New energy efficiency standards for home water heaters being proposed by the US Administration do not go far enough, says the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The new standards will cover the nine million residential water heaters sold every year that account for an estimated 20% of a typical homes’ energy consumption. Savings on the order of 2.6 quads of energy over 30 years will result, says the Department of Energy (DOE), reducing customers bills by around $15.6 billion and emissions by 154 million metric tons.

Engineers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the Florida State University are closer than ever to launching a new generation of high-field magnet, being 3,000 times stronger than an ordinary refrigerator magnet and will be able to generate a field about 45% more powerful than the strongest superconducting magnet currently available.

The new high tech magnet will be made of a high-temperature superconductor that is far less expensive to operate than its conventional counterparts and more energy efficient. According to the researchers, it could mark the beginning of a new generation of super powerful magnets that help lower both the carbon footprint and cost of scientific research.

The researchers there have developed a system that is simpler to assemble and manufacture, and laid out their suggestion in a paper (pdf) presented at the 2008 European Wind Energy Conference.

Till now; the blades of wind turbines have been connected to a generator via a gearbox. Their technology substituted a “C” shaped core generator (initially in a 20 kW prototype) to test to see if by changing the mechanical structure of the generator they could still maintain rigidity and structural integrity while cutting the weight by more than half.

The design is simply a novel arrangement of the electromagnetically active components: the magnets, steel and copper inside the generator and the copper coils.

Construction will start next week on the £42 million Wave Hub marine energy project in South West England.

The Wave Hub, which will be located 10 miles off the north Cornwall coast, will serve as a test bed for wave energy devices by providing an electrical connection from the seabed at a depth of around 50 m to the national grid.

Initially, the Wave Hub will have four berths for wave energy devices up to a maximum capacity of 20 MW, but has the potential to scale up to 50 MW in the future.

Ocean Power Technologies has signed up to take the first berth when it becomes available to test the performance of its PowerBuoy wave energy converter.

The first devices are expected to be deployed in 2011, once the cabling and connectors have been constructed. Starting on Monday, civil engineers will drill ducts from Cornwall coast at Hayle to connect to the subsea cable and a new electricity substation on the site of a former nearby power station.

Graphene is an extremely low density material, almost an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. It has been the focus of much research because of its exceptional electrical, mechanical and optical properties. It holds great promise in renewable energies.

Among the so far underutilized advantages Graphene offers are that it is fifty times stronger than steel, and it has five times the conductivity of copper, with only one quarter of the density.

Last week New Scientist reported that US emissions could be cut by more than 7 per cent if people changed their ways at home. Separate studies in US, Dutch and British homes have reported that 26 to 36 per cent of domestic energy use is "behavioural" – determined by the way we use machines, not the efficiency of the hardware itself.

This means that "machines designed to change humans", as the persuasive technology group of Stanford University, California, calls them, could save us huge amounts of energy and money.

Energy awareness

Many projects are trying to make that happen, with two main motivations. One is to understand which facets of human nature can be manipulated to change behaviour. The other is to develop technical strategies to do so.

The proposed changes will phase out the least efficient outdoor lighting products by the end of 2012, transitioning to new lighting products that are better for the environment and less costly to run. For example, new outdoor lights will be required to have a sensor that will turn them off during daylight hours, putting an end to wasteful streetlight operation during the day. New parking lot lights must be capable of being dimmed, which can cut their energy use in half.

The agreement also directs the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop even better standards by 2013.