An employee pumps gas at a station in Jersey City, New Jersey, July 3, 2007.

World’s largest energy consumer the United States called for a global push for increased energy efficiency to help meet rising demand and alleviate the impact of high prices on economic growth.
The US consumes about 21 million barrels per day of oil, around a quarter of the world’s supply. Record oil prices have cooled U.S. appetite for gas guzzling cars and, along with increasing environmental concerns, leant weight to calls for more sparing use of energy.
The country last month passed a bill requiring increased fuel efficiency in vehicles for the first time in over 30 years, ENN reported.
“We must promote increased energy efficiency,“ U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said in a speech to a green energy conference. “The biggest source of immediately available ’new’ energy is the energy that we waste every day.“
Energy efficiency measures “will not only take some pressure off demand, but also improve the health of our shared environment,“ he said.
The challenge of meeting growing energy demand was global and required huge investment in both conventional and alternative energy sources in the developed and developing world alike, he said. New technology needed to be rapidly deployed to diversify the global energy supplies.
“The world needs safe, reliable, clean, affordable and diverse energy supplies--and in considerably greater numbers than it now has... to do that we need a global response... and, by that I mean all nations, including those that produce our world’s oil supply.“
Bodman earlier repeated his call for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost output at its February1 meeting.
To encourage investment in clean and efficient oil and gas production, Bodman called for an end to “market interventions,“ without specifically mentioning OPEC.
“It is time to stop doing the things that we know will not help,“ he said. “We know that purposeful market distortions--such as rationing supply, cutting production, or creating price floors and ceilings--do not work.“
Bodman was on the third stop of a trip to the Middle East taking in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt.

The fuel is butanol; it can be derived from lignocellulosic materials, which are plant biomass parts that range from woody stems and straw to agricultural residues, corn fiber and husks, all containing in large part cellulose and some lignin.
Butanol is considered to be a better biofuel than ethanol because it’s less corrosive and has a higher caloric value, giving it a higher energy value. Like ethanol, butanol is being considered as an additive to gasoline, ENN.com reported.
Lars Angenent, Ph.D., assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering, takes pre-treated corn fiber, a byproduct of corn-to-ethanol production, from his collaborators at the United States Department of Agricultural (USDA) research facility in Peoria, Ill., and places the lignocellulosic biomass into digesters comprised of a selected mixed culture of thousands of different microbes to convert the biomass into butyrate.
From there, the material is sent back to Peoria where another collaborator, Nasib Qureshi. Ph.D., converts the butyrate to butanol using fermenters.
The USDA researchers Bruce Dien, Ph.D., and Michael Cotta, Ph.D. use physical and chemical techniques to make the hard-to-degrade lignocellulosic material more amenable to degrade, an important step that allows Angenent’s mixed media culture to work its magic.
He uses a mixed culture containing thousands of different microorganisms and optimizes environmental conditions to select for a bacterial community that makes an environment conducive to the conversion of the corn fiber to butyrate.
“The thrust of my lab is the use of mixed cultures,“ said Angenent.
“The advantage of mixed cultures is that it can take just about any waste material, and through our manipulations, convert it into something valuable. For instance, I can alter the PH in this culture. By keeping it neutral, I can get methane gas, but when I lower the pH, I can get butyrate. If I have a pure culture, on the other hand, I have to worry about other organisms slipping in and altering or contaminating the environment.
“Lignocellulosic biomass is plentiful, renewable and a good way to deal with wastes. By using it, we open the door for better economic opportunities for crop producers and rural communities. And because this kind of biomass is carbon-neutral, we don’t worry about carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.“
Using microbial fuel cells and his mixed media cultures, Angenent, in recent years, has produced electricity or hydrogen in the process of treating wastewater.
He is the principal investigator of a USDA grant for $425,000 for this research, along with his co-P.I.s from USDA.
The butanol bandwagon is growing. In 2006, chemical maker DuPont and the British oil company BP announced a collaboration with British Sugar to introduce butanol made from sugar beets as a gasoline-blending additive in the United Kingdom.

In comparison with energy produced from petrol and diesel, solar energy is more cost-effective, if more expensive in the short run.

Sustainable development cannot be realized when the environment onto which all activities take place is abused at will and people continue indulging in environmental degradation. Ruinous developmental practices are pursued to the detriment of entire Earth.
Among these is energy that is used during process that produces a lot of carbondioxide, which is the major element in rising temperature, thus bringing about global warming, which in turn causes multiple problems to mankind as in changing the climate for the worse, Allafrica.com reported.
Replacing the current source of energy that comes from fossils, is a gradual one, as new methods of using renewable sources have been found to be more effective as far as environment conservation is concerned, such as sun light.
In comparison with energy produced from petrol and diesel, solar energy is more cost-effective, if more expensive in the short run.
The population has to be taught about environmental conservation, through the use of renewable energy and reducing the rate of cutting trees, without replacing the ones that were cut, because they give rise to global warming.
Jean Chrisestome Sehene, the executive secretary of Rwanda Environmental Conservation Organization (RECOR), avers that there is great need to think alternative energy sources, and a campaign is on in Rwanda to encourage investors to inject their money in renewable energy related equipments such as solar energy panels which produce energy that is not harmless to the environment.
He says the program is to be extended to all parts of the country.
On the same issue, the national coordinator of RECOR, Fran�oise Kayigamba, blames the use of fossil related fuels on the current global warming pattern, because of the quantity of carbon dioxide that is emitted in the atmosphere, thus bringing about environmental degradation.
He says that in order to achieve the millennium development goals, environment must be put as a priority, as nothing can be achieved when the planet onto which we live is not environmentally sound.
It is the role of each and every body to have an active role towards the sustainability of the environment through planting trees, which help in reducing carbon dioxide during the process of photosynthesis, as green plants use carbon dioxide while making their own food.
Also, petroleum is exhaustible, even as it is environmentally hazardous, following the dangers that have been manifested as a result of temperature rise. More engineers and technicians should be trained in order to impart the desired technological knowledge that will help in the implementation of renewable energy engineering.
Because of temperature rise globally, rainfall patterns have changed, which in turn brings about poor harvests, manifesting poor economic performance and famine due to prolonged droughts. RECOR, in a bid to reduce the prices of products that are imported expensively, has made a list of the equipment that is needed in generating renewable energy, so that importers are exonerated from taxation.
This will increase the quantity of such materials, hence boosting the availability of renewable energy, and further make their projects more successful.
The sources of renewable energy include sunshine, wind, animal waste and others, according to Kayigamba. As regards tree planting on a wide scale, Rwanda does not possess enough land for planting the much needed trees that would go a long way in reducing green house gases which include carbon dioxide, methane and ozone.
Environmental conservation is everyone’s duty, and should be pursued with all the techniques needed in order to avert the current trend within the global climate patterns, that may give rise to further catastrophes than the present ones that have manifested.
The Kenyan Laureate and Nobel Prize winner Professor Wangari Mathari had this to say about these disastrous energy practices:
“Fifty years from todate, water will be costing as much as petrol.“
She said this I reaction to the current environmental degradation worldwide, whereas nothing tangible is being done in order to reverse the tendency. Trees should be planted in order to replace the ones that have been used, and protecting wet lands so as to maintain the water table intact thus deterring future water scarcity.
These mechanisms, plus the use of the new energy sources that don’t emit as much carbon dioxide as the energy sources we use today, will play a decisive role in reducing the rate at which the planet is warming.
The effects of global warming will adversely affect developing countries most since they don’t have enough resources to counter the consequences that will have resulted from global warming.

The solar module converts sunlight into electricity.

Members of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE are traveling to Tokyo with bulky luggage these days. Their destination is Nanotech 2008, the world’s largest trade fair for nanotechnology. Their solar module, which they will be presenting in the BMBF marketing campaign ’Nanotech Germany’, is the size and shape of a door: two meters high and sixty centimeters wide, Physorg.com said.
The key component of the new modules is an organic dye which in combination with nanoparticles converts sunlight into electricity. Due to the small size of the nanoparticles, the modules are semi-transparent. This aspect makes them well suited for fa�ade integration. The solar module prototype manufactured by the researchers at Fraunhofer ISE is amber in color.
It is possible, however, to produce the modules in other colors, or even to print images or text on the module so that it serves as a decorative element. These design options open up an entirely new range of possible applications. Instead of mounting the solar module on the roof of a building, the electricity producer could be integrated in the glass fa�ade. Used in this way, the new technology not only prohibits direct sunlight from entering the building interior but also generates electricity at the same time.
“We don’t see the dye solar cell as being a rival to the conventional silicon cell,“ says Fraunhofer ISE physicist Andreas Hinsch. The module prototypes only achieve an efficiency of four percent, which is not sufficient for rooftop applications in comparison to the performance of crystalline silicon solar cells. On the other hand, dye solar cells have a clear advantage when it comes to fa�ade integration.
The wafer-thin electricity-generating film, which lies between two glass panes, is produced from nanoparticles and applied using screen printing technique. This technique makes it possible to integrate any desired image on the module. A glass facade made of this material can be given a decorative and promotionally effective design, such as a colorful company logo, and delivers electricity into the bargain.
The dye solar module is still a prototype. The Fraunhofer researchers have developed it together with industry partners in the ColorSol project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF.
One particular challenge posed by the new technology is that the narrow gap between the two glass panes must be hermetically sealed so that no air can get in and destroy the reactive substances inside. The Fraunhofer experts have come up with a special solution to this problem. Instead of using polymeric glue like their competitors, they have decided to work with glass frit. To this end, glass powder is screen-printed onto the panes, and fuses with them at a temperature of around 600 degrees Celcius.
Fatigue tests under various weather conditions have shown that the solar cells still function properly even after several thousand hours. The long-term stability as such, however, has yet to be officially certified.