·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full story at CNET.

With politicians pushing adoption of renewable energy in the United States and Europe, the last few years have seen a surge in plans for wind farms–both on land and sea. But wind power isn’t viable everywhere–and prime coastal spots are often already developed.

So some wind-turbine makers are shifting their focus toward building bigger wind turbines that can harvest the lower-speed winds that are more readily available. This next generation of wind turbines is no small matter: their rotors have a diameter the size of a football field.

Read the full story in Technology Review.

In an attempt to address global warming, a handful of power plants are capturing carbon dioxide during the energy-generation process, liquefying the gas under high pressure and piping it to geologic storage sites miles away. But sequestering carbon dioxide underground is impractical in many areas, and it raises fears that the stored gas will escape.

Now a new plant in Linden, NJ, will test an ocean carbon-sequestration technology that could expand its potential dramatically. If permits are approved, the plant, operated by SCS Energy, based in Concord, MA, will pump its carbon dioxide pollution into sandstone located almost two miles beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Mike Judge, creator of King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead is evidently taking on environmentalists in his new ABC TV show, The Goode Family. According to Very Short List:

True to their name, the Goodes are an infuriatingly smug and self-righteous bunch: a nuclear family that’s hell-bent on maintaining the world’s smallest footprint. Gerald and Helen Goode drive a hybrid and live by the tenet WWAGD (“What would Al Gore do?”). They’ve named their adopted African son Ubuntu (in a mix-up, he turned out to be white South African). They feed their pet vegan dog food (he sneaks out at night to eat woodland creatures). The series (premiering 5/27 at 9 on ABC) plays like the funhouse-mirror version of Judge’s blue-collar spoofs King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead, and it, too, is liberal with its laugh lines.

I’ll be programming this into the DVR when I get home this evening.

Read the full story in Campus Technology.

A professor in Michigan has developed the means to know how to optimize the settings for refrigerated display cases to reduce their energy use by 13 percent. A team, led by Homayun Navaz, a professor of mechanical engineering at Kettering University in Flint, MI, built a machine they call the “Proof of Concept Air Curtain,” that proves how the velocity of cold air being sent into the refrigerated case can be reduced and the temperature raised to keep food cooler and energy usage down.

Read the press release.

Energy efficiency has never been more important, according to new research commissioned by Johnson Controls . The Energy Efficiency Indicator (EEI) survey, a research report targeting professionals responsible for energy management, revealed barriers to investing in energy efficiency include: limited funding, uncertainty about future energy prices, government incentives, and energy and climate legislation.

Planning Guide

The U.S. EPA has released the first portion of its Rapid Deployment Energy Efficiency (RDEE) Toolkit Planning Guide to help states, local governments, and other program administrators design and implement effective energy efficiency programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Planning Guide provides key information on the following 10 energy efficiency programs with proven track records across the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors:

• Home Performance with ENERGY STAR
• ENERGY STAR Labeled Products
• Residential Efficient Heating and Cooling
• Residential Energy Audit and Direct Installation
• Non-Residential On-Site Energy Manager
• Non-Residential Prescriptive Rebates
• Non-Residential Retro-commissioning
• Non-Residential Benchmarking and Performance
• Non-Residential Custom Incentives
• Commercial Food Service Efficiency

The Guide presents information that can be used to select and plan for any one of these programs or for the development of a portfolio of these programs, including details on the target audience, likely near-term penetration rates, average energy savings per participant, annual program costs per participant, and the number of jobs created.

Implementation Guide

The U.S. EPA has also released the RDEE Toolkit Implementation Guide ­ Phase I. The Implementation Guide provides states and local governments with the information that they need to prepare and implement RDEE programs, both individually and as part of a portfolio of programs. It is being released in two phases:

Phase I (available now)

• Program/portfolio benchmarking
• Overview of strategies for customer targeting and marketing
• Training needs and resources overview

Phase II (available June 2009)

• Marketing strategies and tactics for each RDEE program
• Examples of and links to specific trainings
• Templates of and links to RFPs and proposal evaluation matrices
• Detailed program timelines
• Measurement and verification details

Visit www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/ee_toolkit.html to learn more about the RDEE Toolkit and to download the Planning Guide or Implementation Guide. The RDEE Toolkit was developed through a joint effort of EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy, with technical input from the Leadership Group of the National Action Plan on Energy Efficiency.

Help Line

The RDEE Toolkit Help Line is also available as a go-to resource for RDEE questions. The goal of the Help Line is to assist state and local governments in deploying ARRA energy efficiency funding in a successful, sustainable manner. The RDEE Toolkit Help Line is available at 866-602-7333 or RDEE@icfi.com. Please note that all questions related to energy-related funding provided by ARRA should be directed to DOE at  www.eere.energy.gov/recovery or 1-877-EERE-INF (1-877-337-3463).

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