But with its fleet of aging delivery trucks -- and limited funds -- the agency needs another innovation. Starting this summer, the Postal Service, which operates the world's largest civilian vehicle fleet, will begin a year-long pilot program of electric mail trucks in the Washington area, using vehicles converted by five manufacturers. (read more)

A local company will unveil its first converted all-electric car in the coming days. Advanced Mechanical Products has been working for three years on converting cars into fully electric-powered vehicles. Although the cars they convert, Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice, are no longer manufactured, the Blue Ash company has tripled its workforce in the past year.(read more)

Concerns over peak oil — that moment when oil demand exceeds global oil supply — has produced little more than a disdainful eye roll from Saudi Arabia. After all, the largest oil producer in the world has far more pressing problems — like peak demand, for example.(read more)

Today, a bunch of legislators and business people plan to show their support for three solar related bills being considered by the General Assembly by gathering in a state office building and explaining how they will make it easier to use solar power, how they will create jobs and how they will lessen dependence on fossil fuels, according to Environment Maryland and the Maryland Energy Administration. Environment Maryland says a quarter of Maryland homes are ready for solar panels that could capture energy that is now going unused. The group cites information from the International Center for Sustainable Development that shows the state gets about 196,000 gigawatt-hours of solar energy on a sunny summer day. That's more than what's produced at the state's mostly coal-fired power plants here in a year. (read more)

A-Power will begin shipping wind turbines in March and deliver all units by the same month of 2011. Its subsidiary, Shenyang Power, is contributing $36.6 million to the project, which is expected to produce about 600 megawatts of energy. (read more)

In Monday’s New York Times, Clifford Krauss and I wrote about the ways cities are preparing for the rollout of electric cars later year. West Coast cities like Portland, Ore.; Los Angeles; and San Diego are vying to become electric car capitals. But the San Francisco Bay Area is already a center of the nascent battery-charged economy, thanks to a concentration of Silicon Valley electric car infrastructure startups, as well as companies like Google and Pacific Gas and Electric that are eager for a carbon-free future. (read more)

The International Energy Agency said Thursday it expects consumers globally, led by China, to burn more crude oil this year than previously forecast as the economic recovery deepens. The Paris-based agency expects world oil demand to average 86.5 million barrels a day in 2010, an increase of 170,000 from its January report and growth of 1.8% from 2009. All of the annual increase in consumption comes from emerging markets. (read more)

On it's face, the blockbuster movie "Avatar" would seem to be good for the renewable energy/sustainability camp. For the few remaining earthlings who haven't yet seen "Avatar," here's a quick recap ... (read more)

While theories differ on when the world will experience the hard hitting times of peak oil, Virgin boss Richard Branson is boldly predicting that will happen in the next five years. In the foreward to a new report being released shortly, Branson urges UK leaders to be proactive rather than reactive to peak oil. “The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” Branson will say. “Our message to government and businesses is clear: act,” he says in a foreword to a new report on the crisis. “Don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.” (read more)

On January 28th the DOE announced the closing of a $1.4 billion ATVM loan to Nissan North America, a unit of Nissan Motors (NSANY), for the purpose of retooling a factory in Smyrna, Tennessee to produce the Leaf, a zero emission electric car that will be released later this year. (read more)

"The concern about peak oil is behind us," chief executive Khalid al-Falih told a session on energy supplies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The peak oil theory that oil supply is at or near its peak gained currency when prices zoomed to a record of nearly $150 a barrel in 2008. The issue remains a concern for many in the industry. (read more)

Will technology leapfrog depletion and save drivers from the cost of triple-digit oil? Every auto producer in the world has an electric car in the works; General Motors, of course, will start producing its Volt later this year. But in actuality, the car of the future is really a throwback to the past. In 1899, an electric car was clocked going over 60 miles an hour. And a little over a decade later, a Detroit Electric managed to travel 211 miles on a single charge (by comparison, General Motors’ Volt will go just 40 miles on a single charge before its back-up gasoline engine kicks in.) (read more)

America, prepare to pay $3 a gallon for gasoline again. Many energy experts expect gasoline prices to return to $3 a gallon, saying gas prices will rise this year with oil prices. Oil prices have been recovering since the U.S. economy crashed in 2008. Energy experts say gas prices are bound to hit that threshold sometime this year as oil prices rise. But please spare the filling station manager your wrath. He's not the reason that pump prices across the country are rising.
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WASHINGTON — Wind could replace coal and natural gas for 20 to 30 percent of the electricity used in the eastern two-thirds of the United States by 2024, according to a study released Wednesday by the Energy Department.But doing so would require a reorganization of the power grid and a significant increase in costs. And it would have only a modest impact on cutting emissions linked to global warming, the study found. (read more)

Reputed companies are always conscious about their brand image and what a great way to build great brand by taking clean and green route! Bell Lab is the division of the Alcatel-Lucent. Currently Alcatel-Lucent is trying to invest in their communications networks to make it 1,000 times more energy efficient. They have launched a five year program known as “Green Touch.” Members affiliated with the Green Touch are AT&T, and China Mobile from industry; MIT and Stanford University from the academic world; and The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control from government. Industrial laboratory members are Bell Labs, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Freescale Semiconductor. The project has received the nods of ascent from United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and the British, French, South Korean and Portuguese governments. (read more)