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The Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975 established an energy conservation program for major household appliances. The National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1978 amended EPCA to add Part C of Title III, which established an energy conservation program for certain industrial equipment. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT) also amended EPCA, and included amendments that expanded title III to include small electric motors. The Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technologies Program conducts the program that develops equipment energy conservation standards and has overall responsibility for rulemaking activities for small electric motors in fulfillment of the law.

The UK does not consume significant amounts of ethanol made from corn, which has been widely criticised for using more fossil fuels in production than are saved by burning it in vehicle tanks.

"Just 40 tons of this stuff has enough potential energy to meet the total U.S. electricity demand for a year." Does this mean we will be mining the moon for Helium-3 any time soon to fuel the earth? Probably not, since the cost to extract Helium-3 from the moon would be enormous and it would require "hundreds of millions of tons of soil" to "be processed to extract a ton of helium-3".

Given its limited reserves of natural uranium and its abundant supply of thorium, India has chalked out a unique three-stage nuclear program. In the first stage, pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs)—similar to those used in advanced industrial countries—burn natural uranium. In the second stage, fast-breeder reactors, which other countries have tried to commercialize without success, will burn plutonium derived from standard power reactors to stretch fuel efficiency. In the key third stage, on which India's long-term nuclear energy supply depends, power reactors will run on thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope that does not occur naturally).

Project Energy Code focuses on understanding the “green gap”—the individual statements of concern over energy and the environment and the actual decisions and behaviors of individuals with the ability to modify electricity consumption, and the institutions that enable options mentioned above. These Project Energy Code differences between respect to their energy choices. Why does this green gap exist in our electricity consumption choices?

“The Smart Grid: An Introduction ” is a publication sponsored by DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. It is the first book of its kind to explore – in layman’s terms – the nature, challenges, opportunities and necessity of Smart Grid implementation.

(The Volt will be a ful-sized four-passenger car with a range of about 65 kilometres using only its batteries. It is scheduled to go into production in the United States in 2010.)

The Volt will use a battery with a capacity of 16 kilowatt-hours of charge. But that battery won’t dip below eight kWh of charge, so a full nightly charge would be eight kWh - about the same amount of power as is consumed by a water heater, a plasma TV or a computer and monitor left on all day.

It has been suggested that this “rebound effect” only accounts for 5-20% of efficiency gains, but I have written previously about the potential for a “shadow” rebound effect that potentially accounts for nearly the entire efficiency gain.

U.S. funding reversal for ITER suggests that fusion energy—"always just a few decades away from reality" as the joke goes—may have finally run out of decades

DOE and SuperPower, Inc. commemorated on February 21 a $27 million project to install a 350-meter high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cable between two electrical substations in Albany. While that might not sound like much cable for the money, the project is the first demonstration of a technology that could someday be used to build a more energy efficient power grid. The HTS cable reduces energy loss by up to 10%, and wires using the same technology could potentially be integrated into generators, transformers, cables, and fault current limiters, making most of the equipment that produces and delivers power more energy efficient. On the other end of the power line, HTS wires can be employed in motors, providing an energy efficiency improvement for one of the largest electrical loads served by electric utilities.

The Thunderbolt Electric Scooter Concept by Henrik Björkman does not break new grounds when it comes to technological advances, but this sexy environment-friendly scooter has a loud and clear message for you. Down with combustible engines! The scooter’s design emphasizes a curvy hole where the engine is traditionally placed. The result is a not-so-subtle protest against combustible engine use. The Thunderbolt has a range of around 70 KM/H on a three hour charge.

I agree with that logic, though from my perspective "mp$" could be even more useful as we enter a world in which the gallons we're using aren't directly comparable, and as electricity enters the transportation mainstream, resisting easy conversion to gallons without heroic assumptions and creating potentially over-optimistic assessments of the overall efficiency of plug-in hybrid cars.

Miles per dollar has much to recommend it, particularly for its simplicity and alignment with the priority consumers put on value. However, it also has two key disadvantages. Unlike mpg, it changes every time fuel prices do, so any comparisons based on mp$ are only snapshots at a point in time. Nor does it address the emissions associated with that dollar's worth of energy, though mpg doesn't do that, either.

LONDON (Reuters) - Lead is still in the race to make batteries for hybrid-powered vehicles, President Bruce Neil at privately-owned lead producer Doe Run told a conference on Monday.

Only recently have we begun to realize that a renewable energy future does not inevitably mean a decentralized energy future. Indeed, right now the fastest growing part of the renewable energy industry may be the large solar central power systems being built in remote locations in the southwest to serve customers in Los Angeles, and the huge wind farms being built in the Midwest to serve customers in Chicago.

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".