Are Solar Panels for the Birds? New Solar Powered Birdhouse Debuts

Oooms, a Dutch design firm, recently introduced a birdhouse outfitted with a solar panel on the roof. Okay, I can already hear you all asking, “Why would a bird ever need electricity?” As silly as it sounds at first, there’s actually a pretty neat explanation for the solar panel. 

During the day, the birdhouse gathers solar energy via the panel and charges a small battery. Once the sun goes down, a small light attached to the birdhouse’s perch is illuminated. No, it isn’t so the bird can read in bed, it’s actually designed to lure nocturnal bugs right to the opening of the birdhouse—essentially the bird version of late-night pizza delivery.

This seems like a neat way to enjoy having a birdhouse and feeder, without having to ever actually put out any birdseed. That said, I might be a little worried that I was messing with the birds’—and the bugs’—natural behavior just a little too much. What do you think?

If you’re interested, you can purchase your own solar birdhouse from the Oooms store, for the bargain price of 70 Euros.

Image via Oooms

Save Money and Go Green by Upgrading Your Home’s Insulation

Yahoo! Green has posted an in-depth guide on how to lower your bills and reduce your carbon footprint by upgrading your home’s insulation. On average, heating costs make up about one third of a home’s energy budget, making insulation upgrades one of the quickest ways to make your home more energy efficient.

The article walks you through how you can identify trouble areas in your home and how to choose your new insulation. Included is an in-depth breakdown of every style of insulation on the market, featuring innovative new green choices like bio-based fibers, radiant barriers and blown-in insulation. To help you determine which type of insulation is best for your situation, the guide even provides a link to a handy cost-to-savings calculator.

With winter just around the corner, there’s not much time left to protect your home from the cold before temperatures drop and energy rates soar, so consider upgrading your home’s insulation today.

Amazon's Kindle Greener Than Printed Books?

If Amazon's Kindle is on your wishlist for this holiday season, you might end up greener than your book buying friends and family.

Cleantech Group found in a study that e-readers could have a major impact on improving the sustainability and environmental impact of the publishing industry, one of the world’s most polluting sectors. In 2008, the U.S. book and newspaper industries combined resulted in the harvesting of 125 million trees, not to mention wastewater that was produced or its massive carbon footprint.

The Cleantech Group’s report, The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle, found that, while e-readers are still a niche technology with a little more than 1 million units sold to date, they could have a more positive impact on the environment in the future. The report indicates that, on average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use. The Cleantech Group forecasts that devices like the Kindle and Sony's Reader purchased from 2009 to 2012 could prevent 5.3 billion kg of carbon dioxide in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period.

Learn more about the study's findings here: Cleantech Group report: E-readers a win for carbon emissions.

TXU Energy Earns the ENERGY STAR® for Superior Energy Efficiency

TXU Energy recently announced that it has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) prestigious ENERGY STAR for its corporate headquarters. The designation is a national symbol for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection. This signifies that the building's energy performance rates in the top 25 percent of facilities nationwide.

TXU Energy implemented numerous energy efficiency steps that earned the ENERGY STAR rating, including a retrofit of the parking garage to LED lights, upgrade of the building automation system lighting controls, and improved operating procedures.

Commercial buildings that earn the ENERGY STAR use an average of 35 percent less energy than typical buildings and also release 35 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The EPA's national energy performance rating system provides a 1-100 scale that helps organizations assess how efficiently their buildings use energy relative to similar buildings nationwide. A building that scores a rating of 75 or higher is eligible for the ENERGY STAR. Commercial buildings that can earn the ENERGY STAR include offices, bank branches, financial centers, retail stores, courthouses, hospitals, hotels, K-12 schools, medical offices, supermarkets, dormitories, and warehouses.

To learn more about the program, check out The ENERGY STAR for Buildings and Plants.

Charge Your iPod, Phone and Other Gadgets with Yo-Yo Power

While solar powered chargers are great for giving your gadgets a quick charge when you’re away from a plug, what do you do if you’re inside, or the sun isn’t shining, when you run out of juice? Easy Energy has a solution for that situation: the YoGen, a small yo-yo inspired generator.

By pulling on a string attached to its body, the handheld YoGen generates up to five watts of clean energy to charge your device via an included connector. While it will probably get rather repetitive after a few minutes, on the plus side, you might be able to burn some calories and build some forearm muscle in the process.

Easy Energy claims that the YoGen has a better ratio of energy input to energy output of any similar charger on the market, but have yet to announce just how many pulls it will take to charge a device. At a price of $39.99, it’s not exactly cheap, but could be just the thing for a quick charge while away from home.

The YoGen is available to preorder for a release date of November 15^th from the Easy Energy store now.

Image via Easy Energy

New Study Finds More Than One Third of Employees Telework

According to new research from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®, nearly two in five employed U.S. online adults work from home at least one day a month. The study, The Telework and the Technologies Enabling Work Outside Corporate Walls, also shows that most teleworkers plan to spend at least $925 over the next year on technology products to help them work from home.

More than 38 million employed U.S. online adults, or 37 percent of the total U.S. workforce, work from home at least once a month. Employees say focusing on tasks without disruptions and running a business from home are the top reasons for teleworking. The top benefits include flexible hours, reduced travel time/costs and fewer disruptions/greater productivity. Ninety-eight percent of teleworkers use computer/IT technology, 90 percent use communication technologies and 75 percent use CE accessories.

The increasing number of teleworkers has benefits for the environment as well. CEA research has shown that a single day of telecommuting saves between 16 and 23-kilowatt hours of electricity or the equivalent of up to 12 hours of an average household's electricity use. One day of telework also eliminates the need for 1.4 gallons of gasoline and reduces CO2 emissions 17 to 23 kilograms. A worker with a one-way commute of 22 miles, commuting five days a week, will also save about 50% of the annual electricity consumption of the average household by working from home one day each week.

For more on the study's finding, check out the CEA press release.

Get Smart and Go Green Sweepstakes

For those of you who have to deal with a long commute to work, you know the awful pain of going to the gas pump and re-filling every week. If you don't have a fuel efficient vehicle, constantly stopping and paying for gas can be both tedious and expensive. Well, if you've been looking to get smart and go green with your vehicle, now might be the perfect time for you.

Green Mountain Energy Company and smart center Dallas and Fort Worth are teaming up to give Texas residents a chance to win a smart fortwo Passion coupe, valued at $16,235 before tax, title and license.The smart fortwo is one of the greenest and most fuel efficient cars that money can buy, pulling in around 41 miles per gallon on the highway. It also emits up to 50 percent less polluting emissions than average 2009 model vehicles. This is certainly a fitting give away for Green Mountain Energy Company, Texas' only electricity provider dedicated to cleaner energy.

Registering to win the smart fortwo is a piece of cake. Simply enter online or visit any number of Green Mountain Energy Company events. You need to get in fast though, because the give away ends on December 14, 2009. To enter the 2009 Sweepstakes, visit Green Mountain Energy Company. If you want to know more about the guidelines, check out the contest's official rules.

7 Ways to Easily Lower Your Electricity Bill

No one likes to get a huge electricity bill at the end of the month. With that in mind, here are seven easy ways to increase your energy efficiency and slash your electricity bill at the same time.

• Shop for a new provider — In many states, consumers now have a choice when it comes to their electricity provider. Check out WhiteFence to see if you have a choice in providers. If you do have a choice, you can compare plans from different providers and order your new service right on the site.

• Hunt down your energy vampires — We’ve blogged about this one before, but it bears repeating, many things draw power even when turned off. To combat this, unplug things like cell phone chargers or hair dryers when you aren’t using them, and consider purchasing some of the new smart power strips that allow you to turn multiple devices off at once.

• Use fans when you can — Fans use much less power than your AC system, especially when you take into account that your AC system has to cool the entire house, while a fan just has to cool you. They won’t do you any good if you’re not sitting in front of them though, so turn your fan off when you leave the room.

• Have your AC system inspected — There are many points along your cooling system where electricity can be wasted. Have a professional come out and look for issues, and you might just save 20 percent on your cooling costs.

• Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs — While everyone has heard about compact fluorescent bulbs by now, many people haven’t taken the plunge, even though they can cut your lighting bill by up to 75 percent! Sure, CFLs cost more up front, but they easily pay for themselves in energy savings over their life.

• Get a programmable thermostat — Instead of keeping your house at one temperature all day, invest in a programmable thermostat and cut down on all of the electricity wasted cooling an empty home. By programming your AC system to turn off while you’re at work, you could save up to 10 percent on your cooling costs.

• Turn off lights when you leave a room — It might be a dinosaur of a tip, but it’s one that makes a lot of sense. Teach your kids this one early to help encourage a mindset of reducing waste.

LG Releasing Solar-Powered Cell Phone

When you think about solar power, you probably think about a big solar panel array on top of a house, or a solar farm out in the desert. Lately though, there has been flood of new solar-powered chargers for portable devices hitting the market. From iPods to laptops, it seems like now there’s a way to charge almost anything on the go. Now, LG is getting ready to release the POP, a cell phone with a solar panel built right into the battery cover.

To charge the phone using the solar panel, you have to leave it in direct sunlight somewhere, which probably won’t appeal to everyone. Also, it charges a little slow, taking around ten minutes to provide with phone with enough clean energy for a little over two minutes of talk time.

But that’s not really too bad. Besides all the green benefits associated with a solar powered phone, I can think of plenty of times in the past where I was away from a charger and needed to charge my phone, even if it was going to take a while.

Sure, it may not be the most practical solar application we’ve seen yet, but I still love the road that we’re heading down. Imagine, in the future we will be able to charge our cell phones anywhere, and without wires.

Well, as long as we’re outside, that is.

Photo credit: LG

Making a Greener Halloween

Like most U.S. big ticket days, it's hard to avoid Halloween. Seeing as how stores start lining up the orange party decorations as early as July 5th, it's obvious that October 31st is a big event for many shoppers. To be honest, I've never been one to dress up much myself, but that doesn't stop me from buying candy like Willy Wonka. Or looking at pictures of robot pumpkins.

Given the amount of consumption around Halloween, it makes you wonder just how much of what goes on is environmentally friendly. Luckily for the eco-minded, we have Green Halloween. Not only does Green Halloween like capitalizing on clever rhyming conventions, they also give great tips about how to make Halloween less harmful to the environment. Their blog has tons of great tips including party activities, masks and even costumes for the kids.

To read more about how to be green this October, visit Green Halloween.