Big Payday for Efficiency

President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu are following through on their promise to help make the U.S. more energy efficient. This week, Obama put the money where his mouth is and released $346 million in funding for efficiency projects. Here are the details, via GreenBuilding.com:

• Advanced Building Systems Research, $100 million: Funding focuses on the development and design of integrated systems to control and manage the technology and equipment that enable structures to be more energy efficient. The goal is to accelerate progress toward zero-net energy buildings.
• Commercial Buildings Initiative, $53.5 million: Funds are to be used for expanding and speeding formation of partnerships among major companies and organizations with large building portfolios to make that property deliver “exemplary energy performance.” The DOE wants to increase the number of partnerships, now at 23, to about 75. Competitive applications for the partnerships will open in September.
• Buildings and Appliance Market Transformation, $72.5 million: Funding will be aimed at spurring the development of more energy efficient products through an expansion of Energy Star; preparing and educating various industries on how to implement commercial building codes that call for a 30 percent improvement in energy efficiency and take effect in 2010; and adapting the DOE Appliance Standards program to better address innovative technology.
• Solid State Lighting Research and Development, $50 million: The DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy department calls solid-state lighting “a pivotal emerging technology that promises to fundamentally alter lighting in the future.” The R&D funds in this area will be channeled toward work that will bring high-performance lighting technology and products to market more quickly.
• Residential Buildings Development and Deployment, $70 million: The money is to be devoted to projects that will provide technical training and assistance to residential builders and the workforce handling improvement and retrofitting of existing homes for energy efficiency, as well as the construction of new, energy-saving homes. Eligible projects include those run by municipalities, states and utilities.

Obama also announced stricter lighting standards, which according to DOE would save customers “$1 billion to $4 billion annually from 2012 through 2042.”

Warner Bros Saving Cents With Green Sense

The New York Times reports today that Warner will cut its carbon emissions by 31 percent with new DVD cases containing less plastic:

Warner Home Video, by far the world’s largest distributor of television and movies on DVDs, has started releasing all of its new and library titles in cases that have 20 percent less plastic, a spokeswoman said. In some instances, the cases feature a thin layer of plastic; others have cutouts in the walls.

Lightening the load on the environment was the primary motivator, says Warner, which said the effort will reduce its home entertainment division’s carbon emissions by 31 percent.

But flimsier is also less expensive, and at a time when DVD sales are down sharply — 20 to 30 percent for some categories — every little cost saving helps. The changes save money on raw materials and shipping, although Warner would not estimate how much.

Now that makes both the business and enviro sides in me happy. And I love this great quote from the company’s green guru:

The initiative is “beneficial to the company’s bottom line,” said Shelley Billik, Warner’s vice president for environmental initiatives. But such moves are also “important in the preservation of natural resources” and “important to our employees,” she said.

Solar Thermal a Water Hog

I learned something new about concentrating solar power in the Washington Post yesterday–CSP uses a TON of water:

CSP, just like any thermal power plant, produces waste heat as a byproduct. In most cases, cooling towers release the heat to the atmosphere through evaporation, a process that uses gobs of water. In fact, CSP uses four times as much water as a natural gas plant and twice as much as a coal or nuclear plant.

Unfortunately, the best locations for new CSP plants are in southwestern deserts like Mojave, where sunlight is plentiful but water is rare.

Some environmentalists are also concerned about the effect new plant construction will have on endangered desert species. All of this presents interesting food for thought on what kinds of trade-offs we’ll need to make to cure our fossil fuel addiction.

A Tale of Two Corporations

Lately, General Electric’s been letting its ecomagination run wild. And Chevron…well, not so much.

A new report from GE showcases the conglomerate’s continued focus on clean energy investments:

General Electric’s revenue for its portfolio of environmentally sensitive products and services grew 21 percent last year and rose to $17 billion, according to the firm’s annual ecomagination report. …

Ecomagination offerings, which range from refrigerators and smart meters for the home to turbines and engines for industries, now include 80 products and services. The number represents a 30 percent increase compared to the portfolio in 2007, the report said.

In addition, the company’s 2008 investments in cleantech research and development increased by 27 percent, rising to $1.4 billion, according to the report. By comparison, the GE’s cleantech R&D investment was $750 million in 2005.

Chevron–who last year unleashed a torrent of greenwashed advertising–is showing little, if any, commitment to clean energy. Via Climate Progress:

The company invests a measly 5 percent compared to total annual profits in low-carbon energy programs.

What’s more, Chevron does not plan to reduce its greenhouse gases emissions.

On a side note, I noticed this interesting tidbit in the full GE ecomagination report:

NBC Universal’s Focus Features became one of the first studios to implement comprehensive sustainable practices on a major motion picture production. The 2009 film Away We Go redirected nearly 50% of its waste away from landfills toward recycling and composting.

I was already planning to see Away We Go (Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida wrote the script and John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are the film’s costars), but now I almost feel morally obligated to catch it on its opening weekend.

A Tale of Two Efficiency Programs

A great article in today’s Wall Street Journal reports that two distinct strategies exist when it comes to weatherization: the government way and the non-profit way.

First, the government way, as demonstrated by a program in Houston:

The program picks a low-income neighborhood of old houses and tries to sign up as many homeowners as possible.

Workers then move from house to house, doing a quick evaluation and using measures that can be completed in hours. Issa Dadoush, director of the city’s general-services department, said the typical homeowner’s energy use drops by as much as 20% in the steamy summer months, helping to save, on average, $335 over six months; with the stimulus money, the city says it can weatherize 10,000 homes a year.

“The assembly-line approach gives us more bang for the buck,” Mr. Dadoush said.

The non-profit approach differs in that they allocate more time and funding for each home:

Sheltering Arms typically performs an “energy audit” that figures out which improvements are the most cost-effective ways to cut energy use. But like other traditional weatherizing groups, it often combines such efforts with major home repairs, using money from a variety of sources such as United Way donations.

So it might repair a damaged roof or foundation in addition to caulking windows and replacing a refrigerator, in a process that can take days and require repeated visits.

I don’t see why both approaches can’t work together, since the additional home repairs clearly serve a purpose beyond increased energy savings.

However the stimulus funds are allocated, it seems like there are programs out there capable of doing the job right.

Obama: Ruthlessly Efficient

President Obama announced new rules that will raise fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. The announcement was met with approval by both enviros and industry:

David McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said that the agreement reached late Sunday night would provide the industry with “clarity and predictability.”

Federal CAFE standards should have been raised long ago–but better late than never.

Kohl’s: My New Favorite Chain

That is, it would be my favorite, if a single store were actually located close to my house. Via GreenerBuildings:

Kohl’s tally of Energy Star-labeled stores now stands at 219, the retailer’s design prototype for stores has been awarded initial LEED Silver certification and three other stores in the chain have attained LEED ratings.

The recognition of Kohl’s green building efforts followed news last week that the company is among the top three purchasers of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership program.

Before the week closed, the company was pointing to further acknowledgment from the EPA, this time from the agency’s Energy Star program, which singles out commercial buildings and industrial plants in the U.S. with energy efficiency ratings that reach the top 25 percent.

Not Painful News on Clean Tech

Phew, and I thought today was just going to be a depressing one for clean energy. But Green, Inc. perks me right back up:

Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu announced $93 million in funding for American wind energy research and development on Wednesday, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“The goal is to set America on a course for a secure and sustainable energy future,” said Mr. Chu to a crowd assembled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. The secretary restated President Obama’s target of generating 10 percent (PDF) of the nation’s electricity from renewables by 2012.

According to energy department statistics, in 2008, wind energy accounted for 42 percent of all new energy generation capacity in the United States.

Of nearly $100 billion in stimulus funds for energy, $26 billion have been authorized for clean energy projects since mid-February, Mr. Chu said. The Department of Energy’s goal is to award 70 percent of this total by Labor Day.

In addition to increased funding, the secretary also pledged to speed up the the energy department’s loan-making process. He said in the past it was not unusual for loan approvals to take four years. “This is a very sick economy,” said Mr. Chu. “If it takes four years to get a new set of loans out, either the patient will have recovered by himself — or he will have died.”

The secretary said the new loan approval system will cut that time to a matter of months, and drastically reduce the amount of paperwork. “We want to launch projects quickly and logically that will provide enduring value,” said Mr. Chu.

Painful News on Clean Tech VC Funding

The financial crisis and subsequent recession has led to a sharp decrease in VC investment in technology. The New York Times reports that the clean tech sector–and solar in particular–has been the hardest hit:

During the first quarter of 2009, investment in green technologies by venture capitalists, who drive a disproportionate amount of financing in new technologies, shriveled.

In the first quarter of this year, they invested only $154 million in 33 young companies, a drop of 84 percent from the last quarter of 2008 when, despite the crumbling economy, they invested $971 million in 67 start-ups, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Investment in the first quarter of 2009 reached the lowest level since 2005, before clean technology became Silicon Valley’s newest new trend.

The story includes a graphic that almost made me lose my lunch:

Spanish Company Builds Huge Solar Tower

Photo from Venture Beat

The Spaniards are not tilting at windmills when it comes to finding energy solutions. They know solar thermal will be a huge part of any carbon-free energy future. From Venture Beat:

Abengoa Solar has brought its massive PS20 solar tower in Seville, Spain online. The 20-megawatt plant is the largest of its kind in the world, delivering electricity to 10,000 homes. The development is yet another example of Spain’s growing influence in the solar sector — which now extends as far as the American southwest. …

Abengoa chose the tower model because solar thermal systems are actually cheaper to run that traditional photovoltaic arrays. They also generate more net power overall, giving the company a significant leg up.