Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Bill Clinton Forum on Renewable Energy

In December 2004, the Clinton Foundation assembled global experts to examine the relationship between energy policy and security, economic development and climate change in a forum at New York University. Below are the live video feeds from the Forum.


  President Clinton's Opening Remarks

  Current Challenges

  The Future of Energy

  Practical Realities of Governing and Energy Policy

  Closing Statement


Note: To watch the above video you will need to have the Real Player that you can download for free from Real Networks.
Download RealPlayer

Monday, November 29, 2004

What is Your Energy IQ?

For the past 10 years, Roper & Associates and the U.S. Department of Energy have been conducting national surveys on Americans' basic knowledge of Energy Issues.

Key Findings: Only one in eight adult Americans (or 12%) has even a passing understanding of basic energy facts.

Click Here to take the Test -- and then Blog us comments and how you did.

Friday, November 26, 2004

The Power of Individuals

In the late 1980's, then President George H. Bush (W's Father) often spoke about the need to create "a thousand points of light" to solve the many societal problems we face. With many "Green People" down and out over the outcome of the recent election, the words of President Bush's Father are worth remembering. The real power to facilitate change doesn't reside with Government or large corporations -- it lies with Individuals working and coming together to achieve a common goal.


Today's Editorial in the New York Times gives an opinion of optimism to those that highly value environmental issues. In the past election, voters also passed very significant environmental initiatives. Nationwide, over $2.5 billion worth of new bonds were approved to preserve open space. Also, voters in Colorado (a pretty conservative Red State) approved a ballot initiative requiring electric utilities to generate 10% of their power from renewable sources by 2015. It's important to note that this initiative passed in spite of major opposition by the majority of the Colorado Legislature and major electric utilities in the State.


This also made us think about the reforestation efforts of our small non profit environmental organization. We recently submitted carbon sequestration data from our 120 acre treefarm to the Energy Information Agency's National Reporting of Greenhouse Gases. As the below graph represents (the red bar), our carbon sequestration efforts exceeded those of many large corporations and were even comparable to General Motors!

Comparing Treepower.org Project to Major Corporations
(Metric Tons of CO2 Sequestered)



If you know of other examples of the "Little People" making a real difference in helping our environment, BLOG US!

Monday, November 22, 2004

Green Energy Marketing

Only about 1% of U.S. electricity customers purchase Green Energy through voluntary programs (like Green-e).
Most Advocates of Green Energy state that this extremely low participation rate is simply a matter of needing "better consumer education" through marketing. But is this correct?
Marketing Research conducted by Roper & Associates indicates that the high price premium (about 25% above the cost of electricity produced from fossil fuels) explains the very low customer participation rates -- especially in the Southern U.S.

Click here to go to story and then Blog us with your thoughts.