The Department of Energy has awarded the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission $319,000 to promote the use of natural gas, propane, and electric powered school busses and trash trucks throughout the Philadelphia region. The DVRPC directs regional cooperation among four counties in Pennsylvania, and four in New Jersey. The DOE says the grant will be [...]
Pennsylvania’s shale boom has drill rigs popping up all over rural parts of the state. Pipeline projects, truck traffic, and hotel construction has followed. Now, industry plans to build large-scale natural gas processing plants. State officials hope to create jobs. Industry wants a larger industrial infrastructure to develop the state’s shale gas reserves. Environmentalists wonder [...]
Philadelphia area residents may eligible for free electric car chargers. The Department of Energy’s EV Project began back in 2009 as a public private partnership with ECOtality, a company that builds charger stations. Since then, the project has provided $230 million dollars worth of electric vehicle infrastructure in major metropolitan areas, primarily along the West Coast. [...]
Subway trains in Philadelphia can now capture and store energy while braking, much like some hybrid and electric cars do. The Market-Frankford line, which runs from Upper Darby, through West Philadelphia, center city, and then up into the Northeast, has begun to reuse breaking energy. A state grant of $900,000 helped launch the project with [...]
Philadelphia City Council followed in the footsteps of cities like Washington D.C., New York City and San Francisco on Thursday when it passed “energy benchmarking” legislation. The measure requires commercial building owners with more than 50,000 square feet to record their yearly water and energy usage in a publicly accessible database. Think of it as [...]
Although no shale deposits lie beneath Southeast Pennsylvania, Philadelphia residents are reaping some benefits from the Marcellus Shale boom. Philadelphia Gas Works announced today that they’re dropping their rates, cutting residential heating bills by an average of 2.5 percent. “In the last year alone, PGW’s natural gas rate has fallen from $1.562 per hundred cubic [...]
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