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NASA has awarded a contract to HPM to provide environmental engineering and occupational health services to the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The firm-fixed price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract begins Nov. 1. It has a maximum value of $29.5 million with a potential performance period of five years. Orica Limited, ... Read more »
FundingFactory, a recycling fundraiser program of Clover Technologies Group, has launched Collected, a free electronic waste recycling program for college campuses that lets schools exchange e-waste for cash or rewards. The program also prevents millions of pounds of e-waste from reaching landfills, FundingFactory says. Collected pays higher education institutions for ... Read more »
Energy and facility managers often hear complaints from employees that the work environment is either too hot or too cold. Now, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are working on a “personal comfort system” technology that could solve the problem of individual thermal comfort. Scientists at the University’s Center ... Read more »
The UK lobbying organization CBI conducted a survey of 100 of its corporate members and found that businesses are confused by overlapping government policies that deter energy efficiency investments. In its report “Shining a Light: Uncovering the business energy efficiency opportunity,” the CBI finds that better energy management can cut ... Read more »
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Aside from the common, well-known barriers such as high initial costs that block large scale investment in building energy efficiency, there are several hidden barriers that don’t receive attention, and an American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) report attempts to explore them. The report, Cryptic Barriers to Energy ... Read more »
Initiatives by firms such as Tesco and Walmart and recent research by bodies including the University of Minnesota Institute highlight the impact suppliers within a supply chain have on a company’s energy footprint, but research by renewable energy company Urban Wind suggests that policies targeting vendors’ energy use are piling pressure on ... Read more »
The US Army awarded contracts to a group of 22 qualified solar technology contractors. Solar is the second of four technologies being awarded under a $7 billion Renewable and Alternative Energy Power Production for Department of Defense installations program. The first, geothermal, was awarded in May. The remaining technologies – ... Read more »
The City of Lemoore, Calif., and Chevron Energy Solutions are starting construction of a solar installation to power domestic water wells, a wastewater treatment plant, the Cinnamon Municipal Complex, Police Department, and several other facilities throughout the city. The project is expected to generate over 3 MW of electricity and ... Read more »
Property owners may understand the benefits of smart buildings, but often have misconceptions that they are a lot more expensive, are the same as green buildings, or that only new buildings can become smart and industrial facilities can not be made smart buildings. Jones Lang LaSalle’s smart building experts debunk ... Read more »
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Clean energy and transportation projects launched across the US in the second quarter of 2013 have led to the creation of 38,600 new jobs in the sector, says a report by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2). The number of jobs is slightly more for Q2 of 2013 than it was for the ... Read more »
Janet McCabe, a deputy administrator at the EPA’s clean-air office, is expected to be nominated to head the division, a position that would put her at the center of President Obama’s controversial climate change plan, the National Journal reports. As head of the Office of Air and Radiation, McCabe would ... Read more »
As every facility manager knows, all the HVAC wizardry in the world won’t matter if your staff aren’t comfortable. Companies have shelled out big bucks for control and automation systems promising to deliver huge energy savings – only to find those savings out the window when employees are too hot ... Read more »
Delhaize America this week is opening a grocery store that will use carbon dioxide as a refrigerant rather than hydroflourocarbons (HFCs) — the first such supermarket in the US, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency. The Hannaford grocery store in Turner, Maine, will use a CO2 transcritical system that reduces ... Read more »
A California water district unanimously voted earlier this week to divest in fossil fuel companies and ban future investments in any of the biggest 200 coal, oil and gas companies including Alcoa, BP, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The San Jose-based Santa Clara Valley Water District provides drinking water and ... Read more »
Supply chain standards organization GS1 has released the Global Protocol for Packaging Sustainability, developed by the Consumer Goods Forum. The protocol includes more than 40 environmental, economic and social indicators. These metrics have been added to the product information that supply chain partners can share on GS1’s Global Data Synchronisation Network. Equitable ... Read more »
Emissions trading offers the best and most cost-effective way of mitigating aviation emissions and climate impact by 2050, according to a report by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Centre for Air Transport and Environment (CATE). The least effective strategy is biofuels, using the assumptions of the UK Committee on Climate Change’s assessment ... Read more »
York Navy Systems has designed a prototype compressor for a new generation of high-efficiency shipboard chillers for the US Navy fleet that the company says can reduce fuel consumption by 25 percent. York Navy Systems began developing the chillers to improve shipboard HVAC systems in 2009 after winning an American Recovery ... Read more »
Bio-Tec Environmental has patented a method of creating a layered polymeric plastic or composite. The biodegradable-plastics company has been granted US Patent 8,222,316 and foreign equivalents for this process. Products that combine the patented method with Bio-Tec’s patent-pending formulations are under development, the company says. Bio-Tec has also received a ... Read more »
In part II of this article, an overview of the first five of these nine elements of this new business model will be discussed: Who is the customer? What is the value proposition for the customer? What are the channels employed to deliver the value proposition to the customer? How ... Read more »
The tradeoff between rising energy costs and the low carbon agenda continues to see policy makers retreating from traditional renewable energy support mechanisms, forcing the industry to look for innovative financing solutions. At the same time, energy mix optimization has come to the fore, particularly in emerging markets, with governments ... Read more »
The main reason many energy efficiency upgrades don’t happen is, in a word: money. And in order to free up more financing, it’s going to require scale, according to the Guardian. A recent survey of 476 energy managers conducted by Noesis Energy found the primary reason why energy-efficiency projects are ... Read more »
Entergy Corporation plans to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. Vermont Yankee sells its power into the New England wholesale market. It is one of Entergy’s merchant nuclear plants, according to a spokesperson. The station is expected to cease power production after its current ... Read more »
An energy-efficient lighting retrofit performed by LumaTech at the Eagle Mountain Shopping Center in Batesville, Ark., is saving $42,580 in annual energy and maintenance costs and saw a six-month payback. Before the lighting retrofit, the shopping center’s parking lot was illuminated with 81 pole-mounted metal halide lamps, each consuming 1,080 ... Read more »
The Energy Department is to partner with the State of New Jersey, NJ Transit and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to assess NJ Transit’s energy needs and help develop a conceptual design of an advanced microgrid system. The project, which is part of the Obama Administration’s ongoing efforts to ... Read more »