We were tasked with studying elephants outside a protected region in an area that includes humans oil-drilling platforms and disturbances by machinery.
and here in the U s. The fact that elephants are surviving in a place where drilling for oil is happening is exciting
The authors looked at 82 raven nests on the U s. Department of energy's Idaho National Laboratory land in southeastern Idaho a sagebrush steppe ecosystem where ravens increased in numbers eleven-fold between 1985 and 2009.
The results of these findings pointed to further increases in raven abundance in formerly natural sagebrush steppe following alterations made by people specifically those associated with energy development and an expanding electric grid.
Poor livestock grazing management invasive species such as cheatgrass transmission lines energy development and subdivisions are all contributing to the loss of this vital resource.
& Technology (ES&T) uses local census weather and other data--37 variables in total--to approximate greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy transportation food goods
The goal of the project is to help cities better understand the primary drivers of household carbon footprints in each location said Daniel Kammen Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group
and the Goldman School of Public Policy and director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.
with Kammen in the Energy and Resources Group. Unfortunately while the most populous metropolitan areas tend to have the lowest carbon footprint centers they also tend to have the most extensive high carbon footprint suburbs.
and present in a visually striking way the impacts and interactions of our energy transportation land use shopping and other choices.
Other important factors include population density the carbon-intensity of electricity production energy prices and weather.
and energy-efficient technologies said Kammen. When you package low carbon technologies together you find real financial savings and big social and environmental benefits.
in order to craft policies and programs that enable the adoption of energy and carbon-efficient technologies and practices.
and Energy Upgrade California will be accepting applications for new cities in February. Each city creates their own targeted strategies to reduce barriers
Scientists farmers and advisors have assumed generally that the reduction in fertility is primarily due to the negative energy balance of high-producing cows at the peak of their lactation
and kiddo from the increasing instability that will come with rising oil prices in the next decade?
and energy, is the best course of action. I'm not suggesting that anyone become the doomer variety of prepper.
Try to reduce your fuel usage however you can. I offered suggestions on how to do this  last month starting with this one:
The more you can get along without oil and natural gas, the better. Your goal should be to imagine how your children
Reduce your overall energy consumption. That might mean moving to a smaller house, finding co-housing or simply upgrading the efficiency of your existing home.
For most older homes, the largest energy losses are thermal, and the first solutions are usually insulation,
Make your own energy. If you have a roof (or yard space) with a fairly unobstructed view to the south
and will reduce your fuel consumption. They typically take longer to pay for themselves than solar PV,
In the United states, search the Database of State Incentive for Renewable Energy (DSIRE) to find available opportunities in your area.
and try growing oilseed crops to make your own fuel for your diesel vehicles--after all, that's
It's generally accepted that every kilocalorie of food that makes it to our tables requires 10 kilocalories of oil
and breaks quickly without a continued supply of fuel. As oil becomes increasingly dear (and eventually,
harder to get in the coming decades, food supply will be at risk. But you don't want to wait until that happens before you start gaining some competency in food production and preservation.
which are made from oil and natural gas. Figure out a low-fuel way to get some compost and manure,
and start building your soil. Learn how to harvest and save seeds for next year's crop.
since we all know that the commercial meat industry is massively reliant on petroleum and natural gas.
Cheap and abundant oil in the past was a big part of the reason why credit was cheap and abundant
as the plateau of oil production signals the beginning of a new era of expensive and difficult oil.
and happily, without oil or gas, without food from the supermarket...even without grid power.
5 predictions for smarter buildings in 2012in the United states, buildings make up 70 percent of all energy use,
Rethinking how buildings use energy is an essential issue of our time, and many have taken on the challenge of retrofitting energy hogs--to save money,
to make cities more efficient, and to help the planet. Smart buildings can help people translate the mass amounts of data that our buildings generate,
(and mend) our energy use. Today, the smart buildings market is estimated to be around $30 billion globally
and the need for more energy efficient buildings is still slowly making its way into planning and development agendas.
and analyzes power consumption. With the carbon matching system in place in this neighborhood, traffic patterns can be broken down,
and how much energy they are using in the form of a summary at the end of each month. Smart meters, one of the key parts of a smart building, allow building owners
and residents to instead get a real time view into their energy usage. This creates a lot more transparency,
Seeing the energy or water we use per task, then will help drive a transformation in energy efficiency.
Taking a cross-section of a building's consumption will be very helpful for larger structures and campuses. Analytics will point directly to behavior that can be changed,
as well as recommend temperatures that save energy, and show instantly when something needs to be fixed. IBM â¢s campus in Rochester, Minnesota has implemented this system of transparency.
so far cutting energy use by eight percent. Prediction 3: The proliferation of an Internet of things.
More energy options for buildings Bartlett predicts that in the near future, as we develop more low carbon energy sources,
building owners will be able to go to what he calls the energy cafe and select different kinds of energy to use--rather than a building being forced to use just one thing.
The cafe just means that there will be a number of different energy sources available over the grid.
With smart meters, not only can building operators get an idea of how much and what kind of energy they are using,
buildings in the future can choose, and change, the energy they use according to their specific needs. This method was implemented on IBM's campus, following a new sustainability mandate.
I think that it is said really cool Bartlett, because depending on your own needs and how much you want to be a part of this,
it puts people in control instead of having to take what is provided. Prediction 5: Real estate finance teams will become corporations'smarter buildings teams In the next few years,
so transparency will likely place pressure on the corporation to make aggressive changes to their energy use.
Smart building initiatives will help them listen to how their buildings are wasting energy and money,
to help 4, 000 buildings meet Mayor Bloomberg's energy efficiency goals. The technology implemented here is going to help him get transparency
Currently, the cost of energy use in New york city municipal buildings is more than $800 million per year,
which will undoubtedly push people to use the new methods of looking at energy consumption. Adoption of smart meters
but it also requires a utility that is willing to buy back the energy that you don't use.
as energy costs are higher in these areas --but its good to pave the way and show some leadership.
Compare that to cleantech--you know how painful it was to have energy utility companies take renewable energy seriously.
Water is 30 years behind the energy utility. The last thing you want to be innovative about is water.
The trigger that has worked best in California is the relationship of water and energy. Water is a mass--it must be stored.
There is a true energy cost anytime you try to move water. And an infrastructure cost.
 After that, you need water to cool a nuclear reactor. You don't really want to turn them down.
And it's occasionally addicted to energy. New york and Pennsylvania are sitting on an enormous reserve of natural gas, the Marcellus Shale.
How energy use has become more efficient The earthquake and tsunami have changed really Japanese attitudes.
After the disaster, Japan shut down 52 of the 54 nuclear reactors, so the country has to conserve energy.
The stores used to be lit brightly but now they're operating at 50%brightness or less.
There's a lot of talk about turning to renewable energy like geothermal plants, but some bathhouse owners are afraid that
and gasoline shortages and the trains weren't running to Kasama. Radiation levels were said to be high in the area
The disaster hasn't changed the way my parents use energy because they never used that much of it.
In Japan, the disaster has made a lot of people anti-nuclear, but I think people both in
Because if it's not nuclear it's fossil fuels. We really need to rethink what we think is the good life.
And perhaps focus less on consuming, and more on creating, like my parents do. For more information on Kokubo's film, see her site:
'Alternative'nuclear, not'no'nuclear Asian Super Grid: How Japan's anti-nuclear plan could go nuclear In post-Japan quake & tsunami era, Noah offers emergency shelter
Accidental environmentalist designs furniture from invasive speciesmiami-based designer and PIE Studio founder Bannavis Andrew Sribyatta barely knew what Šsustainable  meant
and trucks that haul mountains of agribusiness cabbages and cucumbers and whatnot around the country trounce local vans in ton-miles per gallon-the jargon of freight fuel efficiency.
All energy and climate solutions are localthe climate movement isn't dead; it's just gone underground.
Further, it makes no sense to simply clamp down on fossil-fuel emissions without replacing the displaced energy.
and sell some of the energy to other local municipal utilities. The solar projects are credited with helping to shave two percent off the city's 17 percent unemployment rate
I have advocated previously (see The revolution will be bottom-up and Crowdsourcing the energy revolution). At some point, the city will be able to back new bond offerings with its installed solar capacity.
and self-building over time something that will never be possible with fossil fuels. Once a town installs a substantial base of renewable power generation,
and electric taxis or Zipcars could eventually displace the majority of their liquid fuel consumption at a far lower cost per mile traveled.
and other energy hogs used in commercial buildings with more efficient versions. Replace residential appliances such as refrigerators, washers,
In the Northeast, replace furnaces that burn heating oil with ones that burn natural gas, and ban the installation of new heating oil furnaces.
Replace incandescent lamps with LEDS or compact fluorescents. Support ridesharing and carsharing programs. Support local agriculture, small gardening plots on unused city property
Create municipal utility districts to drive the deployment of locally-generated energy. Develop local financing options for rooftop PV and residential efficiency upgrades through local banks and credit unions.
In this way, small American towns could make stepwise progress toward freeing themselves from the shackles of oil
rather than disappearing into the pockets of oil companies or the public coffers of Venezuela and Saudi arabia.
What true energy independence looks like The photo at top, Â which I shot in the Mojave about 100 miles to the northeast of Lancaster,
 illustrates the energy transition that is already under way. In the foreground is the old Route 66
the legendary road that once carried millions of Americans from New york to Los angeles in the freewheeling, cheap oil days of Happy Motoring.
This is what true energy independence looks like: Not drilling another 25,000 to 30,000 tight oil wells and another 500,000 shale gas wells domestically to temporarily displace foreign imports,
as the oil and gas industry is trying to persuade us to do, but building solar upon solar wind upon wind,
and eliminating our need for fossil fuels permanently, one town at a time, from the bottom up. We can do this,
partisan politics be damned. If all politics is local, as former Speaker of the House Tip O'neill famously said,
then so are the solutions to our energy and climate challenges. Â We can kill the carbon monster
and create real economic productivity at home using free fuel.  And if a beleaguered town like Lancaster can aim to be  net zero carbon
offering low rent, low energy costs, and a shared kitchen, to startups. There will also be called a brewery
Our farting microbes are farting methane to power our generator which in turn feeds into the distillery's electrical distribution network this also fuels Reynier's electric car.
In somewhat similar ventures as Bruichladdich's, Helius Energy recently announced plans to build a 7. 2-megawatt power plant in Speyside that will burn whiskey waste and woodchips, providing about 9, 000 homes
A Scottish university has entertained even the possibility for whisky-powered cars by converting pot ale and draff to a butanol additive for gasoline.
however, don't always coincide with one's zeal for clean energy. If you prefer American whiskey,
Further, brewing beer is reportedly less energy-intensive than distilling whisky, but ounce for ounce beer drinkers tend to imbibe more.
so it doesn â¢t have to depend on the city â¢s power grid for energy.
Apple Spaceship campus to hold 12,000 employees and run on green energy via the City of Cupertino and Macrumors
The piece explores farms that are attempting to blend the best elements of organic and commercial farming--using technologies to help cut energy consumption,
Energy use: 100 million mature trees around buildings in the U s. leads to an annual energy savings of $2 billion.
Real estate: Landscaping with trees increases property values. Water flow and quality: Trees can lower the expenses
And besides the economic and energy saving benefits, urban trees can help to enhance the sense of place in neighborhoods
Investors are hearing a lot of pitches about medical devices and energy products these days, and then they see this,
and the country's National Atomic energy commission (CNEA, in Spanish) is pushing forward with the design of a small, low-cost atomic energy reactor called CAREM.
thanks to the technology of a company called Energetika and a city pilot program experimenting with renewable energy sources.
The Mexican version, called Na2light, draws its power from 11 solar cells of 15 watts apiece for a total of 165 watt-hours of energy.
The solar power illuminates LEDS. The solar trees are built to last 10 years. Creators Roberto Calderã Â n and Alejandro Chico told Mexico city Reforma newspaper their innovation is not just about aesthetics
The company is capturing the sun's energy to kill nocturnal insects that feast on crops.
'saves 9, 500 gallons of fuel per yearsouthwest Airlines has announced the world's first green plane, a Boeing 737-700 that's 472 lbs. lighter than a conventional model and saves
9, 500 gallons of jet fuel per year. It's no secret that the airplanes are some of the worst polluting transportation methods available.
and thus reduce jet fuel consumption by six percent or about 90 million gallons a year.
That means less emissions (making the federal government happy) and less spent fuel (making shareholders happy.
Study calculates energy lost via wasted foodamericans are known for eating a lot of food. We waste a lot, too.
we waste energy â about 1. 4 billion oil barrels worth says a new study.
The energy expense is not just about cleaning your plate of every last calorie. After all much of food gets lost along the way to the dinner table.
In March, the USDA reported that the U s. spent 15.7 percent of its annual energy budget in 2007 for food production.
The researchers, from the University of Texas, contend that wasted food represents about 2 percent of annual energy consumption in the U s.
While meat requires the most energy to produce the authors point out that the foods associated with the most energy loss are dairy products
and vegetables because they more often go to waste. Percentage of Foods Wasted in U s. Fats and Oils (33%)Dairy (32%)Grains (32%)Eggs (31%)Sugar/caloric sweeteners (31%)Vegetables (25%)Fruit (23
%)Meat, poultry, fish (16%)Dry beans, peas, lentils (16%)Tree nuts and peanuts (16%)Related on Smartplanet:
a vanishing barcode warns of waning freshness Can U s. farms produce food without relying heavily on fossil fuels?
Vancouver turns scraps, yard trimmings into energy Image: Flickr schilling 2
Style meets function in Mick Peel's bespoke bike saddlesflat streets, good biking infrastructure and temperate weather make Melbourne, Australia, a hot spot for cycling.
For example, in Mexico, salty snacks require oil, which requires teaching farmers techniques in exchange for crop purchase agreements.
and Sweco to develop efficient energy systems for the building, as well as ways to capture and process excess waste heat,
And since technology is much more energy efficient, we think there's a great opportunity to capitalize on this new green rush.
Currently, much of energy intensive light used to grow cannabis is wasted instead of being absorbed since plants can only photosynthesize so much of it.
Vodka, olive oil, wine-you name it and there's probably a group trying to preserve the traditional ingredients and means of production.
and the restaurant uses environmentally friendly cleaning supplies and energy efficient light bulbs. But at this Kimpton restaurant near Washington Penn Quarter, executive chef Robert Weland has done much more â from recycling cooking oil to making his own vinegars and sausage.
Weland has been at Poste since 2004, and his commitment to sustainability was recognized by the city in 2009 with an Environmental Excellence award.
Recycling cooking oil: All cooking oil is filtered and donated to Endless Summer Harvest (the source of Poste hydroponic lettuce,
arugula, butter lettuce and mache), which uses it to heat their greenhouses in the winter.
The volumetric ethanol excise tax credit (VEETC) which gives a 45-cent/gallon tax incentive for pure ethanol that is blended with gasoline,
such as Brazil's sugar cane-based fuel, meant to spur domestic demand. A bipartisan group called to put the subsidies to rest in a letter,
Subsidizing blending ethanol into gasoline is fiscally indefensible. If the current subsidy is extended for five years,
the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use.
calls for about 8 percent of all fuel used in 2011 to be from renewable sources and for blending 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel with transportation fuel by 2022.
Our country is spending over $730 million a day on imported petroleum this year, money that often ends up in the hands of unstable or unfriendly governments.
The price tag for our dependence on foreign oil is likely to rise even higher as the economy recovers.
and place at greater risk the thousands of well-paying jobs that the renewable fuels industry has created.
Ethanol consumes two-thirds of all federal subsidies for renewable fuels, said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working group,
If the same emphasis is placed on breeding programs for perennial grains that is already in place for alternative fuel,
and reducing by almost half the need for energy-sucking air conditioning. The world population is seven billion and climbing,
There no way an organism can use more energy than it produces said Alexis Karolides, an architect with the Rocky mountain Institute in Boulder,
Right now, biomimetic innovations have provided already revolutionary ideas for how new buildings are cooled and heated, one of the most energy intensive systems in a structure.
The building is cooled at one-tenth the cost of structures with old fashioned, energy-sucking air conditioning.
Yet green roofs and projects like the High Line still require a good deal of energy to sustain,
There are enormous amounts of energy that goes into demolition or materials that are tossed into waste sites and landfills and oceans.
Modern, net-zero energy homes made more affordable with modular design
The cancer fighting pizzai never really understand it when people dismiss pizza as unhealthy food.
so that it could produce energy while lowering heat. Or perhaps it would be surfaced with a permeable material like porous asphalt
while using less energy--cause cows to make more milk. The Oklahoma State study aimed to evaluate the energy savings of LEDS
and how they performed overall, including their durability on working farm, the Kansas city Star reported.
The university also will sponsor a conference next month to discuss energy-efficient lighting on farms.
and chickens believe the energy efficient lighting has calmed the birds and helped them gain more weight.
The missing link to a $7 billion marketit's the biggest renewable energy source you've never heard of,
where carbon-reduction targets are driving power utilities--particularly coal-fired power plants--to mix more wood pellets into their fuel supply.
if unsexy, source of renewable energy. Sean Ebnet is the director of biomass origination for the UK utility Drax Power,
and 5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity (because it's reached the end of its life).
and currently gets about 12.5 percent of its fuel--1. 2 million tonnes (Mt) per year--from wood pellets.
With new capital investment, the plant will get 20 percent of its fuel from pellets later this year,
and ultimately rely on biomass for the majority of its fuel. According to Jonathan Rager of Georgia-based Poyry Management Consulting, a 50 Mt gap will open between global supply and demand for pellets by 2020.
which is essential to qualify for use as renewable fuel in Europe. Forecast of wood pellet exports from North america 2007-2017, in million tonnes.
Unfortunately, as Dean Mccraw of Georgia-based Mccraw Energy noted ruefully, much of it has been grown for the sawtimber market:
roughly 30 percent is fuel. Shipping by barge is by far the cheapest method, followed by rail.
Unfortunately, our governmental bodies remain in legislative capture by the automobile and oil industries and haven't shown much leadership on freight rail
it will prove to be a critical lifeline safeguarding our economic viability in an age of declining fossil fuels.
resource control and competition Bioengineering e coli to turn seaweed into fuel Fatty foods cause brain scarring, study shows
as harder, stronger, lighter nanomaterials become commercially available. 5.)Chemist explores nanotechnology in search of cheaper solar cells.
Luke Hanley is a big believer in harnessing solar energy to produce electricity. Doing it more efficiently is his goal.
For four decades straight, the government has failed utterly to reduce our energy consumption, or transition to renewables to any significant degree.
We're as dependent on foreign oil as we've ever been, the modest recent uptick in domestic unconventional oil production notwithstanding.
without building a clean energy substitute for coal. Totally lacking the vision for real transportation solutions, like transitioning to rail,
US Department of agriculture It also may reflect a growing consumer awareness that with 7 to 10 calories of fossil fuels (mainly natural-gas based fertilizers
and crucially necessary pathway to meaningfully reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Three decades from now,
when the world supply of oil will likely be one-third lower than it is today,
and began trending down as oil prices broke away from their sub-$40/bbl norms in 2005
this happened because the growth era of cheap conventional crude oil supply ended, and the world began turning to expensive, difficult, unconventional oil supplies.)
Vehicle miles traveled are still declining, with lower lows and lower highs showing up in the seasonal data.
and how much of that traffic constitutes an enduring shift away from fuel-burning transportation. Anecdotally, I have seen many more people in my own social circles biking more and driving less,
if not rise above vehicle sales again as we move into the era of net oil supply decline circa 2014.
Energy Detecting personal energy transitions is a considerably more difficult task. I was not able to find nonproprietary U s. data on lighting,
I have several friends who are employed professionally in the energy efficiency sector, and they have bemoaned all how difficult it is to build a scalable business around it.
if we really want to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, continues to languish. We do have data on the U s. retrofit market for solar PV,
Solar energy Industries Association (SEIA) Source: Greentech Media Research and SEIA Grid-connected PV installations in the third quarter of 2011 were 140 percent higher than the same quarter in 2010, a quarterly installation record.
the way to the renewable energy revolution was paved rather quietly, and tens of thousands of people started down it.
and fuel flowing as they descend into the zombie apocalypse, this little spot could survive just fine.
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