Smart meters:Truly a cure for energy blindness?Smart meters:Truly a cure for energy blindness?

And now for a dose of reality. No doubt smart meters are a good thing,but even their most ardent fans must admit that a degree of hoopla surrounds these little digital boxes. We hear that if consumers can just see how much power they use in real time,and what it costs,our energy woes will be no more. Smart meters will even cure the blind. The energy blind that is.

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Will Public Support for Efficiency Continue?

What’s the shelf life of today’s support for energy efficiency technologies? The industry has seen an unprecedented boom over the last several years. But all booms eventually bust. A recent souring of public opinion about global warming science has some industry insiders bracing for impact. Will American enthusiasm for clean energy come to a halt? Only if it was global warming that spurred the enthusiasm in the first place – and I suspect it was not.

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Efficiency “sweet spot” for Investors

Energy efficiency appears to have married rich in partnering with smart grid. Yet another report shows that together they have formed what has become today’s most appealing clean tech sector for venture capital. Ernst &Young,using data from Dow Jones VentureSource,recently reported that financing rounds grew 11% in 2009 for energy efficiency,this as deals for the clean tech sector as a whole dropped by 16%.

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