There is a growing interest in Electric Vehicles with many vehicles being offered and planned for future release. The uninspired and those who may be in the employ of the Koch Machine will long and loudly rail against the EV for its status as a ZEV. But at ground level, especially in difficult economic times it is the vehicle’s cost that will motivate mass adoption of electric cars.
Sammy Chu knows that energy efficiency creates local jobs. He’s seen it for himself. As director of Long Island Green Homes, a local financing program based around Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), Chu has seen the creation of dozens of new contractor positions that have helped his home town of Babylon, New York, invest millions of dollars in efficiency retrofits.
A research team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently overcame a major obstacle in efforts to use CO2 emissions to produce liquid fuel. They have succeeded in lowering the potential energy needed to convert CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), a big step forward in creating energy-efficient ‘artificial photosynthesis’.
Arun Majumdar, Director of ARPA-e announced last Thursday 60 new research projects and now the recipients and projects have been identified. More than 50% of the awards and grants will go to Universities in over 25 states for breakthrough technology.
The near-term commercial potential of electric transportation and alternative fuels has prompted the US Department of Energy (DoE) to announce it will direct more of its $3 billion in research money to better support items like electric vehicles and smart grid technologies.
When two tech powerhouses like Google and NASA offer a Google-sized cash prize for the most fuel efficient electric aircraft, you know the results are going to be pretty stunning, and they were.
Solar Decathlon 2011, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) solar architecture contest, has wrapped up. While there is an overall winner, there are also winning teams for different topics (e.g. affordability, engineering, communications, home entertainment, and more). All of the winners are below, along with notes on why most of them won.
The technology needed to cut the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050 already exists, according to a joint statement by eleven of the world’s largest engineering organisations….
Check out this “World Energy Report” and my thoughts on some of the issues represented here…
The serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson brought to life an international need and business opportunity centered on thermally upgrading existing buildings, the world’s biggest users of energy. NYC’s Empire State Building was able to reduce its energy use by 40% thanks to a retrofit. Sir Richard founded the “Carbon War Room” based in Washington D.C. to unite international entrepreneurs, business leaders, researchers, policy experts, thinkers, to focus on solutions, not rhetoric, in efforts to tangibly combat climate change while creating 1000’s of “green” jobs.
