Amidst a housing crisis, an energy crunch, and a fragile economic system people are hunkering down, searching for answers, and in some cases looking to the green building movement for inspiration. One such organization, Solar Energy International (SEI), located in Carbondale, Colorado offers a variety of renewable energy and sustainable building workshops for people pursuing a career and those interested in making improvements to their home.

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Close to 20% of all dollars invested by VCs in 2009 went into clean technology, up from roughly 14.4% in 2008 and 10% in 2007

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Efforts to transform and rebuild our transmission system in the United States are woefully underfunded. Obama only dedicated $6 billion to upgrading the system in the stimulus package. That’s a miniscule amount, considering that the Energy Department and power companies say $130 billion is needed. It’s also less than half what our energy rival China is dedicating to building new lines of power.

From EcoGeek - “Electricity Superhighway Moving Forward”

It will cross portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois with 3000 miles of transmission lines to be able to provide 12,000 megawatts of power from new wind farms in the high wind areas of the upper midwest.

• 1. Bill Ritter of Colorado
• 2. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California
• 3. Ted Kulongowski of Oregon
• 4. Christine Gregoire of Washington state
• 5. John Baldacci of Maine
• 6. Martin O’Malley of Maryland
• 7. Bill Richardson of New Mexico
• 8. James Douglas of Vermont
• 9. Jon Corzine of New Jersey
• 10. Jodi Rell of Connecticut

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From BusinessGreen.com

The bulk of the investment will be targeted at heavy industry and energy firms, with $156m earmarked for combined heat and power (CHP) and waste heat recovery projects. The DoE said waste heat recovery systems deployed at both industrial sites had the potential to save 17GW of wasted energy each year, while CHP systems represent a proven technology that can achieve conversion efficiencies of 80 per cent, compared to conventional efficiencies of just 45 per cent.

The US moved a small step closer to delivering on President Obama’s vision of a nationwide smart grid last week, after the Department of Energy (DoE) announced it will soon release of the first set of draft standards for smart meters and intelligent devices that could connect to the grid.

The trailing of the new draft standards, which will be subject to a 30 day comment period, was accompanied by the announcement that $10m in additional funding will be made available to further the development of interoperability standards, designed to make it easier for manufacturers of electronic devices to connect appliances to the smart grid.

The proposals set a goal of ensuring every home and business in the UK has smart meters installed by 2020, capable of providing real-time, accurate electricity and gas use data that will make it easier for people to reduce the amount of energy they use, switch suppliers, and ultimately take advantage of smart grid technologies.

“Smart meters will empower all consumers to monitor their own energy use and make reductions in energy consumption and carbon emissions as a result,” said energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband. “Smart meters will also mean the end of inaccurate bills and estimated meter readings.”

Highlights include:

• Investment in the sciences — Substantially increasing support for the Office of Science, along with the $1.6 billion provided in the Recovery Act for the Energy Dept.’s basic science programs, as part of the president’s plan to double federal investment in the basic sciences;
• New energy infrastructure — Investing in smart, energy-efficient, reliable electricity delivery infrastructures, including storage, cyber-security and investments in research and development (R&D), as part of the president’s plan to modernize the nation’s electric grid;
• Clean energy technology — Encouraging the early commercial use of new and innovative energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and, along with the $3.4 billion provided in the Recovery Act for low-carbon emission power demonstrations, advancing the development of low-carbon coal technologies