development: 'The Energy Mix'

April 28, 2012 by David Hone
with 574 views
0

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) held its annual company delegate conference in Switzerland this week. For the WBCSD Energy and Climate team the event marked the launch of the latest WBCSD publication “The Energy Mix”. This is a document that started life back in the middle of last year, originally as a response to the reaction from a number of governments to the events in Fukushima. The initial aim was to inform policy makers on the implication of sudden changes in energy policy, such as the decision by the German government to rapidly phase out the use of nuclear power. But as the work got going, the document took on a number of additional dimensions. [read more]

Critical Need for Energy Savings and Loan Performance Data Remains Unmet

April 27, 2012 by Kat Friedrich
with 193 views
0

Providing energy efficiency loans could give financial institutions new market opportunities. Unfortunately, their underwriters don’t have enough loan performance information to finance large volumes of energy efficiency projects yet. This lack of information inhibits the scaling up of energy efficiency retrofits in the residential and commercial sectors. [read more]

Sub-metering can lead to big reductions in electricity consumption

April 23, 2012 by Tyler Hamilton
with 273 views
1

My Clean Break column this week highlights a commissioned study by Navigant Consulting, which looked at the impact that sub-metering has on electricity consumption in apartment units and condos versus those units on a bulk metering/billing system. The reductions appear to be quite large, as you’ll read, but there’s one caveat before you... [read more]

Reckless vs. Responsible: Dueling Infrastructure Philosophies

April 19, 2012 by Deron Lovaas
with 133 views
0

Here's the state-of-play with transportation law:The Senate passed a bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, MAP-21, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 74-22. This lobbed a nice easy proposal to the chamber on the other side of Capitol Hill, which has managed only fits and starts towards its own bill.Last week was Easter... [read more]

How green is your EV?

April 18, 2012 by Michael Giberson
with 161 views
0

On Monday the Union of Concerned Scientists released an analysis estimating the MPG equivalence of electric vehicles. The point of the analysis is this: taking as given an objective of greenhouse gas emission reduction, how do electric vehicles compare to internal combustion vehicles in that dimension? To do such an analysis requires... [read more]