Posted by Lane Burt in Green Enterprise , Solving Global Warming
Today the New York Times highlighted the growing consensus around a national focus on retrofitting American homes to save money and create jobs, all tagged as "Cash for Caulkers". This is a great idea, and certainly not new (but the...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The Natural Resources Defense Council, along with our fellow efficiency advocates, announced the results of successful negotiations with the lighting industry on standards for street lights and parking lot lights. Standards on outdoor lights are such a no-brainer because these...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The media has been taking the Department of Energy (DOE) to task over a recently released audit by the Inspector General (IG) which highlighted some well known shortcomings in the Energy Star program. The conclusions were not surprising - there...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The White House released the "Recovery through Retrofit" report today, which reaches familiar conclusions - retrofitting homes and developing a residential energy efficiency industry can save money, slash carbon emissions, and create jobs right now. The report also had specific...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP) and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a new report highlighting the opportunities for saving billions of dollars and huge amounts of energy through updated federal appliance standards. The full...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The odd saga of stimulus money and the state of Alaska drew to a close yesterday, ending in what should have been a big win for efficiency, as the state legislature voted to override former-Governor Palin's veto of efficiency money....
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
I blogged last month on the deliberate misinformation campaign that the enemies of energy efficiency used to weaken several key policies in ACES, costing us all money. In the last couple weeks several news stories have continued to shine a...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
DOE has been rolling through approvals of state energy plans and releasing huge chunks of the $3.1 billion dollars available through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for State Energy Programs. All told, 29 states and several territories have received...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
The enemies of energy efficiency have unveiled their new tactic to keep you from saving money and energy: they're just going to tell you ridiculous lies and hope you believe them. It seems that because they have had a hard...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
On Monday, President Obama and Secretary Chu announced a strengthened final rule on lamps that will save consumers $4 billion annually by 2022. This standard would cover the tube fluorescent bulbs (general service fluorescent or GSFL) that we are all...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed a landmark climate and energy bill that would finally begin to address the climate crises and move us towards a rational energy policy in this country. There are many key efficiency provisions in...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
Is energy efficiency recession proof? I seriously doubt it, but it should be. A low risk investment with great returns should be at the top of everyone's list regardless of the economic climate. This is true for consumers and the...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
Recently, there has been a good deal of media attention given to building energy codes generally and specifically the codes provision of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), both good and bad. A couple of these articles piqued...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
Better late than never. As promised in my last entry on the buildings sections of the Waxman Markey draft, here is a review of the appliance section. Subtitle B - Lighting and Appliance Energy Efficiency Programs Sec 211 - Lighting...
Posted by Lane Burt in Solving Global Warming
It has been a very busy couple of weeks here in Washington. It seems that folks in Congress have gotten the message that building efficiency is a great idea, no matter what the context. This is illustrated by the Waxman-Markey...
