Energy Efficiency Could Cut World Energy By 70%

Alan Simpson calls the national energy grid 'monumentally inefficient' ... electricity pylons in Suffolk. Photograph: Graham Turner/Guardian

Efficiency Could Cut World Energy Use Over 70 Per Cent -- New Scientist

Simple changes like installing better building insulation could cut the world's energy demands by three-quarters, according to a new study.

Discussions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions usually concentrate on cleaner ways of generating energy: that's because they promise that we can lower emissions without having to change our energy-hungry ways. But whereas new generation techniques take years to come on stream, efficiency can be improved today, with existing technologies and know-how.

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My Comment: 70% reduction .... in your dreams.

Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills

Besides eliminating your heating bill, perfect insulators could make computers cooler and speed up cell phone downloads. Stockbyte

From Discovery News:

With this insulator, the body heat produced by one person would be enough to warm an entire home.

THE GIST:

* A new material developed by MIT scientists perfectly reflects heat and absorbs none of it.
* This perfect insulator could eliminate heating bills and solve cell phone network overload issues.
* Currently, the material only works under freezing conditions, but a perfect insulator that functions at room temperature is soon expected.

A perfect insulator, or a material that reflects heat while absorbing none of it, has been created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories.

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Brilliant! Roof Tiles Change Color To Save Energy

A blast from a heat gun has turned most of the black tile in this image white. The prototype tile, developed by recent MIT graduates, is designed to turn dark in cold weather and white in warm weather. Credit: Patrick Gillooly

From Live Science:

On a blazing summer day, a black roof gets miserably hot, while a white roof reflects the sun and keeps a home cooler. In winter, the warmth generated by a solar-radiation-absorbing black roof can save energy.

That's well-known and simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Well ...

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The Green Case For Cities

From The Atlantic:

Nowhere has the greening message had a bigger impact than in the building industry. Green or sustainable architecture is all the rage—as well it should be, because buildings use a lot of energy. The construction and operation of residential and commercial buildings consume as much as 40 percent of the energy used in the United States today.

The calculation of a building’s total environmental impact must factor in everything from annual energy consumption to how and where building materials are manufactured and the handling of storm water. This requires some sort of rating system, and there are currently more than 40 of them in use around the world.

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Slime-Dispensing Hulls Could Boost Fuel Efficiency For Ships

Slick Hull A fine sheen of slime could someday cover Navy vessel hulls such as this, and cut fuel consumption to boot. U.S. Navy

From Popular Science:

A DOD-backed project would give ships a regenerating slime layer to help shed unwanted marine life.

Slime ships ahoy! A vessel that oozes a continual slick layer of slime from its hull could shed barnacles and other marine life forms, and possibly cut its fuel consumption by up to 20 percent.

Such a novel idea tackles the problem of removing marine plants, barnacles and tube worms from ship hulls every year, lest the buildup cut into both speed and fuel efficiency. The fuel savings in particular may look especially tempting for the U.S. Department of Defense, which has backed the project and previously invested in hull-cleaning bots.

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Actions Taken Over Next Decade To Demonstrate And Deploy Key Technologies Will Determine US Energy Future

From Science Digest:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2009) — With a sustained national commitment, the United States could obtain substantial energy-efficiency improvements, new sources of energy, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the accelerated deployment of existing and emerging energy technologies, according to America's Energy Future: Technology And Transformation, the capstone report of the America's Energy Future project of the National Research Council.

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White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters

A Wal-Mart store in Chino, Calif., has both a cool roof and solar panels to cut its energy use. J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO — Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.

“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.

He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.

All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.

Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.

Relying on the centuries-old principle that white objects absorb less heat than dark ones, homeowners like the Waldreps are in the vanguard of a movement embracing “cool roofs” as one of the most affordable weapons against climate change.

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Top 25 Green Energy Leaders

From Scientific American:

Forward-thinking companies, universities and municipalities are finding creative ways to run on renewable power.

It is no longer enough to just conserve energy. More and more corporations, government agencies and entire cities are making large, long-term commitments to ensure that the power they do use comes from renewable sources. To recognize these trendsetters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes a quarterly list of the top American users of green power: organizations that generate their own renewable energy, buy it from suppliers, or purchase offset credits to compensate for their traditional energy use. To put things in perspective, the average U.S. home consumes about 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year. That means number 25 on the list buys enough green energy to power more than 14,000 homes.

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Gadgets Sap World's Electricity

From Live Science:

Sometime this year, the number of people using a personal computer will pass the one billion mark, according to the International Energy Agency. By sometime next year there will be more than 3.5 billion mobile phones subscribers and 2 billion TVs in use around the world, according to a new report from the agency.

And that's a problem.

You've heard of vampire energy? It's the name given to electricity that runs TVs, stereos and computers when they're in sleep mode, not even being used. You've seen the little red lights that indicate something's still humming inside.

Add that to the juice used by all manner of gadgets when they are being used or charged and, well ...

Without new policies, the energy consumed by electronic gadgets will double by 2022 and increase threefold by 2030 to 1,700 Terawatt hours (TWh), the IEA estimates.

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Leaving Computers On Overnight = $2.8 Billion A Year

Vice President Gore's Office

From Yahoo Tech:

Admittedly I don't think much about it at all. I leave my laptop running overnight because I know it'll take five minutes or more to get things going in the morning -- not just booting up, but launching the various apps I start the day with, downloading my overnight email, filtering out the spam, and otherwise "getting settled."

But all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. The tally: An estimated $2.8 billion wasted on excess energy costs each year in the U.S. alone.

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My Comment: I think it is more than that. I have 3 computers in my office. I have always left them on 24 hours. About 6 months ago I started to shut them down when I was no longer working with them. My electricity bill has dropped appreciably since then.