Sustainable Industries Daily Update

The 2011 Ford Transit Connect Electric was on display in Portland at the start of Ford's national electric vehicle tour.

Car buyers will soon know the carbon footprint of a car they are interested in buying. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation have proposed new fuel economy labels for light vehicles, designed to make fuel consumption, CO2 and smog emissions more obvious for buyers. The labels will also support plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles by translating the energy consumption into a miles-per-gallon equivalent.

All the talk around electric cars this year has also meant a lot of talk around electric vehicle charging stations. Specifically, the talk is centering around a need for fast and furious installation of them all over the country. But did you know that there are already a bunch of old-style EV charging stations that might be easily converted to new, standard plugs? A company called EV Connect just got $1.9 million from the state of California to update about 600 "inductive chargers" in the state.

A part of the coming EV revolution will be a much smarter electric grid. The country is making headway toward that goal, according to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu who says 2 million smart meters have been installed in the United States.

A recent study, “Untapped Potential of Commercial Buildings: Energy Use and Emissions,” produced by Collaborative Economics for Next 10, finds that commercial buildings in California are a steady, stealthy drain on the state's energy resources and economy. Among other discovered facts, the report found that only 60 percent of all new commercial building construction meets California energy efficiency standards. 

San Francisco is doing more than just reducing, reusing and recycling. Recycling and compositing helped the city divert 77 percent of its waste from landfills in 2008, which is hailed as a national record and the highest of any city in the United States.