South Africa, which earlier this month hosted the turbulent climate change conference (COP17) in Durban, has announced it is supporting en.lighten, a global initiative to phase-out inefficient lighting by 2016. South Africa promised to transition
Economic South Asian superpower India has firmly embraced solar power, advancing the target date by five years for selling solar-generated electricity at the same rate as electricity generated by fossil fuel plants, from 2022 to 2017.
According to government officials, the reason for
Supply chain management used to be a narrow, back-office, low-profile function.
Decisions, which were made somewhere else in the company, were simply implemented, based on efficiency and cost. Those decisions usually covered product/service offerings, design, selecting and
Electric utilities operated under a rarified business model for decades. Their customers were captive so they rarely had to think about what motivated them to buy. New government energy efficiency mandates have changed that, and done so with an ironic twist. Now utilities must figure how to get their customers to refrain from buying.
It is fair to say that when BIC, the Paris-based company known for lighters and shavers and pens, announced on December 2 that it has acquired Vancouver-based Angstrom Power, there was some surprise.
Angstrom has had a commercial portable fuel cell for
The 138 page document has been released by the New Jersey Governor’s Office that is a master plan on energy for the state. This final version is largely the same as the draft document released last summer, save for a few changes. It lays out the direction for how the state will meet its energy demands over the next
For a long time, South Korea has been completely dependent upon imported energy resources to meet its large energy consumption. Prior to the use of renewable energy technologies, South Korea was the fifth largest importer of oil. Since the mid-1990s, however, that reliance on oil has steadily decreased.
Minneapolis electronics retailer Best Buy announced last month it is launching a new Home Energy Management Concept. In addition to an “online learning center,” stores in select cities (Chicago, Houston, San Carlos, Calif.) will have an “in-store experience,” complete with demonstration vignettes for a touch and feel
The Green Grid has produced a useful guide to what it calls Containerized Modular Data Center Facilities, which recognizes the increasing interest in modular design and how it can help improve energy efficiency in data centers. I’ve tackled this subject in a previous blog but chairing the recent Green Data Center
There have been a few interesting acquisitions this month. First, energy efficiency solutions provider Serious Energy bought Agilewaves, a Silicon Valley startup that specializes in energy data storage and retrieval.
Agilewaves owns at least one published U.S. patent
More than half of the states in the nation have created programs to increase the energy efficiency of homes through a comprehensive approach that looks at all opportunities to save energy, from insulation to upgrading heating and cooling systems. When taxpayer and ratepayer dollars are used, it is
Using state-of-art video technology, 12 energy experts met simultaneously in London, Washington DC and São Paulo to discuss the technological, behavioral and policy solutions to help the world achieve long-term energy goals.
The event was called Global Energy Conversation
Sixty days ago, U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra challenged the utility industry to enable consumers to download their detailed energy usage with the simple click of a “Green Button.”
The concept of a Green Button—inspired by successes in getting Americans their own health care
Are you a weather junky? I am. After all, I make plans, dress and tend my garden around what’s happening outside. While utilities have always used weather forecasts as part of their operations, our energy future is becoming increasingly more dependent on predicting the weather in a high-tech, sophisticated