Results: Calendar of Events
September 30, 2009
From New York Times reporter Todd Woody: In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs. But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water. Read more
September 30, 2009
From the New York Times: The main way for homes to harness solar power today is through bulky panels added to the rooftop or mounted on the ground. But companies are now offering alternatives to these fixed installatio
ns, in the less conspicuous form of shingles, tiles and other building materials that have photovoltaic cells sealed within them. Companies are creating solar tiles and shingles in colors and shapes that fit in, for example, with the terra cotta tile roofing popular in the Southwest, or with the gray shingles of coastal saltbox cottages. Read more
September 30, 2009
Congratulations to the UAF Bristol Bay Campus for their successful Rural Business Enterprise Grant(RBEG) project to provide technical energy services to rural small businesses! The project has been awarded $88,100 in RBEG Native American program grant funding as announced by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. This is the first RBEG grant ever awarded for business energy assistance in Alaska by USDA Rural Development. The program will include workshops, energy audits, and technical assistance to help small businesses identify and implement energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions. For more information about the RBEG grants, go here
September 30, 2009
The USDA has awarded a $20,000 Rural Energy for American Program grant to Choggiung, Ltd. to install a 15kW wind turbine at the Dillingham courthouse. Choggiung, a Native village corporation headquartered in Dillingham, owns the courthouse, and leases it back to the state. The 40-foot tall turbine will be installed next spring and is expected to generate over 42,000 kilowatt-hours annually displacing almost 66 percent of the building’s annual electricity load and saving about $20,000 per year. A typical home, in comparison, uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year.
The total cost of the project, including the grant, will be about $120,000, Choggiung CEO Doug Calaway said. Anchorage-based Renewable Energy Systems will be installing the turbine, he said. For more information, contact Calaway at dcalaway@choggiung.com For more information about the Rural Energy for America Program, contact Chad Stovall, Business and Energy Specialist at the USDA office in Palmer, at 761-7718 or chad.stovall@ak.usda.gov.
September 30, 2009
More details from the U.S. Department of Energy on the $3.1B California is putting toward energy efficiency: On September 24, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a $3.1 billion slate of ratepayer-supported energy efficiency programs for 2010-2012. The effort will be administered by California’s investor-owned utilities, including Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas and Electric Company, and the Southern California Gas Company. One benefit cited by CPUC is the launching of the nation’s largest home retrofit program. Under the California Statewide Program for Residential Energy Efficiency, the state aims to achieve a 20% energy savings for up to 130,000 homes over a three-year span.
The CPUC will also provide $175 million to encourage the construction of net zero energy homes and commercial buildings. That portion of the funding will help with design assistance, incentives for new buildings that exceed the state’s energy code, and research and demonstration of new energy technologies. In addition, the CPUC program sets aside $260 million in funds for 64 cities, counties, and regional agencies, targeting retrofits of public buildings as well as leading-edge energy efficiency opportunities. See the CPUC press release and the related fact sheet (PDF 30 KB).
September 29, 2009
From the Associated Press: A pair of magnolia trees, dark red siding, ceiling fans, bamboo flooring and rustic wooden beams salvaged from a Georgia barn add to the inviting atmosphere of the little house in the middle of Florida State University’s brick-and-mortar campus. It may look like an out-of-place throwback, but the $575,000 Off-Grid, Zero Emissions Building – OGZEB – has a futuristic purpose. Its mission is to test potential solutions to the world’s energy and climate change problems by combining old tricks with cutting-edge technology, including a unique solar-hydrogen experiment. Read more
September 29, 2009
From CBC News: In April 2007, former Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn announced that Ottawa will phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent bulbs by 2012. The ban is expected to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than six million tonnes a year and save homeowners about $60 annually in electricity costs. The federal government’s move followed a similar ban by Ontario announced earlier that month. The province said that replacing all the roughly 87 million incandescent bulbs in Ontario homes with compact fluorescents or other efficient lighting by 2012 could cut electricity demand by six million megawatt hours over the course of a year, enough to power 600,000 households. Read more
September 28, 2009
From the Anchorage Daily News’ Debra McKinney: Thanks to 15-year-old Garrison Wilts, planet-unfriendly appliances lurking about the state can be exposed for the energy-sucking clunkers they are. Wilts, a South High School sophomore working his way toward Eagle Scout, is the driving force behind donations to local libraries of 65 gizmos that calculate how much energy household appliances use. Alaskans can check them out of the library like a book and use this information to reduce their energy consumption and electric bills. Read more
September 27, 2009
From the Associated Press: Think “high performance” and visions of muscle cars pop to mind not municipal buildings. Massachusetts is hoping to change that image by encouraging the development of “high performance” schools, hospitals, businesses and homes. The state is offering $15 million in federal stimulus dollars for proposals for super-energy efficient buildings. The state says it wants projects that dramatically reduce energy consumption and substitute renewable energy sources for fossil fuels. The state is also looking for breakthrough technologies that can be used in buildings throughout Massachusetts with its snowy winters and muggy summers and that go far beyond existing state and utility energy efficiency programs. Read more
September 26, 2009
From the San Francisco Chronicle: California energy regulators on Thursday approved spending $3.1 billion over the next three years to cut the amount of electricity used in the state, potentially saving as much power as the output of three power plants. Among other things, the sweeping effort will retrofit up to 130,000 homes to slash their energy use by 20 percent. It will spend $260 million to retrofit government facilities throughout the state and devote $175 million to developing “zero net energy” buildings that don’t need power from the state’s electrical grid. Read more here or in the Wall Street Journal
