In the home

Illinois-based start-up PrintEco Software is now offering a version of its paper-saving software for Firefox.

The company, started by Arpan Shah, Tom Patterson, and Purvik Bhesania, has received kudos in the media over the last couple of months for developing plug-ins for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer that format print jobs to remove wasted space and reduce them to as few pages as possible.

Shah and Patterson developed the software while students at the University of Illinois after they noticed all the waste paper that was generated from school and work computer print jobs. Illinois Ventures is now … Read more

In addition to products with the basic Energy Star rating, consumers can now choose to buy even more efficient products with the help of a new rating.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy introduced last week an additional rating it calls Energy Star Most Efficient.

Consumer electronics and appliances with the Energy Star Most Efficient seal will signify those products that have exceptional efficiency within their product category. The seal will only be awarded to the top 5 percent of models. It will initially be introduced in five categories: clothes washers, heating and cooling … Read more

Better Place held a demonstration at the first of 20 Better Place battery-switching stations planned for Denmark over the next year, the company announced today.

The station was installed in Gladsaxe, a town outside of Copenhagen. Its inaugural battery swap was conducted on a Renault Fluence Z.E.

Better Place offers a subscription service in which drivers of electric cars have their depleted car batteries swapped for a fully recharged one at any member station, in lieu of waiting 15-30 minutes for a partial charge, or hours to fully recharge at a charging station.

The company launched its first retail … Read more

California's rebate program for electric and hybrid cars has run out of money for this fiscal year.

The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project has been offering California residents who purchase an electric or hybrid vehicle a rebate of $1,500 to $5,000, depending on the type of vehicle purchased.

The state budget had allocated $5 million for the program for the 2010-2011 fiscal year with an additional $2 million coming from the state's Energy Commission. However, as with the federal Cash for Clunkers program, citizens responded much more enthusiastically than anticipated.… Read more

Three years after launching Google Health, the company has decided to pull the plug on the ailing personal health records service. The lights are also going out for the Google PowerMeter service, which monitors Web-based home energy use.

The Google Health service will expire on January 1, 2012, but users will have until January 1, 2013, to transfer their data out of the system before it gets deleted entirely.

"Now, with a few years of experience, we've observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would," Google said in a blog post today. &… Read more

Home Depot will begin to offer small wind turbines and installation services from Southwest Windpower, both companies announced today.

Southwest Windpower makes a small wind turbine called the Skystream 3.7 Personal Wind Turbine.

The turbine is rated at 2.4 kilowatts and produces about 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month when operating at a minimal wind speed of 12 miles per hour, according to the turbine manufacturer.

Not all Home Depot stores will be carrying the turbines immediately. The wind turbines are initially being offering only at some stores in particularly windy states including California, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Utah, … Read more

Zeta Communities broke ground yesterday on a net-zero housing development in Stockton, Calif., the company announced.

The housing community, which will consist of 22 units, is being developed by the nonprofit group Visionary Home Builders of California.

Zeta Communities is known for its affordable, green prefab homes that are constructed using sustainable or recyclable materials at its factory in Sacramento, Calif. Building 90 percent of a home in the factory will cut construction time by 70 percent, according to Zeta.

In the case of the so-called Tierra del Sol community planned for Stockton, the Zeta prefab homes will be 1,… Read more

Call it a "wind-win" opportunity: there's a new push on for a "WindMade" certification label for U.S. companies, services, and products.

The announcement yesterday (on Global Wind Day) in New York by a group of organizations marks the start of a two-month development period. But the first draft of the standard allowing the use of the WindMade label requires that a company source at least 25 percent of its electricity from wind in order to qualify.

The idea for a WindMade label was originally proposed in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos … Read more

The Natural Resources Defense Council offered kudos to Sony and Microsoft last week for what the organization sees as a significant improvement to their gaming consoles: reduced energy consumption.

A 2010 Sony PS3 and 2010 Xbox 360 each consumes approximately 90 Watts of power during gameplay. That represents a 50 percent energy reduction compared to the 180 Watts the 2006 models consumed during gameplay, according to the results of a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group.

However, gaming consoles still suck down 80 percent of their full power level when they are in menu … Read more