· Aggressive conservation— Ask a representative from your electric company to conduct an energy audit. Your energy auditor will walk your office with you, looking for energy saving opportunities; she may also itemize your electric bill, showing you where you spend the most for electric power, and suggesting ways to conserve.
In most offices, heating and cooling cost the most, followed closely by your large office machinery, your computers, and your lighting. If you have not already taken these measures, take them right away:
(1)Adjust your thermostat so that your heating and cooling system maintains the office at 72 degrees during the day and shuts-down completely at night. Better still, adjust the air conditioning to 74, making it a little warmer but still comfortable; adjust the heat to 70—everyone can add sweaters as needed. If your office has functional windows, use them; your energy auditor will help you arrange a schedule to capitalize on fresh air as an alternative to air conditioning.
(2) Turn-off your overhead fluorescent lighting and equip each workspace with a low-energy CFL desk lamp, insisting that your associates turn-off the lights when they take their breaks, go to lunch, and leave at the workday’s end.
(3)set your computers to go to sleep when they are not in use, and ask your associates to turn them off as they turn off their desk lamps.
(4)Make sure that your doors and frames are properly weather-stripped; and, if you have old fashioned windows that actually open and shut, make sure they have fresh weather-stripping, too. If you have exposed tile floors, lay down thick padding and then carpet them. The floor needs a layer of insulation, too.

· Natural light— Morale improves and you save money when you rely on natural light. Your energy auditor or an interior designer may show you alternative arrangements for your workstations, so that you may make the most of the natural light you have available. Give serious consideration to installing “three-dimensional skylights”—elevated well above the roof line, they have glass on the sides as well as the top, allowing for maximum sunlight from dawn until dusk. Ideally, you will install one large skylight over every major work area. Natural lighting is a great way of saving energy as well as maintaining great aesthetics for the workplace.

· Indoor landscaping— Plants act as natural insulation, and they purify your air. In other words, well-placed natural landscaping helps you control your heating and cooling costs, because it regulates the air’s natural circulation by maintaining a constant temperature throughout your open spaces. If some of your windows create hotspots in the office, put that sunlight to good use, letting it shine on a row of small trees or large containerized plants. Fertilize your indoor landscaping with the grounds from the coffee machine, and work with your office landscaping service to start composting food waste with the debris from routine maintenance of the grounds.

· Efficiency— Your printer, copier, and fax machine suck-up almost as much energy as your heating and air conditioning. Try to eliminate the fax machine altogether; regard your fax as a fossil relic from the 1990s. Save paper and electricity by printing only essential documents. In most settings, you can manage more than 90% of your documents electronically. Moreover, you know that your associates are comfortable and proficient with text messages; take advantage of that post-modern expertise. Similarly, manage projects to control printing, so that you may shut down the copier for extended periods—at least part of every business day, always over night, and often for days at a time.

Where it’s headed
Originally the process was relatively expensive, requiring significant technical expertise, plus the fact not much was produced during the process, there was little demand for its use except for industrial types of application. More recently however, the process has been perfected and costs have been lowered considerably enabling it to be seen as a viable source of alternative renewable energy.
The process was recognized academically during the 1930’s and research found the anaerobic bacteria or microorganisms vastly sped up the process also known as fermentation. Long known as sources of energy, methane and similar naturally formed gases needed to be contained and controlled.

Usefulness of anaerobic digestion
As the process of anaerobic digestion has proven to be most effective with organic wet material, it has been useful in treating sewage and effluent. Most anything organic can be processed through anaerobic digestion. Biodegradables such as grass clippings, waste paper, animal waste, sewage, and left over food will break down into gases as a result of the anaerobic digestion process.
Europe and Germany use the process in operations they call biogas plants. It has found to be useful in developing countries as low cost energy used for lighting and cooking. Countries such as China and India are working on use of small biogas plants that could be applied for local use as cooking and lighting sources.

Since solar paneling produces DC electricity (direct current) readily, it is perfect for charging batteries by putting in the energy collected through the process to charge the batteries. Otherwise having a large solar paneling array on the place in which they are applied such as large vehicles like recreational vehicles and making use of a grid tie inverter to make the DC current convert into AC (alternating current) to be used by several different applications. Make sure that you take advantage of the possible options for photovoltaic cells because they offer a large amount of benefits for several different things, especially for saving on power consumption in vehicles and reducing the need to have fueled generators which are loud and cause several harmful emissions for power.

Depending on the manufacturer, the efficiency of photovoltaic cells will be very different. Several companies will produce high quality solar paneling for use with high current production for several different uses. A large number of these companies will produce efficient solar cells which can be used in different applications to help offset electricity usage from several different sources. You can be sure to look into the available options now and understand the technology behind the solar paneling and understand what is going on in research to help improve the technology. Now you are able to get some of the same technology that is used in many modern satellites to receive power while they are in orbit around the earth.

Several different retailers will be able to offer you different options for any application that you may need. One of the most popular choices is to supplement the energy resources for those who have large vehicles that need to offset their carbon footprint. These vehicles are the most feasible types to use for various applications because they have the most real estate to take advantage of on the roof of the vehicle for photovoltaic cells to be placed. This means that they can be utilized to get more power output than smaller vehicles and the larger volume of power is very simple to use for a larger range of devices that are power hungry.

It is important to have professionals install any and all photovoltaic cells to ensure that they meet the requirements and can perform with the best efficiency as possible. Recent discoveries have made it possible to get a large amount of power output from solar paneling than ever before and it is possible for these technologies to improve in the near future. Whatever the case, they are a very good investment for those who are concerned with their power consumption and their impact on the earth. Having professionals install photovoltaic cells allows you to prevent damages to the cells themselves and proper installation can make sure that the power is being used to its full potential without shorting out or being installed incorrectly.

There are four main parts to a Wind Power Generator system these are:

1. The Wind Powered Generator – Wind Mills or Turbine with the purpose of the capture of Wind Energy by rotating a propeller which rotates a shaft and powers a generator.

2. Power Storage – The common household uses in the region of electricity per day, a small home wind power generator is more than ample to supply the typical household but storage is compulsory for those days of no wind, electricity is stored in a string of batteries.

3. DC/AC Converter – wind power generators create dC electrical current this is converted to AC electrical current used for your household.

4. Power Stabilizer – this device is what delivers your home-made power into your household and stabilizes the power feed to be constant and uniform.

We are all aware that Global Warming is swiftly becoming a key dilemma and the cause of this is our dependency on carbon fossil fuels. Governments and the Big Energy Producing Companies tell us not to be concerned; they are working on the dilemma. When was the last moment you saw a government do anything correct? And how much can you trust Big Business that has a monopoly? Our only option is to start little and grow gigantic to tackle this quickly pending tragedy of global warming, Rome did not fall in a day, it fell one Roman at a time, we should all become Romans.
By taking a tiny step you can become a Roman by installing Wind Power Generators or an alternate supply that will turn out 20% or 100% of your household electrical supply; you will receive many benefits:

1. The installation costs are a tax deductions therefore the system costs is basically free.

2. You no longer pay an electricity cost so that cash stays in your pocket.

3. You will no longer be putting carbon gas into the ecosystem and taking a large step to stop the green house effect.

4. Your neighbors will be encouraged to install their own system when they observe your system working, farther reducing the carbon gas effects. There are additional benefits as well, and that is a pretty respectable return for an only some small dollars investment.

It is a great idea and feeling to know you are doing your part to reduce the carbon output and helping to clean up our ecosystem for the future generations. The sooner we all start the less amount of destruction is being done and the easier it is for Mother Nature to heal.
　

Despite his age, William Yuan has already studied nuclear fusion and nanotechnology, and he is on his way to solving the energy crisis.

It all started with Legos – after he learned nanotechnology to make robots take off. The seventh grader then got an idea inspired by the sun.

“Solar it seems underused, and there are only a few problems with it,” Yuan said.

Encouraged by his Meadow Park Middle School science teacher, the 12-year-old developed a 3D solar cell.

“Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once,” he said.

And his cell can absorb both visible and UV light.

“I started to realize I was actually onto something,” Yuan said.

At first, he couldn’t believe his calculations.

“This solar cell can’t be generating this much electricity, it can’t be absorbing this much extra light,” he recalled thinking.

If he is right, solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells.

“Which would make solar energy actually a viable energy source for the Pacific Northwest,” Yuan said.

While college students have come up with unusual solar cars and the state of Oregon recently unveiled solar panels to power highway lights, Yuan is thinking global.

“It’ll have a really positive impact on society and the environment,” he said.

His next step is to get a manufacturer and market it.

Yuan is flying out to Washington D.C. on Monday to accept a $25,000 scholarship for his research. He earned the Davidson Fellow award, which is for those 18 and under.

Even the tiniest reductions in energy consumption can make a big difference. Case in point, Western Digital announced that their line of external storage units, the Mybook, will now include the new GreenPower hard drives. While individually these units might not make much of a difference, as soon as this technology hits the enterprise market, which should be happening soon, the CO2 savings start adding up (large enterprises can use around 10,000 hard drives for their data-hungry storage needs).

According to WD, each of these drives will save about 13.8kg CO2 per year compared to similar products. For a large data center, say for instance, a bank, that saving could turn out to be around 248 tons of carbon a year. The first of these 3.5 inch hard drives, the 1TB WD Caviar GP, was available as of July 1st.

EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country’s total annual energy use.

“EGS could be the ‘killer app’ of the energy world. It has the potential to deliver vast quantities of power 24/7 and be captured nearly anywhere on the planet. And it would be a perfect complement to intermittent sources like solar and wind,” said Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google.org.

Google’s Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative focuses on solar thermal power, advanced wind, EGS and other potential breakthrough technologies. Google has set a goal to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity, enough to power a city the size of San Francisco, in years, not decades.

To advance EGS, Google.org announced funding for two companies and a university:

• AltaRock Energy, Inc.: $6.25 million investment to develop innovative technologies to achieve significant cost reductions and improved performance in EGS projects. For more information, please visit http://www.altarockenergy.com/.
• Potter Drilling, Inc.: $4 million investment in two tranches, to develop new approaches to lower the cost and expand the range of deep hard rock drilling, a critical element to large-scale deployment of EGS. For more information, please visit http://www.potterdrilling.com/.
• Southern Methodist University Geothermal Lab: $489,521 grant to improve understanding of the size and distribution of geothermal energy resources and to update geothermal mapping of North America. For more information, please visit http://www.smu.edu/geothermal/.

“Innovation is the path to massive quantities of cleaner, cheaper energy. The people we’re funding today have a real shot at lowering the cost of EGS, and bringing us closer to our goal of Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal,” added Dr. Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org.

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