March 24, 2010

Some in the power sector have unclean hands. A nonpartisan environmental group has published a report detailing the industry's mercury emissions and noting that the biggest emitters of them have not yet installed some commercially-available technologies that would cut those pollutants.

While the criticism heaped on certain utilities is deserved, many others are taking action to curb their mercury emissions. Even the Environmental Integrity Project, which released its annual assessment of the industry's mercury emissions, says that overall those pollutants dropped by 4.7 percent between 2007 and 2008 -- the latest timeframe for which the group has collected data from the Environmental Protection Agency. But it hastens to add that those same emissions increased at 27 of the worst 50 coal plants.

March 17, 2010 - Groveland Twp.- Life will be just a little more green for some township residents thanks to a grant awarded earlier this year.

Governor Jennifer Granholm announced in late January that the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth (DELEG) has awarded $17.4 million in grants to 125 cities, villages, townships, and counties throughout Michigan to support local energy efficiency projects.

The state Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) are funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act).

March 22, 2010 

With consumer demand for home energy monitoring devices anticipated to grow -- and regulators expected to require utilities to provide consumers with access to the devices and the data needed to make them useful -- the race is on to see which providers place their products in consumers' homes.

In that race, some providers are joining with utilities to obtain consumers' energy usage data.

Giants Microsoft and Google are clearly in the lead. Microsoft has formed partnerships with four utilities and Google has inked agreements with 10 utilities in four countries. Under the partnerships, the utilities offer Microsoft and Google products for free to their customers.

March 19, 2010

First it was appliances, then cars. Now, it is nuclear reactors.

South Korea, which built its first nuclear plant in 1978 using U.S. technology, successfully outbid American-Japanese and French consortia to land a $20 billion order for four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates.

The deal, announced in the waning days of 2009, calls for the reactors to come on stream between 2017 and 2020. The order could be doubled to $40 billion if long-term operating contracts are added, and further reactor construction could be in the offing.

Below are a few letters received ay EnergyBiz Insider on topics that appeared in the past few weeks. They capture the essence of how many readers say they feel.

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