Saving Energy

Below you will find 5 great ideas for saving energy at home. We can all do so much more to reduce our energy consumption and be more efficient in our usage. In doing so, we will save money and help the environment.

I had a conversation today with someone at Starbucks regarding fuel usage in our cars, I mentioned that I've started to plan out my trips so that i'd use less gasoline. He was stunned and said, 'you do that'. I said, of course I do... I still do everything that I need to... I just try to better plan my trips so that I minimize the amount of gasoline I use.

Being conscious of our individual usage and smart about what we do everyday can make a big difference towards reducing our energy consumption.

USA Today 2/14/08

Five simple ways to save energy at home

By Joan Brunskill, Associated Press Writer

It's easier than you think to paint your house "green."

Simple changes can save resources and energy — and perhaps slow global warming. A growing demand for energy efficiency topped findings from the American Institute of Architects' home-design trend survey for the second quarter of 2007.

The group's chief economist, Kermit Baker, said the panel of 500 architecture firms found high demand for insulation panels, tankless water heaters, geothermal heating and cooling, and green flooring products such as bamboo and cork.

Warren, Vt.-based architect John Connell, a member of the institute's housing committee, said the No. 1 question he gets from confused homeowners is where to start.

"None of the more sexy energy-saving installations — small windmills on the roof, photovoltaic panels, solar-water collectors — make any sense until you've done your insulation, weather stripping and other fundamentals," he said.

For the do-it-yourself homeowner, this is Connell's five-point plan for easy, immediate action:

LIGHTING

Changing to fluorescent bulbs makes sense despite recent concerns about how to dispose of the small amount of mercury they contain.

"If you put in compact fluorescent lighting today you won't have to change those bulbs for a couple of years at least — and systems are quickly evolving to deal with disposal as more and more people do this," Connell said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is working with bulb makers and retailers to expand recycling and disposal options. Check with your local sanitation department to see if you can recycle bulbs containing mercury. If not, the EPA suggests sealing the bulb in two plastic bags and putting it in outside trash for normal collection.

WINDOWS

First, with a compass, identify which windows face south and which north. Use insulating shades on those windows to keep heat in or out and slow the loss of energy, Connell said.

You can open and close windows and shades to help heat or cool the house, depending on season and geographical location.

"In the south, thermal shades work best on the outside, for a cooling effect in hot climates," he said. They'd have to be made of materials that stand up to UV rays. "In the north, shades work best on the inside, for keeping heat in."

APPLIANCES

Taking good care of appliances has a big payoff. "Everything in my life, including the car, could save energy, if I just maintain it properly," Connell said.

Clean your refrigerator's ventilation grill. Have your boiler, furnace, air conditioning units and clothes dryer serviced thoroughly — especially if there are funny noises emanating from any of them.

RECYCLE HEAT

Recycle your heated clothes-dryer exhaust through an appropriate filter into your house.

"It's so simple. Go to the local hardware store and ask for a bypass filter — it's just an 8-inch cube. You just need a screwdriver and the instructions are right on the package," he said. "The bypass helps humidify and heat the house, while the filter still prevents lint and dust from getting into the air you breathe."

This change also helps prevent ice build-up and rot on the outside of the house where the exhaust is vented.

"Of course, it will also raise the moisture level in the laundry room, so remember to leave that door open."

WEATHERSTRIP

Connell called weatherstripping the first line of defense, in the sun belt or snow belt.

"Weatherstrip every door and window in your house — the difference this makes is amazing if you've never tried it. Also check heat loss through mail slots, mechanical chases, chimney flues and outlets on exterior walls," he said. "The reality is, you lose far more heat from your house through air leakage than from anything else."

Outlets on exterior walls can also be weatherstripped, he added. "Buy foam weatherstripping gaskets, take off the coverplates, stick on the foam, then replace the coverplates."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Ethanol Bust

The following article is troubling in two ways. One it neglects the current development of cellulosic ethanol and second it doesn't speak to the economic impact of gasoline getting close to $4 per gallon. Both of these things will make ethanol more economical.

Investors, economist, consumers, politicians and others need to understand that corn based ethanol is a necessary component of meeting the energy/fuel needs of the US. It's an emerging technology and industry. Over the next several years we are going to see an enormous amount of change and development.... uncertainty. This uncertainty is what investors don't like.

Eventually corn based ethanol will be transition to cellulosic ethanol... fuel made with switch grass or other biomass material... the development of ethanol plants and the necessary infrastructure is critical and the development needs to continue. Investors need to keep in the 'game' today... rather than get shut out later. Its truly only a matter of time before this industry takes off.

2/28/08 CNN.com/Fortune

The ethanol bust

The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike.

By Jon Birger, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Cargill announces it's scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an unfinished ethanol plant in Canton, Ill.. And that was just Tuesday.

Indeed, plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months, as Wall Street pulls back from the sector, says Paul Ho, a Credit Suisse investment banker specializing in alternative energy. Financing for new ethanol plants, Ho says, "has been shut down."

How can the ethanol industry be slumping only two months after Congress passed an energy bill most experts consider a biofuels boon? The answer is runaway corn prices.

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

Just look at Verasun (VSE). In the third quarter of 2007, Verasun's gross profit margin shrank from 37% to 12%, as its corn costs rose from $2.05 a bushel to $3.32 a bushel. And, remember, corn prices today are 60% higher than they were back then (whereas wholesale ethanol prices are up only 30%.)

The margin crunch now afflicting ethanol producers is something I predicted when I first wrote about the "Dot-Corn" boom in Fortune last March (see "The Great Corn Gold Rush" ). Here's an excerpt:

[In the summer of 2006] when corn was $2 a bushel and oil was $70 a barrel, ethanol plants were minting money. They averaged $1.06 in profit for every gallon of ethanol sold, according to Credit Suisse. Today, with oil at $60 and corn at $4, ethanol producers typically net an average of only 3 cents...

If corn spikes to $5 -- a real possibility, says A.G. Edwards commodities analyst Dan Vaught -- or oil declines to $50, ethanol's once-fantastic margins would turn negative. That possibility is creating tensions between ethanol producers and corn growers, two groups whose lobbyists are normally attached at the hip.

Looming over all this is a huge catch-22: $4 corn is a result of the 31 new ethanol plants built since 2005, but investors won't keep bankrolling new plants if $4 corn keeps eating up their profits

The shakeout was inevitable. That said, the ethanol business isn't going away, at least so long as the federal government continues to mandate the use of biofuels -- 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, up from 7 billion last year-and impose hefty tariffs on imported ethanol. There is an oversupply of ethanol right now, but the yearly increase in the biofuels mandate means that demand will eventually catch up with supply.

What probably has changed permanently are ethanol economics. The days of cheap corn are over, and the industry's new, lower profit margins clearly favor ethanol leader Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500) over all the smaller producers like Verasun, privately-held Poet Energy and the many, many farmer-owned ethanol cooperatives. ADM's massive 200 million-gallon-a-year ethanol plants simply have better economies of scale than their 50-gallon-a-day rivals. And the fact some of ADM's big plants run on coal instead of natural gas makes ADM's cost advantage that much greater.

Of course, I'm not saying anything that Wall Street doesn't already understand. Since the new energy bill was signed by President Bush on Dec. 19, Verasun and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) are each down 38%.

And ADM? It's up 10%.

New Technology for developing countries... and perhaps the US.

This is a great new technology, and at a relatively low cost. Hopefully it will spread very quickly in developing countries to help meet its needs for energy, much better for the environment than large fossil fuel plants. It will also be cheaper than building transmission lines and support infrastructure.

This also holds significant opportunity for the US. Many places in the US still use septic systems which could be modified, to capture the methane gas for later use... or immediate use. It would probably be done at a relatively low cost... and make the home energy independent.

Just as we use heating oil, natural gas, petro, coal, etc. We need to explore a wide assortment of technologies... to meet our current and future energy needs. This is just one that should be explored and developed.

CNN.Com/Fortune Magazine 2/27/08

Waste not, want not

Plastics maker Sintex seeks to solve India's energy and sanitation problems in one stroke - with an at-home biogas digester.

By Jeremy Kahn

(Fortune Magazine) -- Sintex Industries, a plastics and textiles manufacturer in Gujarat, India, is betting it can find profit in human waste. Its new biogas digester turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity, simultaneously addressing two of India's major needs: energy and sanitation.

Sintex's digester uses bacteria to break down waste into sludge, much like a septic tank. In the process, the bacteria emit gases, mostly methane. But instead of being vented into the air, they are piped into a storage canister.

A one-cubic-meter digester, primed with cow dung to provide bacteria, can convert the waste generated by a four-person family into enough gas to cook all its meals and provide sludge for fertilizer. A model this size costs about $425 but will pay for itself in energy savings in less than two years. That's still a high price for most Indians, even though the government recently agreed to subsidize about a third of the cost for these family-sized units. "We want to create a new industry for portable sanitation in India that's not available now," says S.B. Dangayach, Sintex's managing director.

Government officials plan to end open defecation by 2012 (hundreds of millions of Indians use railroad tracks or other outdoor locales instead of toilets) and say biogas plants are part of the solution. A.R. Shukla, a scientific advisor in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, says India could support 12 million such plants, but only 3.9 million - mostly pricier models big enough to accommodate entire villages - have been installed to date. And last year the government fell far short of its target for new installations.

The future can be glimpsed on a dusty, rutted road in a poor South Delhi neighborhood. Here 1,000 people use an immaculately clean public toilet constructed by a nonprofit foundation, the Sulabh Sanitation Movement. The biogas digester attached to toilets provides cooking gas for a 600-student school and vocational-training program the foundation runs. In the past, nongovernmental organizations like Sulabh were the only ones offering biogas digesters.

But Sintex is hoping cities, real estate developers, building managers, and hospitals will jump at a ready-made way to harness the same energy.

Biogas digesters are just a small fraction of Sintex's business. The company has installed only about 100 of them. But it plans to increase investment and production tenfold in the coming year. That growth potential has helped Sintex stock more than double this past year. Human waste may be a stinky business, but to investors it smells like money.

A Sintex digester can turn manure into fuel for cooking and electricity.

Wind Energy Transmission

Whether it is transmission lines or ethanol stations it seems the distribution system for alternative energy and fuels needs to pick up the pace of development. Alternatively, the existing distribution system needs to embrace the new sources of energy.

What would it hurt for a station to dedicate one pump to ethanol fuel... they do it today with diesel. It would expand their customer base. Electric utility companies should also look at rerouting their power as to free up capacity for renewable sources of electricity. Yes it would take effort ... but its the right thing to do.

Government also needs to put up money to speed the development of distribution systems. The recently passed economic stimulus program should have included spending on infrastructure projects... which would have created jobs... and spending... just as they are attempting to do on the consumer side.

It takes time for new systems to be developed... and for change to be truly engendered. Its a slow process... however, everything we can do to speed the process should be done ... today.

USA Today 2/26/08

Wind energy confronts shortage of transmission lines

By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY

As wind farms sprout across the country, they're kicking up a new quandary: how to zap the electricity to homes and businesses that need it.

The USA's wind-power boom, especially in rural parts of Texas, the Midwest and California, is poised to outstrip the capacity of high-voltage lines to send the electricity hundreds of miles to population centers such as Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The transmission-line shortage is threatening to slow wind energy's breakneck growth and could prevent some states from meeting renewable energy mandates.

Wind power depends on a robust transmission grid. Wind farms are in remote reaches where gusts are strongest, while the greatest power demand is in cities.

Until now, wind developers have piggybacked on existing wires, says analyst Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. But after wind energy soared 45% last year, spare transmission capacity is depleted. Wind power generates more than 1% of U.S. electricity.

Stringing new wires is easier said than done. Wind developers won't go ahead with projects until transmission lines are in place, and utilities are loath to build the lines until they're sure the developers won't back out. Also, the first wind developer in an area is often asked to shoulder much of the $1.5 million-per-mile cost of a high-voltage line.

In Texas, which has about 25% of U.S. wind power, more eye-popping growth in 2008 is expected to push generation past transmission capacity by 65% by year's end, says Bill Bojorquez, vice president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a power-grid manager.

Wind farms will have to compete to be among the lowest bidders to get on the grid, leaving others off. "Clearly we don't want to build wind farms and have them not run," says Horizon Wind Energy executive Denise Hill.

In southwest Minnesota, dozens of wind projects have been proposed to serve the Twin Cities. Even if just 30% of them, with 7,500 megawatts of capacity, are developed, that would far outpace the 2,000 megawatts of transmission capacity planned.

Similar bottlenecks are stalling wind farms in the Midwest, Southwest and California. Compounding the standoff: Some states don't want residents paying for lines that will largely benefit neighboring states. As a result, utilities in several Midwestern states may not meet mandates for clean energy to make up about 20% of their energy mix by 2020, says Clair Moeller, an executive for the Midwest grid operator.

Xcel Energy, a Midwest utility, says it can't raise money for transmission lines that might not carry any juice. "You're committing $1 billion in capital in the hope the cost recovery will come, and that's a tough proposition," says Paul Bonavia, head of Xcel's utilities group.

To break the logjam, officials in Texas, the Southwest, Minnesota and California plan to spread transmission-line costs among multiple wind developers or utilities. But that won't offer near-term relief. A wind farm can be built in 18 months, while a transmission line can take five to 10 years.

Ethanol Stations

We need more ethanol stations nationwide. Please read the article below. It is absolutely incredible that there is only 3 ethanol stations in California. Absolutely amazing. We need more distribution.... yesterday. It only costs approximately $300 to convert your car to accept ethanol. The price of a nice dinner out with your family. Many energy conscious people would glad start using ethanol if they could.... if it were readily available. At one point Walmart was considering selling ethanol at its stores nationwide. I hope they are continuing to pursue this... especially since they also have garages and could convert existing gasoline engines for its customers. .... target, costco, sears and others should also consider this as a way of serving their customers. We need more distribution... so whether its traditional gas stations ... or less traditional locations, we need it yesterday. USA Today 2/27/08 Ethanol stations remain few and far between By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY LOS ANGELES — The ethanol industry has a problem, but you wouldn't have known it Tuesday from the line of big, thirsty vehicles snaking down the street from a single service station. Most states still have few places that sell the industry's highly touted E85 fuel (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) even though there are an estimated 6.8 million cars and trucks on the road capable of burning the mixture. Here in the motoring mecca of Los Angeles, there's exactly one E85 station to serve consumers. It is one of just three open to the public in all of California. Thanks to a promotion subsidized by General Motors (GM), drivers lined up their SUVs, pickups and minivans for a blessed two hours of E85 priced at 85.9 cents a gallon — a far cry from the $2.999 a gallon that Conserv Fuel in the tony Brentwood section of the city usually charges. "I've been waiting to get a station out here," said Keira Lowery, 28, of Los Angeles as she filled up her Dodge Caravan minivan. Some waited more than half an hour. Promotions like this one have been staged around the country to raise awareness of E85, plugged as a home-grown, environmentally sound fuel. But even officials of GM, which makes the most flex-fuel vehicles that can burn E85, say they are frustrated by the slow rollout of pumps around the country. "We're trying to bring attention to the fact we need more stations," said Clay Okabayashi, a GM executive who was on hand at the event. The Corn Belt has most of the E85 pumps. Of the 1,490 U.S. stations with E85, 89 are in Iowa, 169 in Illinois and 342 in Minnesota, according to the tally kept by the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. But there are just four stations in Utah and one each in Montana, Massachusetts and Delaware. The slow growth of the E85 stations contrasts with this season's huge corn plantings and the continued opening of ethanol plants, many near the corn. While more pumps are located near ethanol plants, red tape is also a problem. In California, the coalition blames California air-quality officials for holding up installation of E85 pumps in a dispute about permits for their vapor recovery systems. "The problem is distribution and overcoming some laws and regulatory hurdles," says Phil Lampert, the coalition's executive director. Vapor-recovery issues have been ironed out with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Local air-pollution districts will soon be cleared to allow more E85 stations, says Dimitri Stanich of the California Air Resources Board. That could make customers happy. Jesse Lopez, 37, a freight manager in Los Angeles, says he'll consider filling up his pickup more often on E85. He says he's spending $80 a week on gasoline now. As for E85, "It depends on the price and how it burns" in the truck, he says. And Daniel Ochoa, 30, a store clerk from Los Angeles, says he bought his truck in hopes that he could fill it with E85, but he never before had the chance to try it. He says he knew the day would come.

Wind Electricity -- Texas Success Story

Kudos to Texas. "Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines."

This is absolutely amazing. While we still have a way to go, this is helping the US move in the right direction. Every bit helps as we move toward renewable and alternative sources of energy.





New York Times 2/23/08

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind

Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Jim Albert, front, and Jerry Tuttle, General Electric wind technicians, perch atop a turbine in Sweetwater, Tex. The turbines stand as high as 20-story buildings.

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: February 23, 2008

The Energy Challenge

Hidden Power

Articles in this series will periodically examine the ways in which the world is, and is not, moving toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future.

Wind Power in Texas

Graphic

From Oil to Wind

Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Louis Brooks is paid $500 a month for each turbine he permits on his property. More Photos »

SWEETWATER, Tex. — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

“That’s just money you’re hearing,” he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy.

“I have the same feelings about wind,” Mr. Pickens said in an interview, “as I had about the best oil field I ever found.” He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.

Wind turbines were once a marginal form of electrical generation. But amid rising concern about greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants, wind power is booming. Installed wind capacity in the United States grew 45 percent last year, albeit from a small base, and a comparable increase is expected this year.

At growth rates like that, experts said, wind power could eventually make an important contribution to the nation’s electrical supply. It already supplies about 1 percent of American electricity, powering the equivalent of 4.5 million homes. Environmental advocates contend it could eventually hit 20 percent, as has already happened in Denmark. Energy consultants say that 5 to 7 percent is a more realistic goal in this country.

The United States recently overtook Spain as the world’s second-largest wind power market, after Germany, with $9 billion invested last year. A recent study by Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., projected $65 billion in investment from 2007 to 2015.

Despite the attraction of wind as a nearly pollution-free power source, it does have limitations. Though the gap is closing, electricity from wind remains costlier than that generated from fossil fuels. Moreover, wind power is intermittent and unpredictable, and the hottest days, when electricity is needed most, are usually not windy.

The turbines are getting bigger and their blades can kill birds and bats. Aesthetic and wildlife issues have led to opposition emerging around the country, particularly in coastal areas like Cape Cod. Some opposition in Texas has cropped up as well, including lawsuits to halt wind farms that were thought to be eyesores or harmful to wetlands.

But the opposition has been limited, and has done little to slow the rapid growth of wind power in Texas. Some Texans see the sleek new turbines as a welcome change in the landscape.

“Texas has been looking at oil and gas rigs for 100 years, and frankly, wind turbines look a little nicer,” said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner, whose responsibilities include leasing state lands for wind energy development. “We’re No. 1 in wind in the United States, and that will never change.”

Texas surpassed California as the top wind farm state in 2006. In January alone, new wind farms representing $700 million of investment went into operation in Texas, supplying power sufficient for 100,000 homes.

Supporters say Texas is ideal for wind-power development, not just because it is windy. It also has sparsely populated land for wind farms, fast-growing cities and a friendly regulatory environment for developers.

“Texas could be a model for the entire nation,” said Patrick Woodson, a senior development executive with E.On, a German utility operating here.

The quaint windmills of old have been replaced by turbines that stand as high as 20-story buildings, each capable of generating electricity for small communities. Powerful turbines are able to capture power even when the wind is relatively weak, and they help to lower the cost per kilowatt hour.

Much of the boom in the United States is being driven by foreign power companies with experience developing wind projects, including Iberdrola of Spain, Energias de Portugal and Windkraft Nord of Germany. Foreign companies own two-thirds of the wind projects under construction in Texas.

A short-term threat to the growth of wind power is the looming expiration of federal clean-energy tax credits, which Congress has allowed to lapse several times over the years. Advocates have called for extending those credits and eventually enacting a national renewable-power standard that would oblige states to expand their use of clean power sources.

A longer-term problem is potential bottlenecks in getting wind power from the places best equipped to produce it to the populous areas that need electricity. The part of the United States with the highest wind potential is a corridor stretching north from Texas through the middle of the country, including sparsely populated states like Montana and the Dakotas. Power is needed most in the dense cities of the coasts, but building new transmission lines over such long distances is certain to be expensive and controversial.

“We need a national vision for transmission like we have with the national highway system,” said Robert Gramlich, policy director for the American Wind Energy Association. “We have to get over the hump of having a patchwork of electric utility fiefdoms.”

Texas is better equipped to deal with the transmission problems that snarl wind energy in other states because a single agency operates the electrical grid and manages the deregulated utility market in most of the state.

Last July, the Texas Public Utility Commission approved transmission lines across the state capable of delivering as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy by 2012, presuming the boom continues. That would be five times the wind power generated in the state today, and it would drive future national growth.

Shell and the TXU Corporation are planning to build a 3,000-megawatt wind farm north of here in the Texas Panhandle, leapfrogging two FPL Energy Texas wind farms to become the biggest in the world.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Pickens is planning his own 150,000-acre Panhandle wind farm of 4,000 megawatts that would be even larger and cost him $10 billion.

“I like wind because it’s renewable and it’s clean and you know you are not going to be dealing with a production decline curve,” Mr. Pickens said. “Decline curves finally wore me out in the oil business.”

At the end of 2007, Texas ranked No. 1 in the nation with installed wind power of 4,356 megawatts (and 1,238 under construction), far outdistancing California’s 2,439 megawatts (and 165 under construction). Minnesota and Iowa came in third and fourth with almost 1,300 megawatts each (and 46 and 116 under construction, respectively).

Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon, states with smaller populations than Texas, all get 5 to 8 percent of their power from wind farms, according to estimates by the American Wind Energy Association.

It has dawned on many Texans in recent years that wind power, whatever its other pros and cons, represents a potent new strategy for rural economic development.

Since the wind boom began a few years ago, the total value of property here in Nolan County has doubled, and the county judge, Tim Fambrough, estimated it would increase an additional 25 percent this year. County property taxes are going down, home values are going up and the county has extra funds to remodel the courthouse and improve road maintenance.

“Wind reminds us of the old oil and gas booms,” Mr. Fambrough said.

Teenagers who used to flee small towns like Sweetwater after high school are sticking around to take technical courses in local junior colleges and then work on wind farms. Marginal ranches and cotton farms are worth more with wind turbines on them.

“I mean, even the worst days for wind don’t compare to the busts in the oil business,” said Bobby Clark, a General Electric wind technician who gave up hauling chemicals in the oil fields southwest of here to live and work in Sweetwater. “I saw my daddy go from rags to riches and back in the oil business, and I sleep better.”

Wind companies are remodeling abandoned buildings, and new stores, hotels and restaurants have opened around this old railroad town.

Dandy’s Western Wear, the local cowboy attire shop, cannot keep enough python skin and cowhide boots in stock because of all the Danes and Germans who have come to town to invest and work in the wind fields, then take home Texas souvenirs.

“Wind has invigorated our business like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marty Foust, Dandy’s owner, who recently put in new carpeting and air-conditioning. “When you watch the news you can get depressed about the economy, but we don’t get depressed. We’re now in our own bubble.”

Hybrid-Electric Vehicles

I added new information today to the AltEnergyStation.com web site with information on how hybrid-electric vehicles work. Hybrids are gaining in popularity and is a great near term option for us all, as we try to reduce our energy consumption.

Numerous people have indicated to me that it isn't the best solution. I agree with that, however, until a better technological solution becomes available, its a good option, compared with doing nothing.

I also read today that a company in France is developing a diesel hybrid-electric vehicle, another good option... especially when you consider using biodiesel. Hopefully this technology will be available soon.

Click here to read.... http://altenergystation.com/Hybrid-Electric_Vehicles.html

Wind Energy Credits

While this article is over a year old, I thought it was worthy of posting again. We all need to support, with our business, those companies that are doing their part to move towards alternative energy. Kudos to Whole Foods. Posted 1/9/2006 11:13 PM Updated 1/10/2006 1:22 AM

Whole Foods goes with the wind By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY Whole Foods Market is about to put some serious wind in its sales. A Wyoming site produces energy from the wind. The trend-setting, natural foods grocery chain on Wednesday will announce plans to become the largest buyer of wind energy credits in North America by purchasing credits equal to 100% of its projected energy use for 2006. That will make Whole Foods the only Fortune 500 company to purchase renewable energy credits — which subsidize the production of energy from renewable sources such as wind — to offset 100% of its electricity use, says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says. "In the corporate world, this is huge," says Kurt Johnson, head of the EPA's Green Power Partnership. "When a market leader does something like this, others will emulate." Like most businesses, Whole Foods can't get its power directly from renewable energy sources. Instead, it is contracting to purchase 458,000 megawatt-hours of the renewable energy credits. One credit represents one megawatt-hour of electricity from renewable sources. Producers of such energy sell the credits through brokers; the proceeds help offset the additional cost of generating electricity that way rather than by burning fuels such as coal. Wind energy is the fastest-growing source of electricity in the USA. The Whole Foods purchase will help avoid more than 700 million pounds of carbon dioxide pollution in 2006, says the EPA. That's the rough equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road, the EPA says. "From a branding perspective, it's a stroke of genius," says Barbara Brooks, president of the Strategy Group, a consulting firm. "It shows they understand where their customers are coming from not only nutritionally, but environmentally." Whole Foods declined to state what it spends on utilities or what it's paying for the wind credits. In the 41 states with programs to promote credits, residential customers typically pay a 2-cent premium per kilowatt hour for them, while many business customers pay a 1-cent premium or less, says Lori Bird, senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a Department of Energy contractor. Whole Foods' purchase equals 458 million kilowatt hours, and it gets no tax advantage for it. The move comes at a time when more Fortune 500 companies are trying to project a "greener" image, including General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt recently pledged to decrease pollution and double R&D spending on cleaner technologies. Whole Foods isn't doing this altruistically. Most grocery stores are massive users of energy. As the 180-store chain grows, Whole Foods is increasingly being asked by its environmentally minded customers and employees what it is doing to limit energy waste, says Michael Besancon, the regional president overseeing the chain's green efforts. "We're looking to show our customers and team members that we walk our talk," says Besancon. Requests to help wind energy showed up on Whole Foods customer comment cards, says Quayle Hodek, CEO of Renewable Choice Energy, from whom the chain bought its credits. "Comments like, 'Wind power is cool,' matter to (Whole Foods) because it matters to their customers."