03/24/2010: Five EPA Region 9 Metro Area Cities Rank Among Top 25 in Nation for Most Energy Efficient Buildings
As per our blog title “A small steps towards better environment”…..
I have read an article under USEPA on the how the US Government have encourage the public participation on the Energy saving and fight against the climate change.
USEPA have released a list of US metropolitan areas with the largest number energy efficient buildings that earned EPA’s Energy Star in 2009. The list is headed by Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Lakeland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and New York. Five of the cities ranked on the list are located in EPA’s Pacific Southwest Region.
According to the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation said that these cities see the importance of taking action on climate change and are working with EPA to fight back. The buildings that have earned EPA’s ENERGY STAR are reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and cutting energy bills.
These ENERGY STAR programs have caused annual saving more than $900 million in utility bills and more than 4.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. There was increase up to 40% in the year 2009 on the buildings that received Energy Star award since the year it started 1999. Overall annual utility savings have climbed to nearly $1.6 billion and greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions of more than 1 million homes a year have been prevented.
EPA awards the Energy Star to commercial buildings that perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide compared to similar buildings. Thirteen types of buildings can earn the Energy Star, including schools, hospitals, office buildings, retail stores and supermarkets.
In the Bay Area the Hotel Nikko, One Embarcadero Center, Marin Montessori School and Parc 55 Hotel are just a few of the 173 commercial buildings have saved more the $69 million in energy costs and cut emissions equal to taking about 36,000 cars off the road for one year. Phoenix currently have 52 Energy Star buildings in Phoenix, which creates an $11.4 million dollar cost savings and an electricity savings equal to 9,900 homes’ energy use.
You may refer the article at http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/B048C769E6294B71852576F000773644
Well this is al about US. How about our country Malaysia? What are the steps that we have taken to reduce the energy consumption..From my personal observation we are still not aware the real need of energy saving and its purposes.
I have seen so many decorations that made from light at most of the traffic light areas. That empty space near to traffic light initially was decorated with very nice landscape of flowers and trees with sufficient street light. Now, those areas filled with an artificial tree made from colourfull lights. It really nice to see but is it really needed???
Think…
A good question to ask. I came across an article on The Star, 29th March 2010 posting a title "Malaysia still a long way from being energy efficient". We take for granted over the amount of energy supplied as the energy price in malaysia is still cheap as it is subsidised by the government.Malaysian attitude, when it is cheap we wont know how to value it and we will use use it up to the maximum level. everyone is only focussed on their personal energy use for comfort, not worried about the question of climate change and global warming.May be there is no major effort is being taken to gather every citizen to parcipate in implementing energy efficiency as how we give importance to unity and 1Malaysia.More campaigns and information has to be released to the public on energy efficiency to ensure usage of energy is well monitored.
ReplyDelete