Oct. 10, 2024 -In an effort to one-up nature, engineers have created an artificial plant that captures carbon dioxide ten times more efficiently than its natural counterparts. And it generates enough electricity to power a lamp.

The fake plant is built with bacteria-based solar cells, and looks odd. But it offers a fun, novel concept to tackle two important issues: carbon dioxide removal and clean electricity generation.

Sep. 24, 2024 -Restringing existing electric power infrastructure with more powerful lines could double transmission capacity on many long-distance conduction lines while saving money and cutting through bureaucratic red tape, according to a new study. The approach could also reduce costs for consumers but has been largely ignored in the United States until now.

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July 11, 2024 -A Climate Change Conversation With Bill Gates: When the topic turned to the issue of just how much energy artificial intelligence was using, Gates was surprisingly sanguine.

A.I. data centers represent a relatively small additional load on the grid, Gates said. What’s more, he predicted that insights gleaned from A.I. would deliver gains in efficiency that would more than make up for that additional demand.

July 11, 2024 -You wouldn’t choose algae of all things as a beast of labor, but in the microscopic world, these microorganisms are veritable workhorses. Researchers in Japan harnessed the motion of green algae cells by attaching micromachines, including a “scooter” that moves forward and a “rotator” that might just be the smallest Ferris wheel in the world.

These micromachines, reminiscent of futuristic nanobots, showcase the potential for algae-driven technology. The results are spectacular.

Apr. 30, 2024 -A new report shows that zero-carbon power generated 54% of Minnesota’s electricity in 2023, marking the fourth consecutive year that zero-carbon power has made up the majority of Minnesota’s electricity (54%), compared to the national share of carbon-free power at 41%.

The 2024 Minnesota Energy Factsheet was released by Clean Energy Economy Minnesota (CEEM) and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE).

Apr. 13, 2024 -A loose line of people snaked from a doorway in the side of a cargo truck. One young boy wandered over to examine several bales of hay stacked nearby while others waiting craned their necks to get a peek inside. A small sign in the shape of a barn stuck over the open door read, “Petting Zoo.”

But the queuing visitors weren’t there to meet pigs, goats or sheep. What they wanted was hands-on experience with a different kind of beast: heat pumps.

Mar. 26, 2024 (BBC News), Heat pumps run on electricity instead of gas.

As the UK increases its production of electricity from renewable sources like the wind and sun, it is hoped that they will play a big part in cutting emissions.

Heat pumps warm buildings by absorbing heat from the air, ground, or water.

Mar. 12, 2024 -What if you had only $100 to invest in a cheaper, cleaner home? Or $10? Or even just $1?

The conversation about cutting your emissions is often about replacing big-ticket items like stoves, furnaces and cars. But millions of people are neither ready nor able to spend thousands of dollars. What if you didn’t need to?

Click now to learn much more.

Mar. 10, 2024 -The new American home is shrinking.

After years of prioritizing large homes, the nation’s biggest and most powerful home builders are finally building more smaller ones, driving a shift toward more affordable housing.

The boom in smaller construction has cut median new-home sizes by 4 percent in the past year, to 2,179 square feet, census data shows, the lowest reading since 2010. That’s helped bring down overall costs and contributed to a 6 percent dip in new-home prices in the same period.

Feb. 21, 2024, “Out in the middle of nowhere” in Moore County, N.C., developer Ron Jackson said he is building what America needs — more affordable homes for the nurses, police officers and teachers struggling to find housing they can afford amid a nationwide shortage.

Even in 2018, the use of air conditioners and electric fans made up 10% of global electricity consumption, according to the International Energy Agency.

But something stands in their way.

(PR Newswire), Feb. 9, 2024, For the first time in history, football's biggest game was powered by 100% renewable, carbon-free energy (CFE), independently verified by real-time data and decarbonization platform NZero.

Through a series of partnerships, policies and programs designed to minimize their environmental footprint, the Las Vegas Raiders have been able to convert Allegiant Stadium, the host of this year's Big Game, to 100% CFE.

Feb. 8, 2024 -Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace�and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.

Nine states have signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030.

Feb. 2, 2024 -EnergyHub, a distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) provider, in partnership with Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), has enrolled more than 100,000 homes in the Save on Energy Peak Perks program in six months to create what they’re calling the largest residential virtual power plant (VPP) in Canada.

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Jan. 25, 2024 -Researchers have given the term “power plant� a new meaning with new leaf-like energy generators that convert the energy from falling raindrops and blowing wind into electricity. The device, reported in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, generates enough power to light up 10 LEDs, at least for short bursts of time.

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Dec. 14, 2023 -When it comes to batteries, we’re used to thinking small. Small phones, light laptops, compact electric vehicles. But what the world needs now is batteries that are big.

Big enough to smooth out the unavoidable peaks and troughs of solar and wind farms, and big enough to let us shutter fossil fuel power stations for good, meaning we need to store huge amounts of energy across the globe. The US alone will need to add hundreds of gigawatts of storage by 2050 to meet its clean energy goals, the DOE calculates.

Dec. 11, 2023 -There comes a point in every city’s life when it thinks to itself: it’s time for a change.

And since municipalities can’t buy convertibles or pick up parasailing, there’s one obvious starting point for transitioning into a so-called smart city- converting to smart LED streetlights.

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Nov. 23, 2023 -When Glen Peters bought a heat pump for his home in Oslo he wasn’t thinking about the carbon it would avoid. Convenience played a role; a fireplace was too much of a hassle – the effort of having to buy, prepare and store the wood – and the wall-mounted radiators are too dusty. “They’re a pain in the ass to clean,� said Peters (who is actually a climate scientist).

But the main factor, according to Peters, who had recently swapped to underfloor heating, was money.

June 4, 2022 - This energy-efficient device not only can heat your home in the winter, it can cool you down on hot days � while saving you money.

As temperatures and energy bills spike this summer, it might be time to consider installing a heat pump. Despite its name, a heat pump cools your home as well as warming it in winter, but the device is far more efficient than a conventional air conditioner and fossil fuel furnace.

Mar. 15, 2020 (CleanTechnica) -You may not have heard much about the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands since a series of treaties signed there in the spring of 1713 brought an end to the War of Spanish Succession. The city is famous for the number of its residents who rely on bicycles to get around. It built the first bike lane in in the Netherlands in 1885. Last year it built the world’s largest multi-story bicycle parking garage with room for 12,500 bikes.

Now a new development of 6,000 homes in the city’s Merwede district is being planned with bicycles as the preferred mode of transportation. It is expected to be serviced by 20,000 bicycles but no cars, with construction scheduled to begin in 2022. The new 24-hectare community will be home to about 12,000 people and will include 2 new primary schools, a high school, and several health centers, together with an assortment of shops and businesses.

From: Huber Technology -Most companies and agencies today operate with the concept of business sustainability. This is a holistic way of managing a business that includes environmental, social, and financial responsibilities. To meet this triple bottom line, companies must find ways to be cost-efficient, socially responsible, and eco-friendly at the same time.

Heating and cooling facilities uses large amounts of energy, and accounts for much of a company’s operating costs. With new technologies, companies can reduce reliance on fossil fuels while saving money.

Union of Concerned Scientists,   - How you drive and take care of your vehicle can have a big effect on how much fuel you use. Follow these simple tips to save money and reduce pollution.

Covered are “Before You Hit the Road,� “Behind the Wheel,� and “Driving a Clean Car Revolution.�

(8Rivers)-The future of our planet – considering a rapidly growing global population – demands a balanced portfolio of renewables and carbon-based methods of power generation, particularly those employing carbon capture.

Free emissions capture is the holy grail of carbon-based power generation. Today, power cycles require the addition of expensive, efficiency-reducing equipment to decrease and capture emissions. The Allam Cycle embodies major advantages over conventional systems: attaining high efficiencies at low costs with low to no water consumption. All this with full, free emissions capture.

EnergyCentral Apr. 9, 2019 -Offsets are financial instruments that are used by the California Cap and Trade Program and other similar programs. This paper we will reviews the types of offsets, offset protocols and offset verification.

Jan. 14, 2021(ScienceDaily)-Just one hour of videoconferencing or streaming, for example, emits 150-1,000 grams of carbon dioxide (a gallon of gasoline burned from a car emits about 8,887 grams), requires 2-12 liters of water and demands a land area adding up to about the size of an iPad Mini.

But leaving your camera off during a web call can reduce these footprints by 96%. Streaming content in standard definition rather than in high definition while using apps such as Netflix or Hulu also could bring an 86% reduction, the researchers estimated.

-With clean energy from the sun and wind, we have the technology to provide for our energy needs without the global consequences of pollution. Yet we’re still producing and consuming virtually all of our energy in ways that do lasting damage to our environment, our health and our climate. And to make matters worse, of all that dirty energy we produce, two-thirds of it ends up being wasted.

We can address the largest environmental challenges of our time by shifting toward 100% renewable energy. The fastest, easiest and cheapest way to do that is to first reduce the total amount of energy we use and let go to waste. Learn how you can reduce your energy waste and become more energy efficient in your home.

The article tells about the many ways we can save power and reduce both our carbon footprint and utilty bills.

Everyone loves electric cars�they’re clean, fun to drive, and increasingly affordable to own. But what do electric vehicles (EVs) mean for the electricity grid? Could they enable the use of more renewable power?

Drivers, electric utilities, and the environment can all benefit when electric vehicles are better integrated with the grid.

July 2020, (Bloomberg Green)-In Singapore, close to the Equator, temperatures regularly rise above 32 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) � but inside the soaring glass greenhouses of Gardens by the Bay, the country’s award-winning botanical park, it’s a pleasant 24 degrees.

The daffodils and tulips of the flower dome, along with two dozen nearby towers that are normally full of bankers, shoppers, residents, hotel guests and gamblers, are chilled by what is probably the world’s largest underground district cooling system.

Feb. 7, 2017- Taxa Outdoors’ tow camper, the TigerMoth, is a compact home on wheels geared towards traveling adventurers. The lightweight camper sleeps two, has LED lights, and even better, comes with a built-in electrical system that generates energy while being towed. The camper’s battery can store energy for at least seven days, making off-grid living easier than ever before.

Solar and wind are poised to become a larger part of that green-power mix. But there’s a problem: people need electricity even when the sun’s not shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

One way to solve this problem is to store the excess energy and then release it when there’s a need.

Energy conservation is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about freeways jammed with idling vehicles.

But in California, which has some of the most congested freeways in the country, that's about to change. The CEC has approved a pilot program in which piezoelectric crystals will be installed on several freeways.

An international team of engineers, physicists, and chemists have created the first fiber-optic solar cell. These fibers are thinner than human hair, flexible, and yet they produce electricity, just like a normal solar cell. The US military is already interested in weaving these threads into clothing, to provide a wearable power source for soldiers.

Mar. 30, 2022, (ENERGY.GOV)-Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs), sometimes referred to as GeoExchange, earth-coupled, ground-source, or water-source heat pumps, have been in use since the late 1940s. They use the relatively constant temperature of the earth as the exchange medium instead of the outside air temperature.

Although many parts of the country experience seasonal temperature extremes -- from scorching heat in the summer to sub-zero cold in the winter�a few feet below the earth's surface the ground remains at a relatively constant temperature. Depending on latitude, ground temperatures range from 45°F (7°C) to 75°F (21°C).

Apr. 1, 2021 (ZME Science) -Seemingly small changes in lifestyle can add up to have a huge impact at the societal level. According to a new study, choosing to bike rather than drive a car may reduce the average person’s transportation-related carbon emissions by 67%.

These findings apply for choosing to bike over driving a car only once over the course of a day, meaning you don’t have to substitute all car trips in order to make a huge dent in your carbon footprint. This also means you could reduce your transportation-related emissions by 95% if you choose to exclusively bike.

Oct. 3, 2019 (inhabitat)- Just in time for the annual celebration of Energy Efficiency Day, the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released its 2019 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard.

July 14, 2015  (National Resources Defense Council(NRDC))-There has been a veritable explosion in the number of electronics, appliances, and other miscellaneous devices plugged into, or permanently connected to, America's homes.

Most are consuming electricity around-the-clock, even when the owners are not using them or think they have been turned off. This always-on energy use by inactive devices translates to $19 billion a year -- about $165 per U.S. household on average -- and approximately 50 large (500-megawatt) power plants' worth of electricity.

July 22, 2019 (National Resources Defense Council(NRDC))) -One of the easiest, cheapest ways to fight climate change may be shining down on you right now. The bulbs you use in your kitchen ceiling, chandelier, bedside lamp, or bathroom vanity can be either a major energy suck or a smart way to lighten your power load.

Jan. 15, 2019 Energy.Gov -Professional energy assessments generally go into great detail to assess your home's energy use. The energy auditor will do a room-by-room examination of the residence, as well as a thorough examination of past utility bills. Many professional energy assessments will include a blower door test. Most will also include a thermographic scan. There's also another type of test -- the PFT air infiltration measurement technique -- but it is rarely offered.

Check out the Energy Saver 101 home energy audit infographic to get an idea of what energy auditors look for and the special tools they use to determine where a home is wasting energy.

Aug. 26, 2014,  -Researchers at Mich. State have created a fully transparent solar concentrator, which could turn any window or sheet of glass (like your smartphone’s screen) into a P.V. solar cell.They can be efficiently deployed in a many settings, like tall buildings or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e-reader.

January 13th, 2014 -Yes, all you rhubarb fans take note. A new energy storage breakthrough is under way at Harvard University, and it is based on a common little molecule that is almost exactly the same as one found in rhubarb.

June 23, 2018 -Energy bills are one of the largest regular bills behind mortgages, rent and council tax.

The average annual dual-fuel bill, which covers both gas and electricity, stands at more than $1,700 per household – and this is on the rise.

For most homeowners, cost is secondary to the aesthetics and milieu of the home they are creating. Can you design a beautiful home that still helps you save each month on your energy bill?

June 13, 2014 - LEDs outperform incandescent lights, hands down. But they should also give farmers unprecedented control over plant growth, development and nutritional content in future, say researchers.

Jan. 26, 2015 -Reducing energy use by enhancing efficiency has long been viewed as “low-hanging fruit� in the drive to lower energy bills, boost economic productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Can a home be beautiful, powered entirely by solar energy, use sustainable heating and cooling systems and save it’s owners roughly $3,500 a year? Why, yes it can. Just ask Joanne Coons, who built her award winning, single-family, Net Zero Energy Home in 2010. Sustainable Woman Joanne talks Net Zero standards, efficient appliances and goods, her 10kW solar panels and more.

Click now to sign up for a free estimate.

December 1, 2014 -It requires no electricity, uses the universe as a heat-sink even with the sun shining. -A material that simultaneously reflects light and radiates heat at frequencies that vent it through the Earth’s atmosphere could one day help cool buildings on hot days.

Powered by a five-watt solar panel and a built-in thermal fridge, the Beachill waterproof mattress lets beach-goers keep their drinks cold and their portable devices charged while making a positive impact on the environment.

Experts weigh in on tips for energy efficiency. Appliances, home energy audits, driving tips. Try it, you might just learn something.

Want to save money and reduce your carbon footprint? Who wouldn't?