FEATURES AND NEWS
Savant Systems’ SmartLighting Wi-Fi 802.11-based lighting control products can be used as both a standalone lighting control platform or as part of a Savant automation system. The lighting control features a dimmer inside each Wi-Fi-connected keypad, and the system can be integrated without rewiring the home or commercial facility. Once ... Read more »
Arrow Electronics, a global provider of products and services to industrial and commercial users of electronic components and enterprise computing solutions, held a recycling event that collected more than 154,000 pounds of electronic devices from residents of Denver on Aug. 11. The event, hosted in partnership with Comcast, the City ... Read more »
A list of national plastic bag ordinances can be seen on the Californian’s Against Waste website.
The Global Reporting Initiative says the first draft of the GRI G4 Taxonomy will be available for public comment on Sept. 9. The GRI released G4, the latest version of its sustainability reporting guidelines that place more emphasis on materiality, in May. The GRI developed the GRI Taxonomy — which ... Read more »
Precision Castparts, DuPont, Bayer Group, Dow Chemicals and ExxonMobil are the top five corporate air polluters in the US, say researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. BASF ranks No. 6, with LyondellBasell Industries, Renco Group, General Electric and Ineos Group rounding out ... Read more »
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Diageo has improved water efficiency in its African operations by 32 percent since 2007, surpassing its target of 30 percent by 2015, according to the company’s latest sustainability and responsibility report. On a worldwide basis the alcoholic beverage maker also aims to improve water efficiency by 30 percent by 2015, ... Read more »
In other efforts to shrink buildings’ environmental footprint, a suit of tools released this week by AT&T and Environmental Defense Fund can save US commercial buildings up to 28 billion gallons of water annually, the organizations say.
There is not yet a single commercial-scale carbon capture plant, but the sector is aiming higher all the time. In the latest news, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. has appointed Germany’s Linde Group to build the largest carbon capture facility yet proposed. SABIC affiliate United Jubail Petrochemical Company hopes to capture about ... Read more »
The Sustainability Consortium, an organization that creates sustainability standards for consumer products, is partnering with Nanjing University, nearly a year after launching operations in China. Nanjing University staff will work with TSC researchers to identify the social and environmental issues associated with consumer products and find ways to improve their ... Read more »
The deadline for Gulf of Mexico oil spill compensation claims against BP is likely to be extended from April 2014, according to both sides of the legal settlement, Reuters reports. The deadline could possibly be pushed into 2015. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission‘s Office of Inspector General said the agency’s records of ... Read more »
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Plug Power has received an order from Mercedes-Benz for 123 additional hydrogen-based GenDrive fuel cell units to power new forklifts at a logistics hub under construction in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Last July, Mercedes purchased 72 GenDrive fuel cells for the lift truck fleet at its Tuscaloosa vehicle assembly plant. Plug Power ... Read more »
A MillerCoors zero-waste brewery and McDonald’s “Best of Green” contest, in which employees come up with ways to reduce restaurants’ environmental footprint, are among the ways Fortune 500 companies are engaging employees in their commitments to sustainability, according to a white paper by Workforce For Good. Workforce for Good: Engaging Employees ... Read more »
The Carbon Trust and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) have launched a spreadsheet tool to help UK companies estimate the carbon footprint of tablet medicines in blister packs. The tool, which the organizations say is a first of its kind for the pharmaceutical sector, was funded by ... Read more »
A lobbying group in Michigan, Energy Choice Now (ECN), says the state’s two largest utilities DTE Energy and Consumers Energy are charging businesses higher than necessary rates because the utilities have too little competition. According to Energy Choice Now, Michigan’s industrial electric rates in May were 23 percent higher and ... Read more »
The city council of St. Paul, Minn., approved the issuance of about $10 million of revenue bonds for Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). The St. Paul Port Authority will issue the bonds to finance loans to cities throughout the state for projects to boost efficiency or install renewable energy systems, ... Read more »
The market for lighting controls in commercial buildings has expanded dramatically in recent years driven by falling LED prices among other factors, according to Navigant Research. Falling LED prices are causing an upswing in adoption of LED lamps, which will in turn drive up the adoption of lighting controls, says ... Read more »
There is clear evidence that emerging economies will gradually take a larger share of the renewable energy market, according to research by Frost & Sullivan. Economic development and revised energy priorities in the regions of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa will drive a more sustained increase in the ... Read more »
A Michigan scientist and his team have developed an inexpensive three-dimensional graphene honeycomb that they say can replace the very expensive platinum used in solar cells. Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin and flexible and easy to make, says Michigan Tech News, but a critical component that goes into making them ... Read more »
SunEdison is going to spin off its semiconductor business from its solar business. The company’s board of directors has unanimously approved an initial public offering of its semiconductor business to create SunEdison Semiconductor. Just a few weeks ago, Norway-based Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) announced it would divide the company into ... Read more »
According to a survey conducted by Noesis Energy, the primary reasons why energy-efficiency projects are not getting approved are i) the inability to get funding; and ii) uncertainty about savings estimates. Noesis’ recent Energy Project Survey, which received responses from 476 energy managers and energy consultants in the commercial and industrial ... Read more »
General Electric and BASF are among the 22 organizations to receive a total of $36 million from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop electric vehicle energy storage systems using innovative chemistries, architectures and designs. The ARPA-E’s program, Robust Affordable Next Generation Energy Storage Systems (RANGE), ... Read more »
Wireless networks with 24/7 access are becoming energy consuming monsters and wireless computing will lead to 30 million tons of carbon emissions by 2015, The Guardian reports. Cloud-based applications from data centers managed by Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple help create more efficiency, but they also drive a paradigm shift ... Read more »
MIT engineers have developed carbon fiber “Lego bricks” — interlocking blocks that can be used to build large structures — that are 10 times stiffer than comparable lightweight materials, ExtremeTech reports. The online technology publication says robots could mass-produce these carbon fiber blocks, which could then be used to build ... Read more »
Climate adaptation is poised to provide big business for some companies – and a big expense for many others. As this article at The Verge points out, construction firms – especially those that build flood defenses – and air conditioning manufacturers are expecting big gains as the number of severe ... Read more »
ThermoEnergy and STW Resources in July completed a successful pilot test of ThermoEnergy’s TurboFrac produced water recycling system at a major oil producer’s site near Midland, Texas. Also last month, Nuverra Environmental Solutions entered into an agreement with Halliburton to advance the treatment and recycling of produced water to be ... Read more »