Yesterday, California legislators publicly announced a suite of bills to push forward the state’s ambitious clean energy and carbon reduction goals.  California Climate Leadership, a coalition of state senators, including Kevin De León, Ben Hueso, Mark Leno, Fran Pavley, and Bob Wieckowski, discussed the legislation at a press conference shown hereSB 350

In a first-of-its-kind report announced this morning, Ceres and Clean Edge ranked the nation’s largest electric utilities and local subsidiaries on their renewable energy sales and energy efficiency savings. The report focused on three clean energy indicators: renewable energy sales; cumulative annual energy efficiency; and incremental annual energy efficiency.

Continue Reading New Report Ranks Power Utilities by Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency Performance

Late last week, the United States Dept. of Energy (“DOE”) Loan Program Office issued a final solicitation for projects seeking loan guarantees titled “Federal Loan Guarantees for Renewable Energy Projects and Efficient Energy Projects.”  Issued under the DOE’s Section 1703 Loan Program (named for Section 1703 of Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005), the Renewable and Efficient Energy Projects solicitation will make up to $2.5 billion in direct loan guarantees* available to “catalytic projects”- i.e., those that will push the commercial deployment of innovative technologies in future projects. Download a copy of the solicitation (PDF). 

We provide a checklist of project eligibility, program requirements and the loan guarantee application process below.Continue Reading Qualification and Application Checklist for New DOE Loan Guarantee Solicitation for Renewable Energy and Efficiency Projects

The Citizens Utility Board (CUB), in partnership with the Univeristy of Oregon School of Law, will be presenting its 2nd Annual Policy conference on Energy Efficiency: The Next Generation on Friday, October 26, 2012, at the University of Oregon’s White Stag Block (70 NW Couch Street). 

The all-day conference will focus on energy efficiency in the

On June 8, 2010, Utah Governor Gary Herbert launched a formal planning process for the Utah Energy Initiative.  Over the past several months the members of the Utah Energy Initiative Task Force and various subcommittees have conducted public hearings and a series of meetings to gather input for purposes of drafting a 10-year strategic energy plan.  The Energy Initiative Task Force issued a draft report on November 3, 2010.  Written comments on the draft report are due by November 10, 2010 and should be submitted to abuchholz@utah.gov.  A public hearing at which public comment will be accepted will be held on November 10, 2010 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., at the Senate Building (State Capitol complex east building), Room 215, Salt Lake City, Utah.

The energy plan outlined in the report contains the following themes:

  1. Economic Development and Energy Jobs
  2. Energy Development and Environment
  3. Energy Efficiency, Conservation and Demand-Response
  4. Transportation and Air Quality
  5. Transmission, Infrastructure and Transportation
  6. Developing and Applying Technology and Science

Continue Reading Utah Energy Initiative Task Force Issues Draft Plan

Following on the heels of a September 2010 report by GTM Research forecasting that the smart grid market in the U.S. will grow more than 70%, from $5.6 billion in 2010 to $9.6 billion by 2015, Smart Grid Oregon today announced the new organization’s first conference to be held on November 9, 2010 at the

The Department of Energy today announced the award of more than $37 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to 17 projects supporting solid-state lighting core research, product development, and domestic manufacturing.

Solid-state lighting, which uses light-emitting diodes (“LEDs”) and organic light-emitting diodes (“OLEDs”) instead of incandescent bulbs, has the potential to be ten

Today Energy Secretary  Chu announced that the Department of Energy will award $47 million for 14 nation-wide projects  that will support the development of new technologies improving energy efficiency in the information technology (IT) and communications sectors – specifically, data processing, data storage, and telecommunications industries. The increase in energy consumption in these sectors is a direct corollary

The Department of Energy (“DOE”) announced a new $390 million energy upgrade program under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (“EECBG”) Program that could save $100 million annually in utility bills. DOE is looking for community-scale retrofit projects that will have a significant, long-lasting impact on energy consumption and which can be replicated in