The amount of energy we use to manufacture the products we use every day is a significant part of the energy needed to support out lifestyle. As the planet gets more and more populated, can we continue to make manufacturing more efficient, or are thee limits to this?
Every homeowner can reduce the utility bill by reducing the amount of electrical power used in the home. It is best to begin with the appliance that uses the most energy. This is the home’s HVAC system. It is responsible for thirty percent or more of a home’s energy usage. The following tips will help reduce energy use and lower the utility bill.
Not so long ago, news about energy efficiency focused on what the US could or should do, but wasn’t to save energy. It was a tale of woe.
That’s no longer the case. Now, report after report tells the story of a burgeoning energy efficiency market that is achieving a level of surprising savings.
Space heating and cooling now makes up less than 50% of all residential energy consumption, down from 58% two decade ago, according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey from the Energy Information Administration.
Among the reasons for the shift: More energy efficient equipment,
According to a brand new study carried out by consultancy Ecofys and commissioned by the WWF, the European Union can halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
We have seen time and again that the European Union has been a leader in the fight against climate change when it unveiled its now famous 20-20-20 by 20 strategy. We also have seen that the EU could go further and that 30 percent cuts are achievable by 2020 as its Emissions keep decreasing.
What the EU currently lacks is a vision for 2020 and a plan for further cuts afterwards. There is indeed nothing official on the much needed energy transition to be done at a European level.
Now the WWF and Ecofys demonstrates that – with the right incentives and policies – by 2030 the 27 members of the EU could get 40 percent of its energy from renewables and cut their energy use by 38 percent (compared to a business as usual projection).
The report is a reminder that achieving 100 percent renewables across the economy by 2050 is absolutely feasible.
By 2030, Ecofys projects that 65 percent of the Union’s electricity, 35 percent of its heat and 29 percent of its fuels could be powered by renewables.
Energy efficiency, as you can imagine, would play an important role in this endeavor. Here is an overview of what could be done.
Ecofys breaks European energy savings by economic sector, with industry consuming 31% less energy, buildings making a 26% saving, and transport energy consumption falling by 11%, all by 2030.
The methods involved in the reductions would change from sector to sector. Transport emissions would be cut by fuel economy measures, improved air traffic management, and greater vehicle electrification and use of hybrids.
In industry, a 60 to 70 percent reduction in the intensity levels on 2000 levels would be achieved through increased recycling, stringent and ongoing ‘best available technology’ guidelines and ambitious plant refurbishments.
By contrast, with buildings, a 2.5 percent annual retrofit is proposed, along with increased heat recovery, insulation and ventilation systems, heat pumps, solar thermal systems and local renewable solutions where possible.
Let’s hope the European Union will take advantage of this report and many others to provide an ambitious energy and climate project for 2030 and beyond.
The US consumer wants food to be fresh, local and organic. But that means larger grocery bills in an economy where most people need them to be smaller.
As the New York Times tells it, 20-somethings, just out of college, feel the squeeze the most. They are more intent on Whole Foods-style eating than their predecessors, but less able to afford it. (See “The
Is all this effort to save energy worth it?
Consider this. Had we neglected energy efficiency from 1980 to 2010, worldwide energy use would be 35 percent higher. What does this mean? Look at the amount of energy used in the world’s two largest economies – the United States and China. That’s about how much energy the world saved.
Will new technologies democratize energy much the way the Internet did information?
Industry movement seems to point in that direction with the rise of the smart grid, time-of-day pricing, distributed solar, and the electric vehicle. Together these technologies offer a vision of a less centralized energy system, one where communities and households ‘vote in’ or shape the
In 2010, China built more housing than Spain has homes. That factoid underscores the significance of energy efficiency for buildings in a report released this week by an affiliate of the respected publication, The Economist.
Commissioned by the Global Buildings Performance
A team of U.S. researchers has developed a software system that they say documents carbon dioxide emissions in urban areas down to the level of individual buildings or street segments. Using publicly available data on local pollution, traffic counts, and building uses — as well as models of building-by-building energy consumption — the researchers from Arizona
I don’t think I have ever appreciated a hotel as much as I did during a trip to Houston for a cleantech tradeshow. The humidity was off the charts and it felt like I was slowly melting into the sidewalk going to and from the show each day. But the second I stepped into that hotel, everything was perfect.
The temperature was just right- not frigid, but certainly
Blend a little new energy tech with a pinch of behavioral psychology and you’re bound to get something unexpected.
Consider what happened when New York City-based ThinkEco recently lead a four-month energy challenge for international industrial packaging company Greif.
For anyone to accept the premise that social responsibility is a business strategy, we must be able to define and quantify the business benefits that can be derived from adopting this model. This is so that success can be measured, just as with any business strategy.
We don’t think about energy until something goes wrong, and this week things went wrong on an historic level. As a result, the public and pundits are again focusing on the fragility of big electric grids.
Ten percent of the world’s population – more than 600 million people – lost their power in India on July