Green Daily

(Photo by Energy Star)

It's countdown to tax day! Maybe you're one of those "organized" people who filed back in February and are chuckling at the rest of us with our piles of receipts covering the dining room table. Or maybe you're (normal and) scrambling to file your extension by April 15th.

Either way, as long as we're all thinking about taxes and saving money, here's some interesting information from the Energy Star website about tax credits created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which will give you tax breaks for making energy efficient choices.

If you upgrade your home in 2009 and 2010, you can get a credit of 30% of the cost, up to $1,500 for installing new:

• windows and doors
• insulation
• roofs
• HVAC systems
• water heaters (non-solar)
• biomass stoves

Even better, through 2016, you can get a credit for 30% of the cost -- with no upper limit -- when you add these energy efficient systems to new and existing homes:

• geothermal heat pumps
• solar panels
• solar water heaters
• small wind energy systems
• fuel cells

Thinking about getting a new car? You can find a tax advantaged solution there, too! Even though credits for Toyota and Honda hybrid cars have been phased out, you can still get tax credit for gas-electric hybrids from Ford, GM and Nissan. Also, the first 250,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles sold will earn the buyer a tax credit.

We're all glad when we don't have to think about taxes, but it's always good to hear that you will be rewarded for making the right choice for the planet!

Along with a new, supposedly more youthful and hip logo redesign, Pepsi is launching an energy-conscious effort to keep themselves relevant to the Pepsi generation -- energy-sipping vending machines. The cola giant is rolling out 30 test machines in the Washington DC area to field test the greener vending machines with a 15% lighter energy footprint than current machines -- which are already 44% more efficient than those from six years ago.

Will your Pepsi be as cold and refreshing from a machine that uses only 5.08 kWh per day, rather that 6 kWh? That's what Pepsi hope to find out with these tests. The machines, which will generate 12% less greenhouse gases emissions will get the title of being the first green vending machines in the US (although Coca-Cola operates HFC free machines in the UK and at the Beijing Olympics). If successful, the energy efficient vending cola incubators will go worldwide over the next few years. Pepsi operates about 5 million vending machines globally.

While the act of turning out the lights for Earth Hour is largely considered to be symbolic, if you happen to be someone who's really hoping to cut down on your greenhouse gas emissions, you might want to reconsider your lighting options. According to EcoGeek, living by candlelight for an hour might not be so eco-friendly after all.

In order to equal the light provided by one 40 Watt incandescent bulb, you would need to burn 40 candles -- which releases 10 times more CO2 emissions. Of course, most people participating in Earth Hour won't be burning 40 candles in their home, but there's a lesson here somewhere. Perhaps, the lesson is: don't examine well-intended traditions too closely if you want to really enjoy them. Or maybe its just that technology, while it may be destructive in some ways, is still pretty amazing and under appreciated by most.

I'm not sure if this defies the spirit of Earth Hour or not, but it seems like an LED head lamp would be a pretty energy-efficient -- yet still useful -- compromise.

[via Treehugger]

Every month or so, some insular policymaker says something to indicate that there's some kind of environmentalist plot to eradicate Earth's human population ... could they only seize power. Well, here's this month's. At this week's annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust, leading politico Jonathon Porritt will recommend that Britain reduce its population to 30 million to promote food sustainability.

"Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure. Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact."

Have fun with this one conspiracy theorists ... I won't stand in your way. Aside from the fact that it is in fact true that less people would emit less greenhouse gases -- in the developed world, there's really no more counterproductive PR battle than trying to advocate massive population reductions. It's a little bit totalitarian and disconcerting. Sure OPT, have fun holding your annual conferences and recommending massive population cuts ... just don't expect to win any support by offering up a Chinese style one-child policy.

If you're in the market for a new car, you've probably noticed that the number of hybrids parked on dealer lots higher than ever -- even as the market for cars in general has collapsed. Much of the reason for this is the intense tongue-lashing the auto industry has received for focusing on SUVs and not the smaller, fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow. The trouble is, now that a glut of hybrids are being pumped into the market, the demand for hybrids seems to be vanishing like a mirage.

This month, Toyota celebrated the sale of its 1,000,000th hybrid -- and while execs were reveling in their hybrid domination, they were also digesting the news that Prius sales were down 33% since last February. Hybrid sales across the board are down almost 2/3rds since last April. "When gas prices came down, the priority of buying a hybrid fell off quite quickly," says Wes Brown of LA-based Iceology. In some places, car buyers are trending back towards SUVs and trucks. Still, the slate for most automakers, especially the ones who took bailout money (ahem, GM and Chrysler), is loaded to the brim with hybrids and fuel-sippers. Has the demand for hybrids really collapsed, or is it just the ailing economy? Is our fuel consciousness truly only engaged when energy prices rise?

[via AutoblogGreen]

Finding a silver lining in the gigantic economic mess that is gripping the world right now is pretty hard to do, but if you were to look for a silver lining, experts are predicting a major drop in oil demand and global emissions. Ideally, the drop in emissions would come as a result of people making responsible choices, not the expansion of poverty -- but the word on the street is that oil demand will drop 1.5 percent this year from 2008 levels, which were already down .4 percent from 2007 levels.

If the experts are right -- and it looks like they will be -- this will be the first time that global demand for oil has dropped in two consecutive years since 1982-1983. To put that into some kind of concrete yet still unimaginably large and therefore abstract terms, the IEA estimates that the world will consume 270,000 fewer barrels of oil every day. On a related not, a professor at Cambridge University is predicting a 40-50% drop in greenhouse gas emissions due to the global economic downturn. So, that's kinda like a platinum lining for you.

[via Earth2Tech]

Get ready for European style carbon trading, because here it comes. As the EPA tinkers with the idea of creating a carbon market they first need to know exactly how who's doing the emitting and how much. That's why they've gone public with a proposal to make heavy polluters in the steel, chemical, and auto, and hopefully coal power industries submit annual reports of their overall greenhouse gas emissions to Washington in an effort to monitor America's impact on climate change.

When the EU launched its carbon trading market in 2005, the first couple of years were a major debacle, because the government lacked sufficient data on how much pollution each facility was releasing -- they were also heavily lobbied to give the permits out for free (which they did). Learning from the EU's mistakes, the US plan will most likely have a few years of emissions data in the run up to the opening bell -- if indeed team Obama is able to successfully launch a GHG permitting scheme.

What's the ethanol industry to do when both consumers and the scientific community fail to recognize the benefits of corn-based fuel? Like most other industries of scale, the only thing left appears to be to lobby the government to push the product. After a glut of studies have indicated that ethanol might be worse for the environment than gas, the struggling ethanol industry has convinced Ag secretaries from 11 states to send a letter that appeals directly to President Obama.

Current ethanol regulation caps gas-ethanol blends at 10%. Unless of course you're going with E85 (85% ethanol), and most cars aren't built to withstand its corrosive effects. The coalition of Ag secretaries are hoping that the government will boost corn sales by allowing a 15% or even 20% ethanol blend. In the letter to the President, the ethanol enthusiasts contend that ethanol reduces GHG, a claim that has been hotly disputed recently. Another primary justification for expanding ethanol, which garnered 66% of federal renewable energy subsidies in 2007, is that it would help fund research into more efficient means of ethanol production, like cellulosic ethanol.

[via AutoblogGreen]

Read the letter after the break.

While politicians consider throwing billions down the financial sinkhole that is the US auto industry, some opponents are wondering if officials might be looking at the wrong side of the equation. Instead of giving assistance directly to automakers, why not pay Americans to retire their old carbon-spewing jalopies and thus help them purchase a ride with a newer emissions control system?

Although vehicle emissions get most of the ink, the energy used inside our homes and businesses end up producing the lion's share of emissions each year in the US: 48%. That's why, each year, the EPA takes an inventory on which cities are making the largest effort to lower their skyline's carbon footprint. They measure that by the number of Energy Star labeled buildings in a given city.

In order to get that coveted rating, a building must consume 35% less electricity and emit 35% less greenhouse emissions than a conventional structure its size. 2008 saw a massive 130% jump in the number of Energy Star qualified buildings around the nation. Here's a list of the cities that really put their money where their mouth is.

Though some will no doubt say that it's just a drop in the bucket for big oil, five of the world's largest oil companies sunk over $550 million into alternative energy research at the university level. Over the last two years, BP, Conoco Phillips, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total have all been throwing a portion of their record profits at the nation's research institution to find cleaner sources of energy -- and then spent another righteous sum to brag about it in their ad campaigns, of course.

Good news for the City of Angels, the Clinton Global Initiative has partnered up with the municipal government to roll out the largest LED retrofit program on record. Unfortunately, they're not handing out the highly efficient, yet expensive bulbs to homeowners. However, all citizens will enjoy some of the benefits. Over the next 5 years, Each of the city's 140,000 streetlights will be retrofitted with an energy-saving LED bulb designed to reduce "sky glow."

While I'm stoked about the movement to eradicate light pollution and once again see the stars, the city of Los Angeles has to be excited about saving $48 million over the next 7 years in energy and maintenance costs. The bulbs currently in use need to be replaced once every 4 to 6 years -- LEDs are expected to last from 10 to 12. Not only will the city be saving some seriou cash, but they'll be lowering carbon emissions by 40,500 tons a year, equivalent to taking 6,700 cars off the road for a year. After the city pays off its loan to the Clinton Foundation, its expected to save $10 million each year on its energy bill.

[via Earth2Tech]

January must have been publish your last ditch, crackpot schemes to save the planet month in the research community, because it was loaded to the hilt with them. First, it was the plan to spray arctic seawater into the atmosphere to create a global refrigerator. Then, it was James Lovelock's plan to bury a few gigatons of man made charcoal to sequester CO2. Then, at the end of the month, we get yet another wacky planet-saving proposition.

Researchers from the University of Washington and UC Irvine have published a paper suggesting that humanity can bury its carbon problem in deep ocean trenches. They recommend baling up agricultural waste, towing it out into the ocean with barges, and then weighting it down with rocks. According to research, dumping 30% of the planet's annual crop waste at depths of 1,500 meters of greater could reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere by 15% (600 gigatons). It's basically a really primitive form of carbon sequestration, because waters at that depth don't mix with currents or surface waters. Furthermore, researchers say that if the waste is buried near an alluvial fan, the agro junk will be buried in silt.

[via CleanTechnica]

In the US, having two or three children is pretty much the definition of normalcy. Sometimes, families with over 5 or 6 children raise eyebrows, and couples with no kiddies ... some people simply can't wrap their heads around that. Well, if you're trying to keep your family-building activities sustainable in harmony with the planet, Johnathon Porritt from the UK's Sustainable Development Commission recommends that you limit yourself to 2 offspring. Otherwise, you're a planet hater.