“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”  – Bob Dylan

Who knew Bob Dylan had the insight to harness the wind’s power long before wind turbines were a commonplace item?!

All joking aside, Mr. Dylan was definitely on to something there.

I’d bet that almost all of you have seen wind farms dotting the landscape, harnessing the power of the jet stream to provide energy to homes, farms and cities. However, how many of you know how a wind turbine actually works?

“Simply stated, a wind turbine works the opposite of a fan. Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, wind turbines use wind to make electricity. The wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity.” – U.S. Department of Energy

Energy 101 – Wind Turbines from U.S. Department of Energy on Vimeo.

While wind turbines are typically associated with the giant, towering farms you see dotting the countryside, there are alternatives that can be implemented on a much smaller scale for individual businesses or homes that would like to harness the power for their use. We covered these options in a previous blog post that can help you get started in the right direction if you decide this the right option for your business.

The energy front saw a boost in funding over the past year, a trend we hope to see continue through 2012. Reuters recently reported that global investment in clean energy hit a record $260 billion in 2011, up 5 percent from the previous year.

A major attribution to the rise was the growth in solar energy investment at more than a third over the previous year, despite shrinking profit margins, some bankruptcies and flagging share prices. – Reuters

Some of the key points from the report include:

• The United States regained its title as the top country for clean energy investment, beating China for the first time since 2008. – Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)
• Global clean energy growth was driven mainly by solar, with investment growing by 36 percent to $136.6 billion – a 50 percent drop in prices for photovoltaic panels spurred installation.
• Clean energy investments in the United States rose by 33 percent to nearly $56 billion, while those in China edged up 1 percent to $47.4 billion.
• Clean energy investment in Europe rose 3 percent to around $100 billion, in India jumped 52 percent to $10.3 billion and in Brazil increased 15 percent to $8.2 billion.
• Utility-scale renewable energy projects saw an increase in investments to $145.6 billion in 2011, up from $138.3 billion the previous year.

Not all of the news was great, however:

• Wind power investment fell 17 percent to $74.9 billion.
• Many solar stocks retreated by more than 60 percent as prices for panels that convert sunlight into electricity fell sharply, erasing profit margins for manufacturers.
• A number of companies lost their fight for survival, such as Germany’s Solon SE and Solar Millennium, which both sank into insolvency in December. That follows U.S. companies Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt and Solyndra.
• Fundraising in public markets and investment in government and corporate research and development all fell last year.

On the plus side, it is becoming more affordable for homes and businesses to invest in renewable and clean energy – primarily with solar energy. However, because prices continue to drop for these types of products, companies who provide the innovations that will make us all more energy-efficient don’t receive the funding they need to stay afloat, much less make a profit.

It will be interesting to watch the global energy investment trends through this next year, especially as government campaigns ramp up toward the 2012 Presidential elections.

Do you think 2012 will see an increase, decrease or remain static in terms of energy investing?

It’s that time of year again where you start seeing an abundance of Top 10 lists and countdowns summarizing everything that happened in the past 12 months. Naturally, we have also created a 2011 roundup list…of lists. We scoured the web and have found some of our favorite energy story digests from the past year. Enjoy!

National Geographic always compiles some of the most visually spectacular reviews. This year was no exception. We enjoyed the Top Energy Stories 2011 and The Year’s Most Overlooked Energy Stories. However, our absolute favorite from Nat Geo was Most Hopeful Energy Developments of 2011. While it’s important to remember all of the events that shaped the global energy conversation, we love the idea of looking toward the new year with optimism and encouragement for the amazing things that were accomplished in the previous year.

Instead of creating a list of what they perceived to be the top stories, Renewable Energy World provided a roundup of the most read stories of 2011 – giving us a snapshot of what their readers found to be important.

CleanTechia.com provides a nice summary in its article: Top 10 Clean Tech Stories of 2011.

Finally, Consumer Energy Report compiled its Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2011. What we like about this list is that they’ve included their predictions for top energy stories in 2012.

So, what do you think – do these lists cover all of the big energy news items of the past year? Are there any you think were missed?

Energy Efficiency just got a lot more social thanks to the efforts by Greenpeace and Facebook, who recently announced a collaboration to “promote renewable energy, encourage major utilities to develop renewable energy generation, and develop programs that will enable Facebook users to save energy and engage their communities in clean energy decisions.”

Photo Source: Greenpeace

The partnership came with a bit of arm twisting on the part of Greenpeace, who launched a global Unfriend Coal Campaign nearly two years ago, asking 700,000 online activists to call on Facebook to power its data centers with clean energy instead of coal.

According to TriplePundit.com, the Unfriend Coal Campaign started when Facebook announced the construction of a massive data center in Oregon in February, 2010. This facility was supposed to be very energy efficient, but at the same time receive power from PacifiCorp, whose energy mix is mainly based on coal.

“Facebook’s commitment to renewable energy raises the bar for other IT and cloud computing companies such as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Twitter,” said Casey Harrell, Senior IT Analyst for Greenpeace International. ‘‘The Facebook campaign proved that people all over the world want their social networks powered by renewable energy, and not by coal. Greenpeace will continue to measure, report and campaign on the sector’s progress to green the cloud.”

Greenpeace and Facebook have also agreed to develop and promote experiences on the social site that guide people and organizations with ways to save energy and engage their communities in clean energy issues.

If you consider the global reach of tech giants such as Facebook, this news really is a significant win in both the actual actions being taken and the communication and viral sharing possibilities. Facebook’s commitment – along with Google, which claims to run some of the most energy efficient data centers in the world – fully demonstrates an increasing demand and move towards a more responsible and accountable corporate behavior.

The holiday season can be a costly one, that’s for sure. However, we think that your energy expenses during this time of year should never overshadow the cheer of the holidays. There are several things you can do to help keep energy bills lower and still maintain a festive home.

If you haven’t already, consider switching your incandescent holiday lights to LED lights. LED lights use light emitting diodes rather than the traditional miniature incandescent bulbs. While they are much like incandescent bulbs, they do not have a filament inside that can burn out and take the entire string of bulbs with it. Instead, they are illuminated by the movement of electrons in a semi-conductor material.

You’ll also benefit with this light source due to the absence of excessive heat and wasted electricity. LED lights use about one tenth the energy used by incandescent bulbs, have very long lifetimes, and are very low maintenance.

LED Christmas lights are available in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors, and can even blink just like the regular incandescent varieties.

Timers are another excellent tool for helping keep energy costs down. Handy for both indoor and outdoor decorations, timers allow you to control how long your decorations stay on and require very little to no effort once set. Timers can range in price from $10 to $50 and higher depending on their use and features, and are available at any home improvement store, discount chains and various online retailers.

If you’d like to  take a proactive approach to understanding your holiday décor energy costs, We Energies created this fantastic holiday decoration energy cost calculator that lets you plug in the type of decoration you’re using (lights, inflatables, etc.), the amount of time you intend to power the décor and your energy billing type and will calculate what your estimated monthly cost will be to keep your home decorated.

Do you typically decorate your home for the holidays? Are you a conservative decorator or more along the lines of Clark Griswold? We’d shudder to think what his energy bills look like!

Deal expected to create numerous jobs for vets in the burgeoning green energy sector

Bridgewater, NJ – Energy Edge Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: EEDG) has announced the signing of a multi-layered Partnership Agreement with Trillacorpe Construction, a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Company, that includes the formation of a jointly owned EEDG subsidiary that will begin bidding on hundreds of millions of dollars of federal RFP’s over the next 12-18 months.

Energy Edge is a rapidly expanding environmentally conscious company providing turnkey energy engineering, energy management, design/build and consulting services to commercial, industrial, and institutional customers. EEDG significantly reduces a new or existing facility’s energy consumption, operating costs and C02 emissions by applying multiple energy conservation measures to optimize the energy efficiency and performance of energy consuming loads across an entire facility.  For more information please visit www.energyet.com.

Trillacorpe Construction is an award winning government contractor focused on alternative energy and general construction projects, with an emphasis on energy conservation and eco-smart building technology. Trillacorpe achieved sales of over $28 million in 2010 and boasts a 400% annualized growth rate since its 2008 inception. The company is owned, operated and staffed by veterans and disabled veterans alike and has won numerous honors for being one of America’s leading small business employer of disabled vets. For more information please visit www.trillacorpeconstruction.com.

“The combination of Trillacorpe’s extensive government contracting experience and Energy Edge’s long track record of successful, high rate-of-return energy projects makes for the perfect partnership,” stated Robert Holdsworth, EEDG’s CEO.  ”With Veteran’s Day upon us, it’s truly gratifying to work with a company that not only has several disabled veterans working at top levels, but is totally committed to our returning veteran population with regard to retraining and employment in the rapidly expanding green and eco-sustainable sectors.”

Trillacorpe will be spearheading EEDG’s efforts to obtain government certifications, designations and other auditable platforms and procedures required to perform on federal contract vehicles.  Under the new Partnership Agreement, EEDG and its new subsidiary will be positioned to become standalone federal contractors within the next six months, with the ability to bid on their own work as well as team with other firms including Trillacorpe and its partner base.

“When companies like our two firms get together to solve problems for our customers but also make an impassioned effort to enhance our spiritual bottom line by providing opportunity for our nation’s heroes, it opens the floodgates of opportunity for all involved,” concluded Frank Campanaro, Trillacorpe’s decorated founder and CEO. “Not only is this the right thing to do, it creates a competitive edge that other companies cannot stand up to.  Because much of Wall Street and the Federal Government are managed by academy graduates that embrace and respond to military leadership, our new subsidiary is perfectly positioned to capitalize on a vast number of opportunities. We expect to reach out to all in the coming months as a qualified, tier-one resource that will positively impact their budgets and bottom lines through a wide array of energy savings while empowering us to retrain and hire vets in the process. It’s a total win/win scenario.”

The Indianapolis International Airport recently announced that their Col. H. Weir Cook Terminal has achieved LEED certification, making it one of the largest buildings in the country to reach this standard.

Measuring more than 1.2 million square feet, the passenger terminal plus several adjacent buildings rank in the top 2 percent of the 10,000 LEED certified buildings in the country. Additionally, it is among the first airports in the nation, along with airfields in Boston and San Francisco, to carefully design new passenger terminals to meet the environmental requirements.

Photo Source: Inside Indiana Business

An enormous feat in both scope and accomplishment, the LEED certification of this building is a definite win in the argument for greater efforts in energy efficiency and less environmental impact from the commercial construction industry. It makes a strong statement against any trepidations or disputes that LEED certification is difficult to tackle on such a large scale.

However, the most impressive aspect of this building and perhaps the most compelling argument comes in the form of dollars and cents. The numerous architectural and engineering LEED design features are saving at least 18 percent of the energy costs to operate the terminal – approximately $2 million a year. When you consider that the additional materials and techniques required to meet LEED standards only added a little less than 1 percent to the building costs, the return on investment is quite substantial.

We obviously fully support taking the extra steps needed to make a building as energy-efficient as possible and can’t help but feel that examples such as the Indiana International Airport will help create a strong, persuasive case study for the future of commercial construction and LEED certification.

Can you think of additional buildings that create an exemplary illustration in the case for LEED certified commercial construction?

The calendar officially says fall and, believe it or not, winter is right around the corner. Unfortunately, the colder months can be some of the priciest due to heating bills.

While the cost to heat your home can vary based on where you live – Forbes.com lists Boston, Mass. as the most expensive city to heat a home with average annual heating costs at $1,924 – there are steps you can take to save money regardless of your zip code.

Maintain your furnace. Cleaning and tuning the furnace helps assure safety and efficiency. Tuning may involve resetting the fuel air mixture for proper combustion, and cleaning of the blower and burners to assure maximum airflow and complete combustion. Additionally, changing the furnace filter increases efficiency by allowing proper airflow.

Reduce thermostat settings. Reduce your thermostat setting to 68 degrees and you can save substantially on heating costs. Afraid that will be too cold for comfort? Layer up and add a sweater and a warm pair of socks – both can go a long way to increase comfort in a cooler house.

Keep it cooler at night. Setting the thermostat back 10 degrees at night or when the house will be unoccupied can save up to 15 percent on heating costs. While it is true the furnace will have to run more to reheat the house, the energy saved while the home is cooler more than offsets the extra run time to reheat the home.

Install a programmable thermostat. Programmable thermostats provide the ability to lower the home temperature at night and during the day and still have the home warm when you get up or arrive home from work. Many programmable thermostats can be found for less than $50.

Let sunshine in. Open drapes on the south side of your home during winter days and close them at night. Sun angles are low in winter, allowing substantial solar heating through all south windows.

Check and replace weather stripping. Air leaks around faulty weather stripping on doors and windows increase heating costs. Check for drafts and repair or replace worn stripping.

Reduce hot water use. Reducing hot water use is effective in reducing the cost of heating water. Take showers rather than baths since showering, in general, takes less water than baths. Modern detergents are formulated to work in cold water so wash in cold water.

Have you tried any of these tips in winters past? What has worked for you and what hasn’t? Do you have any additional tips for reducing heating costs?

There are ways to be more energy efficient that might surprise you. Not necessarily because they are so ground breaking or shocking, but because they take a second look at something you use so effortlessly, it probably wouldn’t occur to you that there’s a better way of doing it.

For instance, did you know energy efficiency should be one of the factors in choosing your email services?

Google recently analyzed Gmail energy usage with that of locally hosted email servers and found that switching to Gmail can be up to 80 percent more energy efficient than in-house email servers. The results indicated that the energy savings were higher with smaller businesses than with larger because “cloud-based services are typically housed in highly efficient data centers that operate at higher server utilization rates and use hardware and software that’s built specifically for the services they provide—conditions that small businesses are rarely able to create on their own.”

The study illustrated how much energy a Gmail based business email system would save by showing that one year of Gmail usage is less than what it would take to drink a bottle of wine, stuff a message in the empty bottle and send it on its way across the ocean. Additionally, the study indicated that you would have to watch three straight days of YouTube (also owned by Google) to use the same amount of energy it takes to manufacture, package and deliver one DVD.

Makes a pretty compelling argument for using cloud based systems, doesn’t it?

What email system do you use for your business? Would you consider switching to Gmail now that you know it’s more energy efficient?

Reduced Energy Consumption for Yuengling by 13%

Bridgewater, NJ –  Energy Edge Technologies Corporation (OTCBB: EEDG.OB) recently reported the results of a major energy-efficient analysis and facility upgrade for a Yuengling Brewery located in Tampa, Florida.  Energy Edge provided a 14.3% reduction in overall energy consumption, improved light quality and a 13% increase in transformer capacity, with an 18 month projected payback period.

As a first step, Energy Edge conducted a comprehensive “whole building” investment-grade energy audit and engineering study of Yuengling’s facilities. Energy Edge showed the customer how each energy management solution would impact energy consumption as well as the project cost and return on investment. 

Energy Edge provided the following services to achieve this reduction:

• Complete lighting retrofit with energy-efficient lamps and fixtures.
• Anti-compressor short cycling (Intellidyne).
• Thermal qualities simulation (eCube).
• Power quality improvements.
• Added capacity to transformers.

“We’re drastically different from other firms in that we take a ‘whole building’ approach to energy efficiency to maximize energy and operational cost savings. Every aspect of a customer’s building is an opportunity to save money on energy, equipment, life cycle and maintenance costs,” said Robert Holdsworth, President of Energy Edge.

Based on a comprehensive engineering itemization and evaluation of every energy consuming load in a facility, Energy Edge prepares the project design including projected energy savings, ROI and payback guaranteed in writing and backed by a surety bond underwritten by Lloyds of London, removing all financial risk for its clients. Energy Edge measures the success of all projects in accord with the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol, Option C, as approved by the U.S. Department of Energy.

For more information on Energy Edge, please visit http://www.energyet.com/.

###

About Energy Edge Technologies Corporation (OTCBB: EEDG.OB)

Energy Edge Technologies Corporation provides single-source and turnkey energy engineering, energy management, design/build and consulting services that reduce a new or existing facility’s energy consumption, operating costs and C02 emissions by optimizing building system energy efficiency and performance using a “whole building” approach. For more information, visit http://www.energyet.com/.