News Tagged ‘energy’

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced support for energy-saving commercial building projects as part of an ongoing effort by DOE to improve the energy efficiency of buildings in the United States. With money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, DOE’s national laboratories will select and fund technical experts to provide technical guidance to commercial building owners and operators. The goal of this Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) initiative is to increase the energy efficiency of selected new and existing buildings.

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If you are in or around Washington DC on March 10th, 2010, you may want to register to attend the Great Energy Efficiency Day event being held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.  The event is organized by the Alliance to Save Energy and promises an in-depth discussion on funding, technology and policy measures required to realize energy efficiency’s full potential.

Thie Great Energy Efficiency Day, which has been going on since 2004, has a very impressive roster of confirmed speakers that will focus on the following topics:

• Federal, State and Local Stimulus Dollars Promoting Energy Efficiency: Today and Tomorrow
• Stimulus and Smart Communities
• Building for the Future: EE Technologies Today and Tomorrow

Admission is free, but you must register in order to attend.  Read more about the Great Energy Efficiency Day’s agenda and catch up on past events at the official site.

There has been a flurry of media attention being given to Bloom Energy as they get ready to come out of stealth mode with their Bloom Box fuel cell technology.  Bloom Energy has been developing their fuel cell for almost a decade and has received approximately $400M in capital investment from some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.

K.R. Sridhar, the company’s rocket scientist founder, believes that his fuel cells will be able to power your home in five years at a price tag of around $3,000.  In order to get there, they’re going to have to drive the cost of production way down.  The company has already signed up some very big names with deployments at Google, eBay and FedEx to name a few. The recent state and federal tax benefits that have been created to spur the industry have helped these companies cut the acquisition cost down from the estimated $700,000 price tag for these installs.

The following video, which aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes on February 21, 2010, gives a very good overview of the technology behind the Bloom Box as well as the background of the company.

What do you think? Is K.R.’s vision realistic or can the utility companies stop worrying that their business model is about to go through a major disruption? Let me know in the comments.

At this years TED talks, Bill Gates unveiled his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles” to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

You can watch his whole talk below or visit the TED site to view other interesting talks.

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The conference has evolved and now drives the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Since most of us don’t get a chance to listen to these discussions live, it’s great that TED makes them available online.

TED via Gizmodo

On February 12th, the Obama Administration announced a multi-agency initiative to spur regional economic growth while making buildings more energy efficient.  Seven federal agencies, including the Dept. of Energy, Dept. of Labor and the Small Business Administration, issued a combined Funding Opportunity Announcement of nearly $130 million over five years to create a regional research center that will develop new building efficiency technologies and work with local partners to implement the technologies in area buildings.

Since buildings account for nearly 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, energy efficiency improvements in buildings can provide significant benefits not only to the building owners through lower utility bills, but the entire country through decreased carbon emissions.

“Energy efficient buildings represent one of our best and most immediate opportunities to create jobs, save money and cut carbon pollution.” – U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

The research center will be based at a university, DOE national laboratory, nonprofit organization, or private firm in what the release calls an Energy Regional Innovation Cluster (E-RIC) that is centered around an Energy Innovation Hub.  The center is expected to partner closely with local or state government officials and leverage the expertise of local architects, builders, and manufacturers.

For more details, view the full release on the DOE web site.

For many that keep track of the global climate debate, the next 12 days is about as exciting as it gets.  That’s because from December 7th through the 18th,  193 of the world’s nations will have their top climate and environmental ministers in Copenhagen for the 15th annual Conference of the Parties (or COP15) of the United Nations Climate Change Convention.  The goal for this year’s conference is to establish an ambitious global climate agreement that can take the place of the expiring Kyoto Protocol.