Lately everybody seems to have videos on their websites. Usually I find it distracting from the real information I am trying to get. But, every once in a while you find a video that you feel everybody should view. If you want to know more about how the government is handling global warming you need to watch this fun and informative video. Take a few minutes out of your day to make a difference for you planet.
Cap and Trade Yet another term being thrown around the business news is Cap and Trade. What does this mean? The Cap is the limit that large companies will have on the amount of greenhouse gas they can emit. The Trade is that since some companies can reduce their emissions more cheaply than......
Available Energy Rebates For Going Green At Home (This is a guest post by David Quilty, owner and publisher of The Good Human, a comprehensive site on sustainable living and progressive politics. Follow him on Twitter.) Looking to increase the energy-efficiency of your home this year? Well, you are in luck – if you purchase an energy-efficient product......
I have written about LED lights before, I am a great fan. They use less energy and are quite bright, as opposed to some energy saving light bulbs. Now I have found a great home improvement product that will save you time, aggravation and money. Outdoor, solar powered, LED lighting. Now you can place a light post at the end of your driveway without running wiring underground or hiring an electrician, plus this is real lighting, not just accent lighting so you and your guests can really see your way in the dark. No leaving the light on before you leave for work in the morning, the lights come on automatically at dusk and shut off at dawn. All this for about what you would pay for conventional lighting and no electrician and no electric bills now or in the future. Be the first in your neighborhood to have the greenest outdoor lighting available.
LightsOnline.com LightsOnline.com is part of Progressive Lighting, Inc., a family-owned business with a 45-year history. As the largest chain of residential lighting showrooms in the Southeastern United States, we have a national reputation for elegant and unique lighting fixtures, superior value, and unparalleled customer service. Progressive Lighting operates six retail......
Green Home Makeovers that are Easy and Affordable Are you looking to save the environment, but you cannot afford costly options like solar panels? Are you looking for a way to cut down on your energy costs, but are not all together sure about installing wind turbines in your back yard? Don't worry! There are plenty of things......
It’s hard to believe, it’s been since July since I posted to my blog. Sorry folks, I let life get in the way. Other than family issues which we won’t get into I have been going to school for Environmental Technology. Other than being one of the dreams I’ve always had, it is given me a whole insight on where this blog should go. Instead of focusing just on energy-saving products. I think I should do a blog that concentrates on nothing but what is on my mind at the moment.
So for today, I want to talk about a search engine called Regoog. Regoog through it is an environmentally friendly search engine based on the Google platform. They use a black screen, which is supposed to save 34% more energy over using a white screen. I know this sounds inconsequential, but when you think about how many people Google everyday, every bit adds up.
So search away and save green and have a great New Year!
Simple Tips for a Popular Blog Blogs are, hands down, one of the easiest possible ways for you to publish your thoughts or messages on the internet. Blogs are excellent for spiking search engine enthusiasm, meaning that by writing in a blog you can easily attract plenty of traffic. But are you aware of what you......
10 Tips for Blog Search Engine Optimization (SEO) [/caption] Whether your blog is political or light-hearted, article-focused or image led, every blog needs visitors, because without visitors, your blog is just a space for aimless musings. Attracting a reliable and regular readership can turn your blog into a place of thought-leadership, and of course, the more hits......
I don’t usually like to get political or get involved in the discussion of the national economy, but… It just seems to me that when a company from a foreign country comes in and buys a large portion of an American company it threatens our national security. Just my personal opinion. Now I am reading how companies from Japan and Germany are coming in and buying into American renewable energy to take advantage of new renewable energy initiatives (http://bit.ly/B5Byb). Are we selling ourselves and our wind overseas? I would love to hear your comments on this.
Ten Tips Toward a More Eco Friendly Home Tip 1 - Turn the lights off any time that they are not needed, even if you are just moving from room to room in the course of your day. According to Energy Star, as much as 20 percent of a home's overall energy use comes from its lighting. Using......
Alternative Energy And Renewable Energies by peter farm sealant richly It is important to think about the ways that the average homes today are actually hurting the environment, and the things that can be done about that fact. The average American household actually produces about two times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that the......
My wonderful husband has taught our German Shepherd, Duke, to open and close the screen door by himself. It originally started innocently enough. We were remodeling downstairs and often times my husband would be carrying heavy things in and out and nobody was around to open the door for him. Duke would jump through hoops of fire for my husband and quickly mastered this trick. The problem is that now the remodel is over, I refuse to use the energy to turn on the air conditioner so the doors are always open, and now Duke uses the screen door as his private doggy door. Needless to say the screen has been pushed through and ripped and is now a public mosquito entrance.
I decided to go online and see if any of the local stores carried that pet screening that stretches instead of ripping when an animal jumps up. What I found is a great energy saving screen. A company named Phifer, that makes the pet screening, makes a whole line of screening and fabric. I never even knew there was something called weave technology, where the type of fabric woven in different ways can have different effects. The one that caught my eye was the Super Solar Screen.
The company claims the Super Solar Screening reflects 90% of the suns heat and glare, improves daytime privacy, and still allows for excellent outward visibility, not to mention it keeps the bugs out. Sounds like the claims on an infomercial, but at the Home Depot site the product had been rated and review by two individuals. Both reviews gave the screening 5 out of 5 stars and both said it performed as advertised.
This will be a huge benefit for a house like mine that faces northwest. I get full sun at my backdoor every morning in the summer; I don’t like to open the door and shades because it raises the temperature in the house. Then in the late afternoon I get the full effect of the sun as it gets ready to set so I have to close all the doors and shades on that side of the house. I am hoping with my Super Solar Screen, I will be able to get airflow from the windows and doors without the heat and glare from the sun. If I decide to turn on the air conditioner it should not have to work as hard with the Super Solar Screen. But maybe with the heat and sun reflected away from the house I won’t have to turn on the air conditioner at all. Sounds like a huge energy saver to me.
As for my screen door, apparently there is no pet friendly screen that can hold back a German Shepherd. I am going to replace the screen with the Super Solar Screen and buy pet guards to keep Duke from going through it.
How to Install a Garage Door Opener Having a garage door opener makes life a lot easier and it can add safety features to an existing door. There are numerous kinds of opener and more kinds of doors, but for the sake of brevity, we're going to cover installing a garage door opener that mounts on the......
Are You Wasting Valuable Energy and Money? This post was written by USwitch. With gas and electricity prices spiraling, consumers are looking for ways of saving money. As well as establishing an energy saving regime in the home which can reduce the average fuel bill by up to £250 according to the Government it is worth shopping around......
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller
Sometimes people don’t vote because they think “one vote can’t change anything”. I think the 2000 election proved that wrong, but some people still don’t believe. Now is your time to be counted by your elected officials. If you want this country to move forward with cleaner energy contact you Congressional Representatives and Senators today. It only takes a minute but can help save the earth a life time.
15 Ways to Reduce Energy Costs Big energy bills can bleed your budget dry, not to mention the potential impact on the environment. Cutting back on your energy consumption will help you become more ‘green’ as well as putting a bit more money back in your pocket. Here are some ways you can reduce your......
What is Solar Energy? by Walter Hull The Sun is like a giant power station, making solar energy for us each and every day. Without this daily dose of solar power, Earth would not be even close to the same. Literally the difference would be like night and day. The term solar energy is......
When it comes to clean energy, saving our environment and living green, the best and only place to start is energy conservation. For every unit of energy saved, a unit of energy does not need to be produced. That sounds so very simple, yet I see it over looked time and time again. People are so impressed with the newest solar product, the next residential wind turbine or if hydrogen technology will replace natural gas, that they forget that all this technology can replace a greater percent of our energy if we use less energy to begin with. In other words energy conservation and efficiency are very often more economically worthwhile than renewable sources and also helps bridge the gap between demand for and availability of renewable energy.
We have all seen list after list of ways to save energy around our house; these should not be pushed to the side because you “did” the list last year. Like all maintenance around the house, conservation cannot be done once and forgotten about, that is why they call it maintenance. There are always new products coming out that can make energy conservation easier, more efficient and more affordable.
My attic is always the first place I look when thinking about energy loss. I have a cathedral ceiling in my living room and just never feel comfortable in the room during the cold winter months. Obviously I have insulated but I still just feel the heat escaping. So I went up to the attic at night leaving the living room lights on and the attic lights off. Bingo! I was able to identify several areas that were not completely insulated around the recessed lighting (make sure your recessed lighting fixtures are rated to have insulation around them). Next I went up to the dark attic on a very sunny morning, before the heat made it unbearable. Again, Bingo! There were a couple of places along the eaves where I could see daylight. Once these were fixed I started looking at different insulation products for attics that were DIY friendly and wallet friendly. Two products caught my eye: Super Insulating Radiant Barrier and the Battic Door Attic Stair Cover.
The Super Insulating Radiant Barrier is a fold out, insulating, reflective product that goes over your current insulation and/or over the roof rafters to create a barrier that actually radiates heat back down to the living space.
The Battic Door Attic Stair Cover is an insulating box that goes over dropdown attic stairs and keeps heat from escaping. This product is a huge improvement over ones of days gone bye. I have had a similar product for about fifteen years and can see this will pay for itself in very short time.
Take time to look at these and other energy saving products. A dollar spent today could save hundreds over a life time not to mention helping to save the environment. Never under estimate the heat, or cooling, loss in your home. Keep vigilant about conservation, any energy saved is energy that does not have to be produced.
What Do You Do To Go Green? Going green can vary for all of us. We each do what we can in our lives to be environmentally conscious and reduce our eco-impact. If you haven't began your green adventure, here are a few simple steps you can take to go green that my family and I have......
How Efficient Are Heat Pumps Heat pumps come in three varieties: geothermal, electric, and a duel source system. These systems utilize various sources to move heat from various sources into and out of your house. Air source electric heating systems are more energy efficient than the traditional electric heating system. They come in sizes suitable......
Thumbs up to Ken Salazar and the Department of the Interior, they have issued five leases to private companies to explore offshore sites for wind energy. All these sites are off the shore of New Jersey and Delaware. I hope this is only the beginning of government being proactive in helping private enterprise develop off shore wind sites.
Here in Massachusetts, where I live, Cape Wind has been fighting an uphill battle, at their expense, to get government approval for a project in Nantucket Sound. Eight years of pushing for wind energy is too long if we are actually going to make wind and renewable energy a reality. In order for individual states to meet any renewable energy quota we need more positive government actions like this.
Lets all pray that the government will continue to put their money and decisions where their mouth is.
Green Building Materials Green Construction is the practice of building in a way that increases efficiency of the use of materials like energy, water and other materials and resources while reducing the impact on human health and the environment during the process of building through more efficient design, site selection, construction, operation, maintenance......
Bad Drivers Beware: Local Governments Are Charging 'Accident Response Fees'. Call me crazy, but didn't tax dollars used to pay for services like Fire Departments removing the proverbial cat from the tree or an annoyed state trooper showing up two hours after a minor fender bender? According to the NY Times, these basic services have gone from just paying......
In a June 1st article by Dan Cook, in Arizona’s The Daily Courier, he wrote about a Habitat for Humanity home that had been built as a “net-zero energy” house.The idea is to use smart building products and techniques, as well as alternative energy sources, such as solar, so that the house does not use any energy from the grid or fossil fuel. This is a whole new niche in the building industry and there is an unlimited amount of products and services to choose from. The problem is that builders and prospective homeowners, we don’t know which products are proven, or will work in our situation, or have a chance to see the product installed or talk to a builder who has actually installed the product.
That is why I found this article interesting. If the companies offering these great new innovative energy saving products donated them to Habitat for Humanity, we would all benefit. First the company would win, getting actual exposure to the public with their product, as well as goodwill, for donating the product. Any builder interested in the product could donate their time to help install the product at the Habitat for Humanity job site. This gives them goodwill for helping, but also gives them experience with new products and techniques that they can sell to their clients. The homeowner wins because they are buying a product that they have seen work and are having it installed by someone who has had experience with the product. The recipient of the Habitat for Humanity home wins with lower or no utility bills. And last, but not least, the environment wins every time we do not use fossil fuel to power our world. This could be the ultimate win-win situation.
A Liquid Wrench For Every Job Liquid Wrench, a company that's been in business since 1941, knows how to make products people really need and use. Their product line includes lubricants, penetrating oils and protectants for people who know that one product can't do everything. While some products on the market today are hyped as all-purpose......
How To Save Energy: A Guide to Renewable Energies by Lynn You should be able to find several indispensable facts about clean energy in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make. Consumers, businesses, and organizations may purchase green energy in order to support further development, help reduce......
According to Boston Business Journal, Boston’s Museum of Science announced this week that it will be putting a wind turbine laboratory on its roof. Apparently they have already done wind studies for a year and have come to the conclusion that there is not enough viable wind in their location to create any meaningful electricity. They already have two turbines up and intend to put up three more of varying shapes and sizes ranging from 7 feet to 40 feet. The idea is to “demonstrate small wind turbines that could be erected on small businesses and homes”.
The problem is that small wind turbines cannot be erected on any building, ever. Mother Nature is a very formidable force to deal with. Any and all wind turbines have an incredible vibration; this can cause both structural and noise problems. Roof top turbines have been known to cause nails to vibrate right out of the roof. While the museum roof may be substantial enough to withstand this, with a full time maintenance crew, the average home is not engineered to withstand these forces.
Second, there is no usable wind on a roof. When you see a small wind turbine on a roof spinning wildly, it looks like it would be generating plenty of power. The truth is, all that spinning is the turbine trying to find a steady wind in a very turbulent area. Wind is invisible, and most people don’t understand what they can’t see. Think of a stick lazily drifting down a calm stream, making slow but steady progress, then there is a rock in the way, the stick goes around the rock but gets caught twirling in the eddy behind it, there is a lot of movement, but no progress. Wind is the same way, once it hits an object, such as a house or a tree; there is wind turbulence behind the object. Another way of looking at this is a sailboat in the lee of a bluff. You feel the wind on your face, it feels strong, but the sail is slapping madly and the boat is going nowhere. A wind turbine is the same way as it searches for the wind in the turbulence.
The Boston Museum of Science would be doing the public a huge favor by teaching the physics of wind and turbulence using smoke chambers and roof mock ups to show how a nail or a screw can be loosened due to vibration. They should teach the benefits of clean wind energy when placed in the right location and the uselessness of putting it in the wrong location. With all my heart I hope the Boston Museum of Science is not advocating building mounted turbines, not only would they be putting the public at risk physically and promoting a waste of money, they will be putting a black mark on wind energy when these turbines never produce any meaningful electricity.
Look for an upcoming blog on proper wind turbine location.
For more information check out the Warwick Wind Trials data on building mounted turbines.
Is Solar Panels Electricity Widely Acceptable? by Joan T. Ritzborough According to the Energy Information Administration in 2006 around 86 percent of this planet's primary energy production was powered by fossil fuels. This fact alone showed us that despite of the advanced technology we are using in this modern era we are still depending on the......
What is Green Energy? During the course of the last elections both in Canada and the USA, there was a substantial amount of talk surrounding energy: renewable energy, green energy, and fossil fuel emissions. There was by no means any shortage of terms but there was a shortage of definitions. It’s pretty obvious......
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Jun 16, 2010 
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Cap and Trade Yet another term being thrown around the business news is Cap and Trade. What does this mean? The Cap is the limit that large companies will have on the amount of greenhouse gas they can emit. The Trade is that since some companies can reduce their emissions more cheaply than...... 
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