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Energy and environmental leaders, including representatives from the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Pew Environment Group, recently met with members of President-elect Obama's transition team. The groups came carrying a monstrosity of a document that describes their recommendations on energy and environmental issues for the new administration. The 391-page report, entitled "Transition to Green," was made available Monday on Obama's transition Web site. The environmental groups had suggestions for a wide swath of federal departments, from Energy to Education and Homeland Security to Defense.

Green building of the week from Inhabitat is this vertical farm proposed for Vancouver - Amazing Skyscraper Farm for Vancouver. I'll believe vertical farms work when I see it, but I'd like to see one tried, purely for the sake of showing how successful they can (or can't) be. Vertical farms are one of our favorite future-forward concepts for creating sustainable cities. Providing locally-grown produce and food will not only help us reduce our carbon emissions significantly, but also help us become healthier. Romses Architects recently came up with an amazing concept for a vertical farm in Vancouver as part of the City's 2030 Challenge. Complete with a tower for growing fruits and vegetables, a livestock grazing plane, a boutique dairy farm, commercial space, transit lines, renewable energy and more, the Harvest Green Tower has the potential to be a food growing, energy producing, living, breathing sustainable transit hub.

Cleantechnica reports that the UK is experimenting with smart fridges (fridges that adjust their power consumption dynamically based on grid load) - UK Giving Away "Intelligent Fridges". Live in the UK? You may be the lucky recipient of a free "intelligent" refrigerator. 3,000 fridges that adapt power usage based on the demands of the electrical grid will be given away by the government next year. According to a report from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, the dynamic demand fridges could potentially save 2 million tons of carbon each year and £222m. In addition to saving energy, the dynamic demand fridges will also help ease the transition to intermittently produced renewable energy by reducing the minimum amount of power necessary to keep the electrical grid stable- in other words, the fridges limit the base amount of fossil fuels used in energy creation.

"As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging in the United States,"� says Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "New Energy Economy Emerging in the United States"� . "The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The transition is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even a year ago."�

Read It News is your source for in-depth news and outdoor and entertainment information for Prescott, Arizona and surrounding areas. We tell stories that emphasize sustainability and community.

As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging in the United States. The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The transition is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even a year ago.

It is a sad commentary on the culture we live in that so many of us are afraid to exercise our right to use the public roads in a non-polluting manner. Believe me, I know how you feel. I went from not riding my bicycle for many, many years and have since become a 4-season rider in the northern midwest. Here are some things that have helped me make the transition.

Our American way of life is unsustainable; rather than attempting to perpetuate it, we must transition beyond it-quickly. Should we fail to do so, our society will collapse-in the not-too-distant future… Message to mainstream America: our American way of life-300+ million people enjoying historically unprecedented living standards-has been enabled by our increasingly dysfunctional ecological and economic behavior over the past 200 years. Our existing way of life is therefore unsustainable; in fact, America is facing imminent societal collapse.

tullamarine interchange, tullamarine solar power, solar power, solar sound barrier, solar power barrier, sound-proof solar panels, noise reduction solar barriers In the search for a solar solution to power our cities, one of our biggest obstacles is the massive acreage required by conventional arrays. Photovoltaic panels are flat and expansive, and urban centers are at a serious loss for free space. Now Australian renewable energy retailer Going Solar has conceived of a clever strategy that infuses urban transit systems with energy producing potential - install solar panels in highways as sound barriers!

Abrupt climate change is a potential menace that hasn't received much attention. That's about to change. Through its Climate Change Prediction Program, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) recently launched IMPACTS - Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions - a program led by William Collins of Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division (ESD) that brings together six national laboratories to attack the problem of abrupt climate change, or ACC.

WorldChanging has a post on a Rocky Mountain Institute backed initiative to pave the way fro smart grids and electric vehicles - Project Get Ready Aims to Create Electric Vehicle Revolution. Creating a well functioning smart grid - cyclically connected to smart vehicles and buildings and houses, as well as personal and public renewable energy systems - will be no small infrastructure feat. Utility providers, technology innovators, neighborhood councils and local governments will need to come together to provide needed support -- both monetarily and ideologically. Although U.S. President Obama and the recently passed stimulus plan are pushing the renewable, electric energy revolution forward, residents across the nation might need more motivation to make the leap from fossil fuel users to plug-in pioneers. A new project, headed by "think-and-do" tank the Rocky Mountain Institute, is offering to help city leaders provide community members with that extra inspiration. The initiative, Project Get Ready, supplies a menu of strategies that are meant to help cities prepare for the "plug-in" transition. According to RMI, problems related to individual hesitancy toward purchasing electric vehicles and investing in the infrastructure itself, can "be overcome if cities/regions become ecosystems that welcome electric vehicles."

Inhabitat is doing a "Energy 101" series to explain why smart grids are necessary - Energy 101: Where Does Our Power Come From ?. Today we're excited to announce the launch of our new Energy 101 series,. in which we'll be exploring the future-forward technologies that stand to upgrade our grids, reduce our energy footprint, and slow the speed of global warming. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past few years, you've probably heard terms like "energy conservation", "off-grid energy", and "smart grid" tossed around. But before getting into the nitty-gritty of transitioning to renewable energy, we should stop and examine where exactly our power comes from now. Unless you derive all your power from on-site renewable energy sources like solar panels or wind turbines, chances are that you're connected to the power grid, a vast network that delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers. Right now, most energy on the grid comes from generating plants. These plants still usually get power from traditional sources like coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric dams. But as concerns over carbon emissions, safety, and long term sustainability of these sources grow, electrical utilities have begun to switch over to renewable energy sources.

Basically, a cross between the convenience of grabbing a cab and a public bus; the podcars will be a component of Masdar City's public transportation system. As part of Masdar City's car-free design; these podcars will be part of a network of electric taxis without drivers (!). The first of these podcars (also known as personal rapid transit - PRT) are set to debut this year

I've got another guest post from Neil Howes up at TOD, this one proposing a rough plan for North AMerica to obtain 50% of its power from wind by 2030 - A North American Wind Energy Scenario. Would a "50% of electricity generated by wind scenario" work in North America by 2030? In this post, I make a rough cut estimate of what might be required to make such a transition in about 20 years time. Most proposals that are being made rely on a very big increase in carbon free energy, both to charge electric vehicles (EV's) and to replace oil and natural gas (NG) presently used for hot water and space heating. In this post, I lay out a path by which 50% of North American energy might come from wind by 2030, including replacement of a large share of oil and natural gas use by electricity. ... High quality wind resources (wind speeds greater than 6.9m/sec) in the US are estimated to be >5,500GWa, about x10 all of N America's present electricity production of 550GWa. Canada's potential appears to be similar or greater than the US, while Mexico's wind resources are more limited (these figures do not include deep offshore resources that could be harnessed by floating wind turbines or higher altitude wind resources that could potentially be harnessed by airborne wind turbines).

Anarkalis happen to be one of the most contemporary tends prevailing in the domain of salwar kameez fashion. The origin of the outfit dates back to the Mughal era and it is evident from the fact that the outfit is named after the famous Mughal courtesan Anarkali famed for her legendary love story with Sehezada Salim. The classic movie Mughal-e-Azam makes the story immortal story come alive.