Today's New York Times uncovers some unsettling news about the Energy Star brand (http://nyti.ms/dhYmBR).
Energy beat reporter Matt Wald reports that Congressional auditors posing as fictitious companies easily secured Energy Star labels for such products as a gas-powered alarm clock and a feather-duster-topped air purifier. Really?

U.S. gas and electric utilities spent $6.1 billion last year on energy efficiency programs and services, according to data released by the Boston-based Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE).
That represents a 43% increase over the previous year. Spending in Canada, however, was flat year over year.

So much for saving energy by replacing the fridge.
A new report from the World Economic Forum and IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates suggests that Americans are indeed replacing their old, inefficient refrigerators with new ones. But they're keeping the old ones running elsewhere in their homes and actually increasing their energy consumption. Ouch!

Unemployment nationally is hovering just below 10% but there's one bright spot on the jobs horizon: energy efficiency jobs created by various "cash for caulkers" schemes.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) estimates that a total of 333,000 jobs will be created in 2010 by manufacturing energy efficient products, implementing President Obama's recently announced HomeStar residential retrofit program and by BuildingStar, a similar program for commercial retrofits.

Early in my career I spent a few years hanging out on the high reaches (72nd floor) of the Empire State Building, working for a small B2B agency.
Besides the spectacular view north to the then Pan Am building (now MetLife), I recall the paint-encrusted, creaky steel windows that actually opened, if only a crack.

It's good to see President Obama touting a new proposal to spend $6 billion quickly to encourage homeowners to insulate their homes and take other energy-saving measures. The President visited a technical school in Savannah, Ga., today to announce the program.
Here's the Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Williamson's report (http://bit.ly/dzxIJN).

Smart meters and the so-called smart grid are getting a lot of attention--and money--these days.
Vermont electric utilities, for example, have recently won a $69 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to roll out smart meters statewide.

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, do it. Now.
I'm about half way through and it's a sometimes riveting, sometimes too-much-inside-baseball account of the rise of the feared old-media killer.

Tomorrow's a banner learning day for Vermont's designers, architects and builders. That's because KSV client Efficiency Vermont will host its 12th Better Buildings By Design Conference in Burlington.
The conference includes a number of nationally and internationally-renowned speakers, who will introduce the latest innovations in energy efficiency, from LEDs to passive homes to new models for financing energy efficiency improvements.

It's gratifying that the first Habitat for Humanity home in the town where I live, Charlotte, Vermont, will become the most energy efficient home Habitat has ever built in New England. The design, which exceeds Energy Star standards, will meet still higher standards for green building set by the Passive House Institute.