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Helping Communities Develop Through Efficiency & Renewables

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), the world’s leading expert on energy efficiency, is launching a web-based tool to help communities understand how energy efficiency and renewable energy can be an integral part of economic development. The most common way of creating jobs and a tax base for cities and towns is to attract industry. Towns usually offer tax breaks or free infrastructure to new industries or retail developers. These then compete with existing businesses, gobble up land, and increase infrastructure costs. After paying the costs of growth, the community may be worse off than when it started. Michael Kinsley, of RMIs Research & Consulting team, says, Most simply dont know there are business development and job creation opportunities in energy efficiency and renewable energy. RMI’s new website, the Community Energy Opportunity Finder, is designed to help communities discover those opportunities. We know that efficiency and renewables work, both through logic and by the examples of such cities as Sacramento, Kinsley continues. Sacramento voters told the municipal utility company to shut down a poorly performing nuclear electric generation plant after costly repairs failed. The utility responded by helping customers use energy more efficiently, which avoided the need for new power. It also […]

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Japan-USA to Collaborate on Hydrogen Production From Nuclear

Japanese and U.S. officials said Wednesday they have agreed to develop a joint hydrogen-based energy program. The Japanese government will cooperate with U.S. agencies to produce hydrogen by means of a high-temperature test reactor, or HTTR, which will be built at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Japan's Nuclear Energy Institute will assist in the project. Scientists view hydrogen-based fuel cells as one of the most hopeful energy resources for the future. However, hydrogen production remains an expensive process and scientists think it might best be accomplished by using nuclear reactors to generate the electricity necessary to free hydrogen from water. Also, by extending the scope of nuclear energy development to include hydrogen production, officials hope the effort could promote the construction of more nuclear plants in Japan.

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Panel Sceptical of Hydrogen Fuel Timeline

In a report analyzing Bush's Hydrogen Initiative, the American Physical Society's panel on public affairs concludes that major scientific breakthroughs are needed for the initiative to succeed. The scientists said major obstacles stand in the way of the President Bush's proposal to offer hydrogen fuel and a hydrogen-fueled cars by 2020. Columbia University's Peter Eisinger, chairman of the committee, presented the report before the House Science Commmittee on Wednesday. The most promising hydrogen engines are too expensive or do not perform well enough to be be competitive, he said, and hydrogen fuel is now four times more expensive than gasoline to produce. No existing material for hydrogen fuel tanks lives up to consumer benchmarks. In addition, improving current technology will not be enough to close what the scientists call very large performance gaps. The panel recommended that Congress be adequately prepared for the possibility the technological hurdles for the initiative will not be met by 2020.

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