While service industries don’t have smokestacks and may have less environmental impacts than a manufacturing facility, they too can benefit from sustainable business strategies to mitigate risks and capture new business opportunities.

However, it is not uncommon for service based (more…)

Making buildings and our lifestyles more energy efficient is one of the best ways to reduce emissions because it can be done now. As we move towards alternative energy, some companies are also working on ways to cut down the amount of energy we use, and to create energy-efficient products. (more…)

In July, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s MobiSys conference, researchers from MIT and Princeton University took the best-paper award for a system that uses a network of smartphones mounted on car dashboards to collect information about traffic signals and tell drivers when slowing down could help (more…)

Schools have been teaching energy conservation for decades. Now more of those schools are able to incorporate a little math into their lessons about the value of turning off the lights. The New York Times reports that one Long Island school district was able to achieve some $350,000 in annual utility savings (more…)

The energy efficiency sector has had a healthy injection of venture capital over the past 18 months. In Q2, investment in energy efficiency accounted for almost a quarter of cleantech venture capital commitments (Cleantech Group).

It is an increasingly appealing sector for VCs in the (more…)

Most American consumers think of energy use as one-way delivery. Flip a switch and you’ve got power. Shut it off and it’s gone. Until, of course, you need it again. Indeed, the power grid stands at the ready. Or does it?

We get power from the thousands of power plants (more…)

Schneider Electric is a well known French global company offering energy efficient solutions for both homes and businesses around the world. As the “Global Specialist in Energy Management,” Schneider Electric provides the technology and solutions needed to fully optimize energy usage in all (more…)

With everyone trying to make their home as green as possible, it seems like most of the attention gets focused on the inside – smart heating and cooling systems, low flow toilets, and eco-friendly light bulbs being just a few examples. But there are also ways we can be green on the outside of the home, doing just as (more…)

Over the last few decades, commercial buildings have been at the forefront of a number of energy storage technologies including batteries, flywheels (primarily in uninterruptible power system (UPS) applications), and thermal energy storage (TES). While the former market segment is mature, TES (more…)

When it’s hot in the summer, we want our air conditioners blasting to keep us cool. And when winter brings shorter days and freezing temperatures, we want the heat and lights full on. Until spring – and daylight savings time – arrives. We don’t want to waste precious resources, but we do want to be comfortable! (more…)