A homeowner received a proposal for $1045 to remove asbestos panels.  The panels did not contain asbestos.

Jim Lee thought he had asbestos panels in his laundry room.  When he bought his home last year, the property inspector flagged fibrous panels behind the washer and drier as possible “asbestos containing material”.  Jim called three different asbestos remediation companies for estimates.

Jim asked me for advice on selecting the best remediation company.  I did some environmental testing when Jim bought the home, and he respected my opinion.  I asked to see the lab report on the suspect material.

Jim did not have a lab report.  Not one of the remediation companies sent a sample to a laboratory.  All THREE inspectors claimed they could identify asbestos just by looking at it.  At that point, I knew all three companies were unethical.

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It is time for the Solar Decathlon. And students are now preparing their knowledge about solar power and their designing skills once again. For this year, they are going to build a solar house.
The house is going to be built in Washington, DC’s National Mall. Students who will be joining the contest should start building [...]

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Largest Offshore Wind Farm is Planned to be build in Netherlands. The wind farm will be made from 59 wind turbines and will have an approximately capacity of 300 MW.

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Send Vice President Biden and the other members of the Middle Class Task Force your ideas about creating green jobs and making buildings more energy efficient.

President Barack Obama announced today the formation of a Task Force to strengthen the American middle class.  As Vice President Joe Biden, a member of the group, describes the task force on the White House website, “This task force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class.  It is our charge to get the middle class - the backbone of this country - up and running again.”

First on the agenda for the task force is the creation of green jobs and the ways home energy efficiency can both save homeowners’ money and create green jobs that cannot be outsourced.  From the White House:  “If we create jobs that aim to reduce your energy costs - like your electric bill and your home heating bill - that means you have more disposable income for other things. Creating more green jobs has multiple benefits.  It helps the economy as a whole; it helps our environment; and it will save you money.”

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Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) scientists, from Germany, have developed a novel technology of transforming plant materials into liquid fuel (biodiesel, methanol, hydrogen). Their method is able to bring the cost of one litre of such fuel down to 0.5 - 0.4 euros. And that’s cheap, according to European oil-based fuel prices.

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