President Barack Obama proposed on Monday to boost funds for clean energy research and deployment in his 2012 budget by slashing subsidies for fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

The budget provides the Department of Energy with $29.5bn (£18.4bn) for the fiscal year 2012, up 4.2% from the proposed 2011 budget, and up 12% from the enacted 2010 budget. Some $8bn would support research in clean energy like wind, solar and advanced batteries.

“Whomever leads in the global, clean energy economy will also take the lead in creating high-paying, highly skilled jobs for its people,” the administration said in the budget.

The budget would also provide $853m to support new nuclear energy technologies, such as small modular reactors. The White House asked for $36bn in federal loan guarantees to help finance the building of nuclear power plants, as it did last year. The loan programme already has $18bn in authority.

To help pay for the clean energy initiatives, the White House is asking Congress to repeal $3.6bn in oil, natural gas and coal subsidies, a move that would total $46.2bn over a decade. In addition, the budget cuts funding for oil and gas research and for hydrogen fuels programmes. But many Republicans oppose cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, saying it would hurt industries that provide jobs while the economy is still fragile.

The budget would double the number of energy innovation hubs to six to bring scientists to work on topics like rare earth elements, energy storage and batteries and development of smart grid technologies designed to make electricity transmission efficient

Technorati Tags: Cleaner power

With the state of the worlds economy and the relentless worldwide search for renewable energy, cheaper electricity is something close to everyone’s heart.

Of course you could just use less and many try to but to most others cheaper electricity means simply buying it for less money. The price of electricity goes up with inflation year on year as set out by the government watchdog Ofwatt and wholesale costs also rise/fall with the price of oil. Every time there is a major incident around the world cheaper electricity gets further for every ones reach. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the war in Iraq or the collapse of banking giants Lehman Brothers, these have all directly affected the price of electric bills landing on door steps across the UK. Of course as oil drops and the threat of war ceases we should get cheaper electricity bills but as we all know that’s rarely the case.

Since the deregulation of the Electricity and Gas industry in the 1990’s there has been a wider choice in the UK energy market. Lost cost providers are now offering gas and electricity across the current infrastructure in millions of homes nationwide. I guess a similar parallel can be drawn with the airline industry with many new smaller leaner carriers competing with the big boys offering discounted airfares across Europe and beyond. Easyjet’s planes are full of passengers that are happy to spend a lot less on a ticket than say British Airways were charging for the same route. Of course some of these airlines will fail ( and have ) , as will some of the smaller energy providers but the better ones will survive increasing competition and driving down the price or your electric bill. In fact recent findings show that on average each person that has swapper to a low cost supplier is about £100 better off per annum since deregulation.

Bearing in mind this saving its hard to understand why so many households are still using the bigger and dearer providers like Npower and Eastern Electricity and not looking at other cheaper companies. Many of these new providers also have modern helpful customer services teams to further set them selves apart for the established old boys. Indeed their satisfaction ratings are  almost double that of current providers.

If you look at average utility bills , Gas , Electricity , Home/Mobile phone and Broadband prices appear quite keen and most people cant be bothered changing supplier but add them all up and multiply the total by 12 and its easy to see why many house holds are spending upwards of £1500 a year , some considerably more. A ten or twenty percent saving is easily achievable by moving your account to a lost cost carrier. It’s the same gas and electricity as before just cheaper and that means cheaper electricity bills……

Have a look at your bills, take off 20% and multiply this figure by 12 , it wont buy you a new car but it’s a saving , often it’s a big saving. Check out a low cost provider , what have you got to lose ?

10 ways to save energy, money, and help prevent climate change.

Here are some simple measures you can do right now.

1. Use energy saving lightbulbs. They last up to 10 times longer than ordinary bulbs, and using one can save you around £40 over the lifetime of the bulb. This saving could be around £65 over its lifetime if you’re replacing a high wattage incandescent bulb, or one used for more than a few hours a day.
2. Turn your thermostat down. Reducing your room temperature by 1°C could cut your heating bills by up to 10 percent and typically saves around £55 per year. If you have a programmer, set your heating and hot water to come on only when required rather than all the time.
3. Is your water too hot? Your cylinder thermostat should be set at 60°C/140°F.
4. Always turn off the lights when you leave a room.
5. Close your curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping through the windows and check for draughts around windows and doors.
6. Don’t leave appliances on standby and remember not to leave laptops and mobile phones on charge unnecessarily.
7. If possible, fill up the washing machine, tumble dryer or dishwasher: one full load uses less energy than two half loads.
8. Only boil as much water as you need (but remember to cover the elements if you’re using an electric kettle).
9. A dripping hot water tap wastes energy and in one week wastes enough hot water to fill half a bath, so fix leaking taps and make sure they’re fully turned off!
10. Do a home energy check. Just answer some simple questions about your home and we’ll give you a free, impartial report telling you how you can save up to £300 a year on your household energy bills.

Just doing these simple things will cut at least 10% off your bills

1. Unlike natural gas and coal, no one burns crude oil. The crude oil is first "refined" which means breaking it up into many different products, ranging from gases, through gasoline and diesel fuel, to heavier materials such as bunker fuel, bitumen, and coke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery#Major_products

The prices of the various outputs of the refining process depend on the demand. Usually demands for gasoline and diesel are the highest and they drive the cost of crude oil.

Since coke is not useful for much expect burning like coal, it has a much lower price, you can start using "oil" for power generation when the price of coke is low enough, even if the price of crude is still high.

2. Cost isn’t just a matter of fuel. There are two distinct costs for a power plant: initial cost and operating costs. The cost of fuel is the primary operating cost. But the cost of building the power plant is also a major cost that has to be paid off during the life of the plant.

Nuclear power has very low operating costs, but its fixed costs (initial plus cleanup) costs are very high – making nuclear power very expensive.

http://www.energybulletin.net/52023

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/business/energy-environment/11power.html

Since no one has built oil fired power plants of any size, it isn’t clear what the fixed costs of an oil plant would be, how long the plant would be able to run, etc.
(Natural gas plants have higher operating costs that coal plants but are much cheaper to build, which is why they exist even though natural gas prices are higher than coal prices on a per unit energy basis.)

3. Prices depend on supply and demand. If you were to suddenly start using oil to produce electricity, then the demand for oil would go up and so would the price.

In the U.S. the electric power market is the largest consumer of energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USenergy2009.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

48% of that comes from coal, 18% from natural gas. Any switch to oil would have major effects on the oil market.

4. In fact, the world is producing enough oil at current prices (much less lower prices) to satisfy demands for both electric power generation and current petroleum product usage.

I have shared this with my friends and family and we are all saving.

Reduceenergy.joinambit.com

If the house is large and has 2 stories, that will be a big factor. It will take a lot of central air to cool 2 stories, especially the upstairs, unless you have "zone" thermostats.

Finally, how many rooms of the house do you actually USE? And how cool do you need them to be? If you can deal with a warm house but want a cool bedroom to sleep in, the window AC and some fans should be enough and would be most efficient. But if you use the entire house – a lot – and need it to be relatively cool throughout, then the 3 room ACs probably will not do the job for you and the central air would be more effecient. As long as you get it working RIGHT.

Of course, they could just get more trains, but they are very expensive, and if the usage is shuffled a little, it is enough. The problem is simple: you cannot store passenger space. You cannot use empty passenger space from the night during rush hour.

Electricity generation is quite similar: we cannot do much to store electricity. We pretty much have to use it as we produce it, and whatever equipment we have, that is the limit of what we can produce at one time. If electricity companies can encourage people to use power at non-peak times, they can use their existing facilities to provide it, thereby reducing the maximum requirements at peak time, otherwise it may mean building new and expensive additions.

This is not quite the whole story, since you can have a nationwide grid that shares power across large geographical areas, allowing plants in, say California to get power from, say Maine when main no longer needs so much and California does.