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What is the Energy Credit Card? - It's a regular credit card that is credited by your    local utility with real green rewards - It's just as easy and convenient to use. - It can replace the card(s) you have now. - Good anywhere credit cards are accepted. - It can help reduce your credit card debt

Japan, famous for its hybrid cars and solar panels, may become an environmental pioneer in another sense: buying cheap carbon offsets abroad to minimize the burden on its domestic industry to clean up its act at home.

HERE’S one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt. Skip to next paragraph Post Typography Related Tread Lightly, Fly Directly (July 1, 2007) Enlarge This Image Mark Elias/Bloomberg News WORLDLY GOODS The 438-horsepower Lexus luxury hybrid sedan. Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!

While grid connected homes have been given a 30% tax rebate on all new solar installations in the recent Bailout Bill, off-grid homes receive nothing. What’s more there is no cap on the size of the solar installation so wealthy grid-tied homeowners will receive the biggest subsidy.

That is one reason for the rise of renewable energy middlemen like Clean Currents in Washington, D.C. The company bundles small businesses that want to buy wind power credits and submits a collective application to a utility. The businesses get better rates, and Clean Currents pockets a 1 percent commission.

According to David Victor, a leading carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, as many as two-thirds of the supposed "emission reduction" credits being produced by the CDM from projects in developing countries are not backed by real reductions in pollution. Those pollution cuts that have been generated by the CDM, have often been achieved at a stunningly high cost: billions of dollars (or pounds) could have been saved by cutting the emissions through international funds, rather than through the CDM's supposedly efficient market mechanism.

GE Energy Financial Services has released a study estimating that the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power that is set to expire December 31, 2008 more than pays for itself through tax revenues from the projects' income, vendors' profits and individual workers' wages.

legislative package on August 5 that will encourage people throughout the state to install grid-connected solar and wind power systems, systems that generate power from farm wastes, and green roofs. Most of the bills relate to net metering, which allows homeowners and businesses to earn credit for any excess power that they feed back into the electric grid

up to 2 megawatts in capacity, or equal in size to the customer's peak load, whichever is less, and increases the maximum solar power system size for residential customers to 25 kilowatts, up from 10 kilowatts

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - The World Bank on Monday launched a new carbon credit trading guarantee that will allow private-sector firms in developing countries to tap the growing 40 billion euro ($63.11 billion) global carbon market, a senior official said.

Nuclear energy is often touted by its supporters as being cheap, clean and plentiful. It's often stated in articles on the subject that Patrick Moore, purported co-founder of Greenpeace, is in favor of increased nuclear plants. In fact, there are about 30 new American nuclear plants currently on the drawing board. So, does nuclear live up to the claims of its supporters? Well, for one, it might not be as cheap as we've been told. Two reactors planned for Levy County, Florida may clock in at more than twice their original estimate at $10 billion. You can install a lot of distributed solar capacity for that kind of money. In fact Moody's Investor Services gave an estimate in October of $6,000 per kilowatt that Jim Hempstead (a senior credit officer at Moody's) stated in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal has been "blown by" after reviewing recent estimates from a handful of "experienced different nuclear operators".

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Trade in the world greenhouse gas credits market rose 80 percent last year as emissions rules became a concern for more companies, a carbon analysis group said on Friday.