I recently had the chance to speak with Catherine Potter, Manager of Consumer Content at Positive Energy.

Matthew Benson:  What is Positive Energy?

Catherine Potter:  Every energy utility faces a fundamental challenge of balancing supply with demand.  They can add more capacity or they can reduce demand to make the math work.  We help utilities reduce demand in the residential sector, by providing tools and ideas that encourage and enable consumers to reduce energy use.  In this way, utilities can look at us as an efficiency power plant.

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The search for alternative transportation fuels just got a little easier.

The U.S. Department of Energy, now headed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, has rolled out an “Alternative Fueling Station Locator.” In other words, if you’re driving a vehicle that runs on biodiesel, electricity, ethanol, hydrogen, natural gas or propane, this tool can help you find it .

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President Obama, welcome to the center stage, the country and the world are expecting great things from you and your team of 306 million people. Please lead us all wisely.

This morning Barack Hussain Obama became 44th President of the United States before a backdrop of mounting environmental concerns, national security fears, economic instability and a very expectant, demanding and increasingly impatient constituency. Today he humbly called on American and the World’s citizens and to help him.  The future of clean technologies of every sector require forward thinking politicians and intelligentsia to wean the public from energy sources that “strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet“.

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In “The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World”, Phillip Schewe provides his readers with a historical backdrop to the “largest industrial investment in history” – the electrical grid. He discusses the key players in its development – from the scientific geniuses who converted electricity from a curiosity to an essential tool for modern life, to the entrepreneurs who built the electrical infrastructure and marketed and sold power to the masses, to the political leaders who deemed it in the national interest to get the government into the power business to expand access to this essential commodity. Schewe writes from a fairly general point of view and avoids getting into too much technical or economic detail. He does often complement his historical summarizing with philosophical meanderings, which in my opinion add little value to the overall presentation.

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