The average California home has 11 “vampire” chargers – chargers which continue to draw small amounts of power even when no device is connected. These chargers waste well over 60% of the energy they consume and cost California the equivalent of powering 350,000 homes for an entire year.

According to the Commission, this new technology is inexpensive but will save an estimated $306 million a year in residential and commercial electricity bills.

The Commission’s findings stated that the estimated increase to an electric toothbrush, would cost 40 cents, but would return $1.19 in electricity savings – a 3-to-1 return – over the life of the product. In addition, the added cost of 50 cents to a laptop computer would yield an 18-to-1 return by providing the consumer with $9 in electric­ity savings over the life of the device.

As California goes, so goes the nation. The strict energy saving standards are the first of their kind in the US and go into effect at the beginning of next year.

Due to the size and historical influence of California’s consumer markets, this innovative policy will undoubtedly upgrade energy efficiency standards nationwide.

Under the Department of Energy’s Save Energy Now LEADER Companies Program, U.S. industrial companies commit to reducing their energy intensity by 25% or more in 10 years. In exchange the DOE offers partners (called LEADER companies) resources like personalized dashboards, comprehensive energy assessments and baselines, expert energy consultation, and planning, software and training tools. Rewards of participation include national recognition and publicity, the long-term value of energy reductions and monetary incentives.

LEADER requirements also stipulate that within the 12 months companies establish baselines for energy use and intensity, appoint a manager to the program, develop a plan for energy management and provide annual reporting.

Other prominent companies have pledged commitment to the program. Notable among the list of LEADER companies are familiar names like 3M, Harrison Steel, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCO, Roche Diagnostics, Tyco and Volvo.

For resources  on the program or becoming a partner, please visit Save Energy Now.

Last year in the United States, vampire energy loss was responsible for around $10 billion in wasted electricity and contributed billions of tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere. Those numbers are expected to increase with the proliferation of mobile devices and rising energy prices.

“These new charging options will make a necessary and fundamental impact on energy use in electronic devices that quietly dominate the energy supply across the globe,” according to Vampire Labs’ VP of Marketing, Hugh Thompson. “Our desire is to influence how consumers draw energy and ultimately see all electronic devices use their energy more efficiently.”

Vampire Labs is improving energy efficiency in the world’s most ubiquitous electronic devices. As demand grows exponentially across the globe for communication devices, so increases the strain on the energy supply to support them. Learn more at www.vampirelabs.com.

Get yours today.

Project Steeper, a collaboration between IBM and other top energy researchers, focuses on the transistors that often leak electricity and contribute to the global epidemic known as vampire energy loss. It is actually a subset of parasitic loss, which is one of the three main components of vampire energy loss as defined by Vampire Labs.

The project is slated out for 3 years with a deliverable of  “creating semiconductors that have a more abrupt switch between the on and off state than the metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (more commonly referred to as CMOS technology) used since the 1970′s. These devices would have a steep slope between on/off transitions, which gives the project its name, and would lower the leakage of charge in transistors.” As CMOS transistor scaling continues into deep submicron nodes beyond 22nm, leakage power is expected to waste as much as 80% of the total power consumed by an integrated circuit such as a modern microprocessor.

According to top energy researchers, Lawrence Berkley National Lab, vampire energy loss is responsible for around 10% of an average US household’s annual energy bill. Our research indicates that this is relatively dated information, pertinent a few years ago, with the actual range of wasted energy at around 15% today and growing. According to IBM, one year of vampire energy loss in Europe is equivalent “to the electricity consumption of Austria, Czech Republic, and Portugal in one year” combined.

A project of this scope involving topnotch researchers and funded by large governmental bodies is welcomed news. Its promise of new transistors and semiconductor designs will greatly impact world energy use while not changing consumer behavior. Their plan is to implement this at the original equipment manufacturer level, something Vampire Labs has been innovating, developing, and advocating for years with our focus on totally eliminating vampire energy loss.

The impact of Project Steeper could potentially be powerful, but it’s a long term solution with a projected deliverable within 6-10 years. In the interim, consumers, corporations, manufacturers, and governmental bodies should look at existing vampire energy slaying technologies and how they can immediately be leveraged to combat this pervasive and global energy parasite. Visit Vampire Labs’ Technology page to learn more about what’s available today.

$68.4 Million in government funds and $31 Million from private industry will go to 45 advanced and emerging energy-efficient buidling technology projects centered on 5 key areas:

Around $8 Million in Federal funds and $1.5 Million in private will be awarded to 13 projects centered around green job training in the following 3 categories:

It will be exciting to see what the selected projects accomplish and how they help shape our sustainable energy future. Without going forward into the unknown, we will be perpetually dependent on the failed systems of the past.

For a complete listing of all award amounts and awarded organizations.

Vampire Proof  Chargers are here to put a stake in vampire energy loss once and for all! Coming soon Vampire Labs will be offering an exclusive pre-order for our revolutionary vampire energy eliminating mobile phone chargers. Our patent-pending technology eliminates vampire energy loss at its core – reducing your home’s wasted energy, saving money, and ultimately saving our planet.

Visit www.vampirelabs.com to learn more about our exclusive pre-order, which guarantess you will be among the first people in the world to own a piece of tomorrow’s energy-efficient, ground-breaking technologies.

Unfortunately for our planet, April 22nd will come and go like so many other honorary holidays or birthdays where a calendar day recognizes or memorializes something that is forgotten the next day. If everyone on the planet observed 4/22/2010 with 100% earth-friendly practices, it would not change the Earth’s plight. This is not to say that Earth Day is not important or that it having its own day of recognition is not valuable. It is; it is.

The message just comes with a caveat – Earth Day should be everyday and practiced by everyone in a rational manner. Human behavior is not hard to change for a single day once a year. Most people are incentivized by a mix of peer pressure and conscious that comes with an official Earth Day to think green (but just for today). Instead of going overboard on green-this and eco-that all packed into 24 hours, why not incorporate more sustainable (and attainable) practices in one’s everyday life?

Aside from spurring more people to think about how their everyday actions represent themselves as stewards of a world, hopefully this Earth Day will add fuel to the new climate bill being introduced on April 26th in the U.S. Congress. Because while everyday individual choices do, can, and will make a collective difference, changing our laws in order to move to a more sustainable, more energy-efficient and less oil-dependent world is worth all the carbon free activities one can cram into a late day in April.

Abusus non tollit non nocet – Happy Earth Day, Earth.

Whenever Google publicly does something of this nature, we should be paying attention. The same can be said for their PR-savvy counterparts. Most of these corporations are very guarded with their street cred. Additionally, it’s not good enough to brush this aside as a good natured call to governmental duty because that would be naive.

The opening paragraph of their missive to Obama reads:

Clearly Google, AT&T, GE, Nokia, Intel and the rest are vying for plausibility of providing this type of consumer and commercial energy management on the varying platforms they specialize in, support or manufacture. Sending an open letter to Obama is a sharp marketing ploy to create public interest and demand surrounding the individual savings and global impact that reducing wasted energy at home and in the office will have. Something Vampire Labs has been arguing all along.

Plus, they are asking the US government to be a leader (err … market driver?) in four bullet points from their letter:

Expect to see an escalating push around the individual and global savings of monitoring residential and office energy on a very large scale. Do any of the aforementioned companies market any other way? High level savings data was already outlined in the dispatch:

Conjointly, the corporations and associations involved are seeing a developing market and are informing the right administration – we are ready to make good on a clean energy future and it starts with wasted energy; let’s work together.

Click on picture to view downloadable U.S. DOE Energy Posters

2010 continues to be the year of energy efficiency, and the positive attention it is receiving from venture capital markets, consumers, the European Union and U.S. Governmental bodies are market drivers that contend it’s here to stay.

Why not have products and facilities that waste energy use that energy more efficiently? It saves energy resources, which in turn saves money, reduces unnecessary climate warming environmental waste, and can ultimately lower the cost of energy altogether. Our future depends on conserving energy in a practical manner and that future is now.

What is cleantech and why should anyone care that VC funding dropped 50%?

Ernst & Young,  “a global leader in assurance, advisory services, tax, transactions, and strategic growth markets“,  defined cleantech in their analysis as, “a diverse range of innovative products and services that optimize the use of natural resources or reduce the negative environmental impact of their use while creating value by lowering cost, improving efficiency, or providing superior performance.” Cleantech will continue to play a vital role in our everyday lives and our future. The U.S. Government thinks it so vital that they are noted as one of the largest investors in the sector.

If cleantech is so crucial, why are VCs backing off?

Keeping in mind the global recession and that 2008 was a record year for cleantech investments, the analysis becomes less drastic. After all cleantech received $2.6 Billion in VC financing through 2009, and Q409 was even kinder. VC cleantech deals rose 21% overall in Q409 while  energy efficiency cleaned up. As a sub-sector of cleantech, energy efficiency VC investment rose 11% in Q409 making it the largest VC deal maker. In line with the boost in VC deals, energy efficiency also raised the most capital in Q409 than all the other cleantech subsectors.

The shift marks as an interesting cleantech market driver. Others noted in the analysis include the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which recently awarded $2.3 Billion to cleantech manufacturing; the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, who is expediting cleantech entries; U.S. corporations, who are rapidly “going green” in order to reduce overhead and operating costs; and U.S. public markets, which brought $2.8 Billion in cleantech investment.

John de Young, an Associate Director at Ernst & Young, captured the trend concisely, “These results reflect the easing of an investment cycle largely driven by significant capital demands of solar companies and a shift toward energy efficiency products with lower funding requirements and potentially faster commercialization.“