energy efficiency

New financial instruments may one day plug cities’ building codes into global carbon market

The William J. Clinton foundation has arranged billions in financing to help a coalition of sixteen cities cut urban emissions by applying a range of energy efficiency measures to aging buildings.

Efficiency measures tends to get lumped in under the heading of conservation, but they really deserve to be their own full-fledged category of solutions to global warming. If conservation is simply doing less of a polluting activity, efficiency is doing the same activity with less energy. Turning off the lights is conservation. Screwing in a compact fluorescent light bulb is efficiency.

Efficiency measures deserve their own category because they are among the most important strategies for reducing emissions. Emissions reductions from efficiency projects are immediate (which is good), they are often cheap or even free (which is great), and they don't require individuals to make significant changes to behavior (which is important to quick adoption, no matter how much we might wish otherwise).

Unused mobile power adapters still use energy

As part of an announcement by Nokia regarding new green initiatives and features for future phones, the company revealed a little-known fact about mobile phone adapters:

Not exactly

Wondering what to make of this? President Bush responded to a Supreme Court environmental ruling by settling on regulatory changes that don’t need congressional approval, the White House said Monday. Bush is announcing the steps he is directing his administration to take in a Rose Garden appearance later Monday. Read on down a little bit: […]

All about lighting

The WorldWatch Institute discusses a burst of new efforts from various and sundry governments to ban incandescent bulbs. Wal-Mart is using its considerable monopsony powers for good, forcing its suppliers to substantially reduce the amount of mercury in CFL bulbs. (Cool about the Wal-Mart solar buy too, huh?) CFL schmeeFL. LEDs are coming on strong!

How to reduce your household energy consumption, easy-like

Last Sunday's New York Times honed in on the dubious practice of Americans buying carbon offsets to brand themselves carbon-neutral. Andy Revkin, the paper's global-warming reporter, quoted me saying, "There isn't a single American household above the poverty line that couldn't cut their CO2 at least 25 percent in six months through a straightforward series of fairly simple and terrifically cost-effective measures."

My claim has hit a nerve. Despite the absence of a link, already a dozen readers have tracked me down on the web and written to ask what measures I have in mind. This article is for them and anyone else who might be interested.

First, a confession. As often happens, assertion preceded analysis. But my claim didn't come from thin air -- I have experience in energy analysis and a feel for the numbers. With a bit of figuring, I made a list of 16 energy-saving (hence carbon-reducing) steps that together should do away with a bit more than one-quarter of a typical U.S. household's carbon emissions.

The top five:

Speaking of CFLs …

This is funny.

Not tonight … your CFLs give me a headache

I have to say, this story has sure played out at my house, where my bride lovingly (I hope) refers to me, in moments of teasing (I hope), as "Mr. Conserver Man" for what she considers to be an excessive devotion to making the electric meter spin more slowly and for my habit of figuring out ways to avoid using the car.

But the 100w incandescent in her bedside lamp says that I'm at least smart enough to know when to quit:

Good stuff

I’ll leave it to Gar to judge if the targets are sufficiently aggressive, but either way I’m happy to see new legislation on energy efficiency being proposed in Congress. This stuff isn’t sexy and doesn’t garner much media attention, but — as we keep saying — efficiency is the low-hanging fruit. Time to eat some […]

Indirect greenhouse-gas savings

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

Previously I pointed out that efficiency, doing more with less, is a key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (A lot of people on Gristmill are fans of conservation, doing less with less. I have nothing against this, so long as it is a voluntary choice, but I won't be spending a lot of time on it.)

Normally, when people think of efficiency they think of direct savings -- insulating homes, electric cars, and so on. That is: make the same sort of goods we make now, but more cleverly, so they require fewer inputs to operate. And that is an extremely important kind of efficiency.

But Amory Lovins and Wolfgang Feist pointed out long ago that there is another kind of efficiency. Instead of looking at how to provide the same goods, look at what those goods do for us, and see if there is another way to provide the same service. For example, it remains essential to start making steel, cement, and mill timber more efficiently.