The Washington Post reports today that the U.S. risks falling behind in the race to become the world’s clean tech superpower:

[India, South Korea, China and Japan] are pouring money into renewable energy industries, funding research and development and setting ambitious targets for renewable energy use. These plans could outpace the programs in Obama’s economic stimulus package or in the House climate bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.).

“If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is the United States’ entry into the clean energy race, we’ll be left in the dust by Asia’s clean-tech tigers,” said Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that favors massive government spending to address global warming.

…[E]ven though developing nations refused to agree to an international ceiling for greenhouse gases last week, China and other Asian nations are already devoting more attention to cutting their use of traditional fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.

Still, many opportunities for success in clean tech remain open to the U.S., particularly the export of “next generation” technology:

[Mark Levine of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] said the United States is unlikely to “become the or even a leading photovoltaic manufacturer. But our scientific talent . . . has a good chance of developing the next-generation PV systems which we could either manufacture in China or another country . . . or license to foreign companies. . . . Even if the manufacturing is done abroad, this will lead to very real and large benefits to the U.S. from licensing fees, not to say sales in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

Years ago as a camp counselor in upstate New York, I slept in a converted chicken coop. Boy, was it cold at night–and this was during the summer.

I was reminded of my chilly time at camp by this announcement from Yahoo!:

Yahoo! also announced that it would build a state-of-the-art data center near Buffalo, N.Y. — beating out sites in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — that would take advantage of the region’s hydropower and climate. Among other things, the data center will operate without any chillers, utilizing a natural cooling system supplied entirely by the cool air coming off Lake Erie. Chillers are among the most energy-intensive parts of a data center.

The Buffalo center has been dubbed the Yahoo Computing Coop, because “it looks like something chickens live in,” says Filo.

Data centers can get very hot, and it’s great to see Yahoo! using natural cool air flow, rather than an air conditioning system that would produce high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

A wake up call for all of us who want to actually move beyond petroleum (not you, BP). According to the latest Forbes Global 500 rankings, the oil and gas business remains the most profitable industry in the world. Just look at the top 6:

1. Exxon Mobil
2. Gazprom
3. Royal Dutch Shell
4. Chevron
5. BP
6. Petrobras

General Electric (#8) and Wal-Mart (#14) are two profitable companies that are starting to take energy efficiency and clean energy use seriously.  But let’s not forget that many powerful companies clearly do not want us cured of our oil addictions any time soon.

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.”

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.

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.

The manufacture of wind turbines, solar pv panels, and other clean energy products is increasingly happening in China and other rapidly developing nations. From the Financial Times:

While investment in renewable energy suffered in some of the world’s wealthiest countries last year, it is thriving in the BRICs [ed: Brazil, Russia, India, China]. China is becoming a big consumer of renewable energy: last year it added more solar capacity than any other country bar the US, and it has overtaken Japan as the biggest manufacturer of PV components. It is also reportedly introducing a preferential tariff for utilities for power that comes from utilities. But it is also pursuing rapid growth in manufacturing capacity of solar panels and wind turbine components.

A subsidy for solar manufacturing was announced in March, aimed at jobs growth. And it’s this sort of effort that could be the problem for all those green stimulus measures in developed countries, with their attached hopes of green jobs.

Not that we need another reason to get these industries up and running in the States, but the fact that green jobs are already going overseas should be strong motivation.

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 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.

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.