1. Home
  2. Articles posted by: Rona Fried (Page 2067)

House Punts on Efficiency, Senate Looking Better

In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a comprehensive energy bill that does relatively little to promote energy efficiency. According to ACEEE’s analysis, this bill will produce only about 57% of the energy savings of the bill passed by the House last year. The reduction in energy savings is primarily due to the fact that tax incentives for efficient new homes, commercial buildings, appliances, and combined heat and power (CHP) plants included in last year’s bill were dropped this year. Savings were also lost because the House gutted a provision in last year’s bill calling on DOE to set efficiency standards for ceiling fans. However, the House bill will produce some savings, primarily from new efficiency standards on half a dozen products, tax incentives for upgrades to existing homes, an expansion of daylight savings time, and R&D efforts and direction to redesign the appliance “Energy Guide” label. The Senate energy bill is looking better, with markup scheduled to begin May 17. The Senate is likely to add half a dozen additional consensus efficiency standards to the House bill that ACEEE helped negotiate. The Senate is also likely to add back in many, if not all, of the efficiency tax […]

Read More

Ceres Power Cell Passes Milestones

Ceres Power announced its fuel cell exceeded global industry standards after thousands of hours of tests. The fuel cell ? which is the size of an After Eight mint ? fits into a domestic central heating boiler instead of a pilot light, transforming boilers into mini-generators that produce both heat and electricity. The cell would provide homes with a clean and cheap form of energy that produces significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions than conventional fossil fuels. Ceres, which was spun out of Imperial College London and floated on AIM last year, has been working on the fuel cell for more than 15 years. It can be powered by natural gas as well as hydrogen and does not need platinum as a catalyst. The company, which has a stock market value of about 53 million, believes the first fuel cell boilers will be on sale in about three years, at prices similar to existing boilers. The system will create CO2 savings of 30 to 50 per cent, even allowing for some CO2 being produced by the fuel cell running on natural gas. Ceres is developing cells to power other applications. These include devices for rural communities that rely on bottled gas; […]

Read More

Toyota to Cut CO2 Emissions 20% by 2010

Toyota Motor Corp. (TSE:7203) announced it’s new goal of cutting worldwide carbon dioxide emissions 20% by 2010. In the first revision to its environmental program in five years, Toyota set numerical targets for 22 categories in five fields, from recycling to environmental management systems. By 2006, the company will launch autos in Europe and Japan that do not have mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and lead.

Read More