From Green Right Now Reports

The Roscoe, Texas, wind farm (Photo: E.ON Climate & Renewables)

Global energy company E.ON Climate and Renewables today announced the completion of what it says is the world’s largest wind farm near Roscoe, Texas. The new wind complex has an installed capacity of 781.5 megawatts (MW), which can generate enough electricity to power more than 230,000 homes.

The project area spans parts of four Texas counties and covers almost 100,000 acres — an area several times the size of Manhattan. The wind farm has a total of 627 wind turbines manufactured by Mitsubishi, General Electric and Siemens.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Newsweek has launched a ranking of the greenest companies in America and Hewlett-Packard tops the initial list. The Newsweek Green Rankings, based on companies’ environmental footprint, policies and practices, appears in the Sept. 28 issue of the magazine.

The green ranking covers America’s 500 largest publicly traded companies as measured by revenue, market capitalization and number of employees. Companies were ranked based on criteria such as each company’s greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste emissions and use of other natural resources. Newsweek and its partners also assessed the companies’ management of environmental issues and policies, regulatory compliance and policies concerning climate change. Newsweek said the rankings also factor in the results of a reputational survey of CEOs, corporate social responsibility officers, members of the media, academics and members of key environmental groups.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports:

St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR, the national symbol for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection. St. Anthony’s is the first hospital in Florida and one of only 86 hospitals in the nation to achieve this recognition. Buildings that receive the EPA’s ENERGY STAR designation reduce greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy-efficient specifications set by the government.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Nearly all the world’s electric utilities now believe that climate change is threatening power outages, higher costs and changes in usage as demand grows to power the world’s expanding cities, according to a new report from Acclimatise.

Over ninety percent of the global electric utilities that report climate change activity to the Carbon Disclosure Project say they are at risk from changes in climate and water availability, which are already adding stress to the sector. However, fewer than a third say they are undertaking any financial or quantified evaluation to the impact of climate change on their business.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Kimberly-Clark, the Dallas-based health and hygiene company, is the largest on-site user of alternative, green power, according to the latest statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA’s Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that supports the organizational procurement of green power by offering expert advice, technical support, tools and resources. The EPA program works with a wide variety of leading organizations — from Fortune 500 companies to local, state and federal governments, and a growing number of colleges and universities.

The EPA credits these green power purchases for helping to reduce the environmental impacts of electricity use and support the development of new renewable generation capacity nationwide. The combined on-site green power consumption of these organizations amounts to more than 736 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, which is the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power more than 61,000 average American homes each year.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Using a new technology to listen to its pipes, New Jersey American Water says it can now determine where significant problems could arise in its water system, sometimes before breaks occur. The result is saving millions of gallons of water, the utility reports.

Water running down a street is often one of the first signs an underground water main is leaking and the water has reached the surface. New Jersey American’s new technology uses the Internet to continuously transmit data from permanent acoustic monitors that aid in proactive leak detection. The utility’s technicians, equipped with additional electronic devices, use computer software to processes the digital signals and analyze the sound, and time of travel of the sound generated by a leak to accurately calculate its location.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

SustainableBusiness.com has released its 8th annual list of 20 public companies that are leading the way to a sustainable economy. The selections are made in cooperation with a group of judges consisting of leading green stock analysts.

Judges select companies across the range of green business sectors: solar, wind, geothermal, smart grid, water, food, agriculture, green building and transport. SustainableBusiness.com said a third of the companies populating this year’s list are “corporate pioneers” — companies with conventional products and services that are greening their product lines.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

The California Public Utilities Commission yesterday approved a plan by Southern California Edison to build the largest U.S. installation of advanced solar panels on otherwise unused large commercial rooftops across Southern California.

The installation will occur over the next five years and will result in 250 megawatts of solar generating capacity. The utility also will conduct competitive solicitations offering long-term power contracts to independent solar power providers who will install an additional 250 megawatts, bringing to 500 megawatts the total generating capacity of the project — the largest photovoltaic program ever undertaken.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Puget Sound Energy announced it has distributed more than 10 million free and discounted compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs to its more than 1 million electric customers in Western Washington since the residential lighting program launched in 2002.

The utility said there is now an average of 10 energy-saving bulbs in use for every customer in the utility’s 9-county electric service area. PSE has distributed the bulbs to electric customers through local retailers, events and special promotions.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

ComEd has selected the City of Elgin to be part of its Advanced Metering Infrastructure pilot, which the utility says is largest test of smart grid technologies in the Midwest. Subject to Illinois Commerce Commission approval, the city will receive 10,000 “smart meters” as part of ComEd’s one-year pilot.

Elgin is among 10 municipalities participating in ComEd’s Community Energy Challenge, a program designed to generate creative, locally-driven approaches to help communities meet their environmental sustainability objectives.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports

Detroit Edison is the latest power company to ramp up wind-generation as a major part of its production capacity. The utility is soliciting proposals from potential partners interested in jointly developing wind energy projects with the company.

Detroit Edison wants to build Michigan-based wind energy farms capable of producing at least 75 megawatts of power by 2011. The energy produced from those projects would help Detroit Edison achieve Michigan’s new Renewable Portfolio Standard for the state’s electric utilities to provide 10 percent of their retail electric sales from renewable resources by 2015.

[Read more →]

From Green Right Now Reports:

Public support for wind energy is strong and crosses party lines, according to a poll being released today by the American Wind Energy Association at the opening of WINDPOWER 2009, an industry conference being held this week in Chicago.

The poll shows that 75 percent of American voters support a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) that would require utilities to generate at least 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025.

The support was bipartisan with 86 percent of Democrats favoring the RES, 62 percent of Republicans favoring it, and 71 percent of Independents.

[Read more →]