efficiency

A lot of Web sites sell plans and devices purported to boost your car's fuel economy, but the best way to squeeze more miles from the gallon is to change your driving habits. The Fuel Efficiency Adviser won't actually tell you how to drive more economically, but it will give you information that can help change your driving style. Simply plug the Fuel Efficiency Adviser into your ODB II port, present on all cars from 1996 on, and it will show instant fuel economy, how much your current trip is costing, range to empty. It shows many other … Read more

A new breakthrough may change the attitude that the incandescent lightbulb has had its day.

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) have unquestionably gained popularity for their energy efficiency when compared to the traditional incandescent bulb. Millions of people around the world have been encouraged by politicians, governments, energy utilities, and even lightbulb companies themselves to phase out traditional incandescent bulbs in favor of CFLs (or even LEDs) to save electricity in the home.

But now researchers at the University of Rochester in New York say they've found a way to make an incandescent lightbulb more efficient.

A group led by … Read more

General Motors announced today plans to build a small, fuel-efficient car at an idled UAW manufacturing plant in the United States.

The news tempers previously announced plans to import 17,300 small vehicles from China in 2011, which probably didn't go over well with the UAW.

Currently, about 67 percent of GM cars and trucks sold in the U.S. are built in the U.S. By producing another car domestically, GM anticipates that U.S. production levels will increase beyond 70 percent by 2013.

The proposed car was not announced, but an article from Automotive News speculated that the Chevrolet Spark is one of three small cars that General Motors could export from China to the U.S. The Chevrolet Lova and Aveo were also named as import possibilities.

The U.S. automaker already has the Chevrolet Cruze and Volt slated for production next year to help it comply with increased efficiency requirements of a fleetwide fuel economy of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. … Read more

President Obama announced plans to establish more stringent national auto mileage standards on Tuesday, a move that will accelerate the arrival of energy-efficient technologies such as hybrid cars and diesel engines.

The plan calls for a 5 percent annual increase in car makers' fleet-wide fuel efficiency starting in 2012. The standard, which addresses cars and light trucks, will be 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016, four years sooner than previously planned. (Click for PDF with details.)

The stricter mandate also presses automakers to quickly adopt fuel-savings technologies in an industry reeling from falling car purchases. But auto manufacturers on … Read more

Within the Department of Defense's announcement detailing further plans for facility improvements, under money allocated to it through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), there are some little green gems that may have gone unnoticed.

In its March Expenditure Plan, the Defense Department had said it planned to spend $300 million on "near-term energy technology research."

Now it plans to spend an additional $346 million on "energy-related projects, enabling the DOD to lead the way in the national effort to achieve greater energy independence," according to the Department of Defense April 28, 2009, Expenditure Plan (PDF).… Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Paul Bell's bio below.

When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in February, he spoke to the need for the United States to become more energy-efficient. To that end, the stimulus bill he recently signed into law provides more than $30 billion for energy efficiency projects, innovative technology loan guarantees, the retrofitting of federal facilities, and the development of the initial framework for a "smart" electrical grid.

These measures put the country on a long-term path toward so-called green-led growth. But how they are implemented is as … Read more

I'm here in the ever-sunny land of Israel, and one of the sights you constantly see here is laundry blowing in the breeze. Everyone line dries their laundry here, and many families don't even own a dryer. I'm not just talking about my mother-in-law, who thinks of a dryer as a newfangled invention that no one needs. One of my closest friends, a mother of five children, line dries all of her family's clothes--every single piece.

Here in Israel, the weather cooperates. But when I get back home to Houston, the humidity will make line drying … Read more

Updated at 4:08 p.m. PDT April 1 with further details about Google's data center efficiency and shipping containers modules and 6:30 a.m. April 2 to correct the time frame of efficiency statistics.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google is tight-lipped about its computing operations, but the company for the first time on Wednesday revealed the hardware at the core of its Internet might at a conference here about the increasingly prominent issue of data center efficiency.

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands … Read more

BOSTON--The cutting edge of building science these days seems to be more about expanding foam than solar power research.

Last Wednesday, I stopped by the Building Energy Conference put on by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). If there was one theme that jumped out, it was energy efficiency.

Insulating and air sealing a building, with stuff like expanding foam, has always been a sensible way to lower utility bills. But weatherizing homes is increasingly seen as the first and vital step to perhaps more exciting technologies like solar and wind.

At the morning keynote discussion, Mark Rosenbaum of building … Read more