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The five organisations; Addison Lee, Cyclone Couriers, Green Tomato Cars, Qdell & LHR Express Cars, and Trident Logistics has worked closely with the Energy Saving Trust to gain a better understanding of their carbon footprints and how they might reduce them. The scheme provided invaluable benefits to all involved.
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Nissan showed a two-seater electric vehicle resembling a go-cart Monday that isn’t ready for sale but spotlights the Japanese automaker’s ambitions to be the leader in zero-emission cars. Nissan is planning to produce 250,000 electric vehicles a year, starting with the Leaf electric car set for delivery in Japan and the U.S. in December, and next year in Europe.
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EnergyHub, a home energy management company, recently announced that it will be supplying its technology to Honeywell for inclusion in the company's portfolio of energy management solutions. According to Joseph Puishys, Honeywell's president of Environmental and Combustion Controls, EnergyHub's home energy management system will allow homeowners to minimize their energy bills by viewing and adjusting their energy usage settings.
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The project was launched three years ago by Sanderson, a London-based marketing entrepreneur who is confident that it will attract the £15.5 million needed to be completed. Sanderson came up with the idea of an electric GT ten years ago at a motor show, inspired by the project’s technical director, Arthur Woolstenholme.
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Students at MAST Academy recently compared energy consumption at the school between 2009 and 2010 for the August/Sept period. The total energy consumed by the school during the 2008-2009 school year from August through September was 3,228,120 KWH. This was reduced to 2,514,600 KWH during the year 2009-2010, a decrease of 22% of energy usage.
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A star-rating system, similar to that used for electrical appliances, will now be a mandatory part of advertising for lease or sale of office space. The scheme is designed to make climate change a more important consideration in corporate decision-making, in part by naming and shaming companies with office space in energy-hungry buildings.
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Now that would be a brutal blow for any industry battered by a vicious recession. But it's particularly bad news for the American wind industry, which had defied the downturn by installing a record 10,000 megawatts of new capacity in 2009. New wind capacity had grown an average 39 percent annually over the previous five years and represented 39 percent of all new electrical generation that came online last year.
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On days with little wind, Europe may have to rely on Norwegian reservoirs to keep its wheels running smoothly in the future. On the Continent, the concept of Norway as Europe's green battery has caught on -- but is it feasible in practice? The Centre for Environmental Design of Renewable Energy (CEDREN) -- one of Norway's Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research -- is carrying out the HydroPEAK project to study whether Norway could truly provide Europe's balance power.
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Council wardens are getting on their bikes to improve efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint created by work vehicles. East Staffordshire Borough Council is adopting power assisted cycling to enable wardens to travel economically through the borough. Supplied by Lichfield-based electric bike specialist PowaStation, the electric bike enables staff to cover far greater distances than using a traditional cycle.
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IPT (Induction Power Transfer) is the name of the world’s first commercially-available wireless electric car charging system, just launched in London. The brainchild of UK start-up HaloIPT wishes to electrify the England’s M25 motorway by using magnetic induction, a principle discovered in the 1800s.
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South Korea is set to become home to a new $8.2bn offshore demonstration wind project, according to local media. The project, which is slated to be the largest in the Yellow Sea, will be used to test 20 turbines produced by local manufacturers in South Korea, its regional government has confirmed.
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A group of us from the NRDC teams in Beijing, San Francisco, and D.C. just visited Shanghai, China to discuss opportunities to collaborate on helping turn an old iron and steel alloy plant into a new "clean energy development zone." The site is one of 12 old industrial sites that China is planning to turn into clean energy development zones. NRDC's China Program will be working with this project to make it as energy-efficient as possible.
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A new institute is being launched to help Idaho residents and businesses conserve power and save money. The Institute will evaluate energy-saving technologies to see which ones work best. The program will be run by the Idaho Falls' Center of Advanced Energy Studies, and Otter says it will play an important role in Idaho's energy future.
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The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is optimistic that Asia can get the 10 trillion US dollars it needs to finance sustainable energy projects over the next 20 years. The projects will include more efficient use of coal and oil as well as greater reliance on renewable power sources such as wind and solar energy.
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General Electric has created new halogen compact fluorescent light bulbs, GE Reveal and GE Energy Smart Soft, that unlike typical fluorescents (CFLs), contain less mercury (only 1 milligram) and don’t take time to warm up, being more efficient.
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The European Hydrogen Association (EHA) and the European Regions and Municipalities Partnership for hydrogen and fuel cells (HyRaMP) have called for accelerated support from the EU, national and local governments to ensure a sustainable build-up of hydrogen infrastructure in Europe. Both organizations stress the need to integrate hydrogen infrastructure development into the EU’s current energy and transport infrastructure plans.
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Making a cellphone battery last ten times longer is a first target for a large research project that IBM, Infineon and a number of European universities unveiled on Wednesday. The new research project, called Steeper, also aims to decrease the energy needs of other electronic devices like TV sets or supercomputers by 10 times when active, and to virtually eliminate power consumption when they are in standby mode.
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A new clean tech company called Totempower Energy Systems Ltd. has come up with an easy way to put wind power within the grasp of everyday homeowners. The company is developing new micro-wind turbines that are designed for close quarters and non-disruptive installation, but the real key to getting more micro-wind turbines into consumers’ hands is the company’s “ease of ownership” plan which provides a soup-to-nuts service including site selection and connecting the turbine to the home electrical system.
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Solar panels are usually mounted in series, to sum up their voltages, and the resulting power is sent to a large inverter, which transforms the DC voltage into AC. One big issue with this scheme is that if shade falls on one panel, or it gets dirty, the inverter lowers the current of all the other panels, and causing power losses through inefficiency.
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MIT researchers are hopeful of capturing and releasing solar energy with the help of thermo-chemical technology. Scientists were already working on this technology in seventies but this project was aborted due to its expensiveness and termed as too impractical to achieve. But MIT researchers are now gearing up to take this thermo-chemical technology that is supposed to convert solar energy into electrical energy.
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A New Zealand firm is hoping to beat rivals to Britain's lucrative boiler replacement market with its energy-efficient product and says an IPO (initial public offering) in Europe could be on the cards as it ramps up production. Whisper Tech, controlled by New Zealand state power group Meridian, expects to be profitable within a year and is examining its funding options over the next 12-18 months as it moves into mass production.
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The Coca-Cola company has been introducing more electric vehicles and other low-emissions trucks into its massive fleet, and now researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University are developing yet another alternative energy option. The team has been working on a solar powered air conditioning system that would significantly reduce or eliminate beverage delivery truck emissions related to cooling.
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The Abu Dhabi Distribution Company (ADDC), which supplies electricity to the city and surrounding areas, will have installed digital electricity meters in all buildings by the end of this year, its deputy managing director Abdulrahman al Dhaheri said yesterday. The new meters not only calculate power usage, but also allow consumers to sell their own solar-generated electricity back to the grid.