House Puts Energy Technology Onus on EPA
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By JIM ABRAMS  WASHINGTON - Determining how best to speed ethanol and other alternative fuels from refinery to gas pump would rest with the government under legislation the House passed Thursday.
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IT vendors can play a major role in reducing the world&#39;s energy consumption, but information about the benefits of technology has been lacking in an ongoing environmental debate in Washington, D.C., three tech CEOs said Wednesday.While IT consumption of energy in the U.S. has grown in the last decade, technology also displaces more than its share of energy-consuming activities in other sectors, members of the Technology CEO Council said. The advocacy group highlighted a report, released Wednesday, saying that every kilowatt hour of energy used by IT replaces 10 kilowatt hours of energy that would have been used elsewhere.IT currently uses about 6 percent of U.S. electricity, up from 2 percent to 3 percent in 2000, said John &quot;Skip&quot; Laitner, co-author of the report and director of economic policy analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). But through a wide variety of IT products, including tech that enables video conferencing, telecommuting, and e-mail, technology results in a net decrease in energy consumption, he said.Instead of flying to a conference in Sweden recently, Laitner attended by video conference, he said. And in preparing the ACEEE&#39;s report, Laitner received thousands of pages of documents by e-mail or downloads, instead of having them delivered.Few studies have explored the energy efficiencies created by IT, he added. &quot;We have to look at what that&#39;s displacing,&quot; he said.Users of computers and other tech products should expect more energy savings in the future, said Dell CEO Michael Dell. He joined Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials, and Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, at a press briefing focused on green technologies.&quot;As an industry, we have begun to take up the [environmental] issue in a serious way,&quot; Dell said. &quot;It&#39;s an issue that customers care about.&quot;The IT industry has come under some criticism for its energy use, particularly at large data centers. In January 2007, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, introduced a bill that would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to analyze and report to Congress about the growth and energy consumption of computer datacenters by the federal government and private companies.Congress needs to &quot;more fully understand the impact that the growing number of computers in use throughout the country has on energy consumption,&quot; Allard said then.The Technology CEO Council isn&#39;t concerned about congressional mandates because the IT industry is already taking steps to reduce its energy consumption, said Bruce Mehlman, the group&#39;s executive director.But the U.S. government has a huge impact on energy consumption by adopting more green technologies, said Applied Materials&#39; Splinter. &quot;The government is the largest user of energy in our country,&quot; he said.In addition to the ACEEE report, the Technology CEO Council released its own report, called &quot;A Smarter Shade of Green.&quot; The report lays out the group&#39;s environmental policy principles, including:*&#160;The president should select a federal agency as a center for energy efficiency excellence, a model for other agencies going green.*&#160;The government should invest more in green research.*&#160;Governments across the world should reduce tariffs on green technologies.*&#160;The U.S. government should explore tax incentives for deploying energy-saving technologies.*&#160;Companies shouldn&#39;t wait for government mandates or incentives but should adopt energy-efficient strategies on their own.
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WASHINGTON Trying to break a deadlock on energy policy, a diverse group of environmentalists, academics and former government officials were to publish a report on Wednesday that presents strategies for making the United States cleaner, more competitive
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The United States has plenty of fuel in  storage for winter heating thanks to near full-throttle  refinery production, but household energy bills are still  likely to be up sharply, the head of the U.S. Energy  Information Administration (EIA) said on Friday.
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Managing Watt? Reg Tech Panel As the green debate rages on, one of the findings that came from our recent survey of Reg Readers revealed that despite all the talk about energy savings and IT, the majority of IT departments are not accountable for spending on electricity to run systems.â¦
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The Christian Science Monitor - If new technology is a key answer to global warming and America's addiction to oil, then President Bush's proposal to boost federal spending on energy R&amp;D - by no less than 30 percent in fiscal 2008 - would seem a welcome step.
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IT vendors can play a major role in reducing the world&#39;s energy consumption, but information about the benefits of technology has been lacking in an ongoing environmental debate in Washington, D.C., three tech CEOs said Wednesday.
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Three powerful lobbying forces &#151; automakers, electric utilities and the coal industry &#151; are confounding Democrats' efforts to forge a less-polluting energy policy.
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The Christian Science Monitor - When she became House speaker in January, Democrat Nancy Pelosi pledged to put forth &quot;energy independence&quot; legislation no later than the Fourth of July. The idea was to cut American dependence on foreign oil while reducing the harmful climate-change effects scientists say result from burning fossil fuels.
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Lawmakers treated the traditionally insurmountable opposition of the auto industry as little more than a speed bump on the way to the passage of an energy bill.
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The head of the House Energy and  Commerce Committee chided BP Plc.  executives on Thursday  for overlooking corrosion that threatened to shut down the  giant Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska, calling the UK-based  energy giant's policies "as rusty as its pipelines."
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House Democratic lawmakers on  Wednesday ramped up the pressure on the Justice Department to  fight a federal court ruling that could allow energy companies  to avoid paying the government billions of dollars in oil and  natural gas royalties.
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The head of the House Energy and  Commerce Committee chided BP Plc. executives on Thursday for  overlooking corrosion that threatened to shut down the giant  Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska, calling the UK-based energy  giant's policies "as rusty as its pipelines."
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WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy has missed all 34 deadlines set by Congress for requiring energy efficiency standards on everything from home appliances to power transformers, auditors said yesterday.
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Senate Democrats, eager for a vote on energy legislation, ran into staunch Republican resistance Thursday to requiring that utilities use more wind, solar and other renewable sources to produce electricity.
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A year of rhetoric, lobbying, veto threats and negotiations ended yesterday as the House of Representatives voted 314 to 100 to pass an energy bill that President Bush is to sign this morning. The bill will raise fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, order a massive increase in the use of...
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Democrats in the U.S. House of  Representatives on Friday introduced a bill that would rescind  billions of dollars worth of tax incentives extended to U.S.  energy companies and put the money into a fund earmarked for  renewable energy.