energy

7 Ways To Lower Water Heater Costs

Your water heater can account for 13% of home energy costs. The good news is that there are small, easy tweaks you can make to lower those costs and conserve energy at the same ti

Book review: Game Over

Stephen Leeb's new book makes that case that we're running into resource limits on every front--energy, metals, water--and that this problem is going to affect everything we do. T

Invest some of this cheap energy

I've tried to avoid predicting energy prices, except to say that they'll be volatile. I'm not a bit surprised to see oil and gasoline prices dropping by half in the past few month

Opt-out of the wasteful $26 billion phone directory industry

In this day and age of the internet, free Google 411 and a host of other paperless directory services, what use do the big, fat phone directories serve? I don’t know about you, but

The good life on less energy--even in the US

Whenever I write a post about energy, I point out that we know it's possible to have a high standard of living while using less energy--people in European countries do, so it must

Welcome to Container City - How Shipping Containers Are Recycled into Green Dwellings

At any port you can probably see hundreds to thousands of empty shipping containers just sitting around waiting to be loaded. In recent times these containers have not only transp

What if energy costs keep rising?

Recession or not, I think the medium-term trend in energy costs is up. Just in case I'm right, you ought to have plan for that.

Is daylight-saving time a complete waste of energy?

This weekend the clocks “spring forward.” I’m not a huge fan of DST . In fact, I’m not a fan of anything that steals

Non-financial investments

Talk about investments and most people think stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, plus maybe real estate and commodities like precious metals. Let's call those "financial inve

Six Ways to Stay Warm and Reduce the Heating Bill

Are you paying through your nose to heat your home this winter? Is your heater broken? Read on for some practical tips to reduce your energy bill and stay warm at the same time.

As the Wood Burns: The Top 3 BioMass Heating Sources Revealed

CNN predicted a 22% increase in the cost

How Not To Freeze For Nearly Free

Grab a pair of socks, a hot coffee (or toddy) and read this. It might just save you from the "my-heating-bill-was-outrageous" blues.

Fix energy in tangible form

They key problem with energy is that it's really hard to store--it's tough to buy energy now and use it later, and most energy storage techniques lose a large fraction of the energ

Living Without Air-Conditioning Can Save Big Bucks This Summer

Living in 90 degree weather with over 70 percent humidity the past few days has not been easy here in rural Nebraska. Hearing others complain about it only makes it worse -- especially knowing that they probably have air-conditioning. [more]