San Francisco To Ride the Wave of Wave Energy

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the city has applied for a federak permit to develop wave power off the City by the Bay’s coastline.
When fully operational, it’s anticipated this alternative energy project would generate anywhere from 10 to 30 megawatts of energy, with a potential to go up to 100 megawatts.
San Francisco will join the [...]

L.A. to Implement Biggest Green Light Retrofit to Date

Following up on a recent news release, the city of Los Angeles plans to replace 140,000 streetlights with energy-efficient LED’s over the next 5 years.
With help from the Clinton Climate Initiativethis upgraded system is expected to save the city $48 million in energy and maintenance costs. It will also cut carbon emissions 197,000 tons over a seven year [...]

Dreams of Space Can Come True

 
I promised you some tales of my time at Space Camp. Here’s the first installment of that amazing experience.
Marshall Space Flight Center – the site where Space Camp took place on February 6th and 7th, 2009– is located on the Redstone Arsenal, an Army installation in Huntsville, Alabama.
One of three main sites where NASA manages the [...]

Grassroots Community Solar Scores Discounts for Homeowners

Following the same principle that buying in bulk is cheaper, a community-based solar power buying group is helping homeowners purchase solar installations for discounted rates.
1 Block Off the Grid (a for-profit organization) brings groups together to meet with installers and garner group rates that make installing solar more affordable.
General Manger David Llorens co-founded 1BOG in [...]

Green Plug Moves Towards Universal Standardization

Industy giants like Ricoh, Innergie, Westinghouse Digital Electric and Pacific Gas and Electric, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a representative of the Chinese government have all endorsed Green Plug.
Embracing 2-way digital communication to create a universal power source , Green Plug’s “Power Hub” is the first charger to simultaneously power multiple devices with differing voltage and power [...]

Just how Eco-friendly is your Laundry Detergent?

A lawsuit is being filed  to force cleaning conglomerates Tide, Colgate-Palmolive and others to reveal the exact chemical ingredients of their laundry detergents to consumers.
Environmentalists and health activists are filing a lawsuit in New York today, using a little-known New York statute meant to combat phosphates in detergent as the basis for the suit.
Filed on behalf of six state and national environmental and health groups, including the [...]

Energy Hog Desktops? Not any More

Desktop computers, every company’s
mainstay, use large amounts of electricity – from 300 to 600 watts each. Multiply that by the number of employees a company has and you get high utility bills.
Maintaining multiple workstations requires dedicated IT staff to troubleshoot, handle maintenance issues and install upgrades. All this translates to high operational costs. With businesses [...]

Data Centers – Go Green or Go Dark? (part 2)

Fascinatingly, the reasons for increased awareness by IT executives of the need to green data centers stems from environmental news reports, consumer demand for green products and rising costs of inefficient data centers.If awareness is growing, action is definitely lagging. The report reveals a lack of industry leadership and uncertainty as to reliable industry advisors for [...]

Data Centers – Go Green or Go Dark? (part 1)

What would happen if you went online to buy or search something  and nothing happened?
The EPA predicted that grim possibility in 2007 in their “Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency’, saying within 5 years, power failures and limited availability would stop operations at more than 90 percent of U.S. data centers.   

As early [...]

What’s New?

Check out my Writers Notebook for newly published environmental and related  articles.