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Posts Tagged ‘Department of Energy’

Greens cool on Obama water heater efficiency rules

Posted in energy efficiency, green policy, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2009| 1 Comment »

In The New York Times on Friday, I write about environmentalists’ less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the Obama administration’s proposed efficiency standards for water heaters, one of a home’s biggest energy hogs:

Environmentalists have had a lukewarm reaction to the Obama administration’s proposed energy efficiency standards for home water heaters.

The standards, which would take effect in 2015, could save consumers as much as $15.6 billion over 30 years, cut energy consumption and avoid emitting 154 million tons of carbon dioxide, according to the United States Department of Energy.

That’s good but not nearly good enough, said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a Boston-based group backed by energy efficiency advocates and environmental organizations.

“They fall short because they fail to take advantage of the advanced technology where the big savings are,” said Mr. deLaski. “The question is, do you just tweak existing technology or push the market to technologies that get you enormous savings?”

You can read the rest of the story here.

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Study: China can store 100 years of carbon emissions

Posted in energy, environment, global warming, tagged , , , , , on October 15, 2009| 1 Comment »

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Image: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Next month the United States Department of Energy will release a study finding that China contains huge underground repositories that could be used to store 100 years of carbon emissions. As I write in The New York Times on Thursday:

China has vast underground repositories that could store more than a century’s worth of carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities, according to a report to be released by the United States Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The study, conducted with scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that the geologic formations are in close to a large percentage of the country’s power plants.

That could permit “the continued use of cheap, domestic coal within China while supporting CO2 emissions reductions via the capture and geologic storage of the associated CO2,” according to an eight-page summary of the study.

The full report will be released in November.

“A lot of the policy dialogue and technical discussions have this really sharp dichotomy — either you use coal and bad things happen to the environment, or you forgo coal and bad things happen to the economy,” James Dooley, a scientist at the laboratory and an author of the report, said in an interview. “We’re trying to say maybe there’s a third way here.”

Such technology, which remains untried on a commercial scale, comes with high costs, because capturing and storing carbon emissions consumes significant amounts of energy and water. The potential environmental impact of putting billions of tons of carbon dioxide underground also remains unknown.

You can read the rest of the story here.

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Paging Dr. Chu, venture capitalist

Posted in alternative energy, BrightSource Energy, climate change, enviro startups, environment, global warming, green financing, green policy, green startups, investment tax credit, tagged , , , , , on October 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

2009 Solar Decathlon

photo: Stefano Paltera/DOE

In my new Green State column on Grist (I’m stealing the above headline from Grist executive editor Russ Walker), I take a look at the state of green tech venture investing gleaned from a recent seminar at the University of California, Berkeley:

Silicon Valley is by nature an optimistic place. After all, inventing the carbon-free future and making boatloads of money along the way is fun. And even though California is slouching toward apocalyptic collapse these days, there’s always another innovation wave to ride.

So it’s always interesting to get a more-or-less unvarnished assessment of the state of green tech, as happened last week when a group of regulators, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs gathered at the University of California, Berkeley’s business school. They were there for the Cleantech Institute, one of those pricey, closed-door seminars for executives and government officials. (I was present to “facilitate.”)

The good news: Speakers reported that investors are starting to turn on the taps again when it comes to funding green tech startups.

But don’t expect a return to the halcyon days of 2008 when $4 billion poured into all manner of green technology companies. In the wake of the “Great Recession,” VCs are reassessing their investment strategies as it becomes clear that the success of their portfolios will be influenced to a large degree by government policy and incentives.

You can read the rest of the column here.

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