That’s how Caterpillar, Inc. just chopped its energy bill by 46% — to save $800,000 a year — by improving the energy efficiency of its headquarters in Peoria, IL. The company’s reduced electricity and natural gas demand translates into credit for reducing GHG emissions.

To do it, Caterpillar redesigned its electrical systems by adding:

• direct digital controls throughout the building to control 800 newly created temperature zones and prevent one-size-fits-all temperatures
• variable-speed fans to the HVAC system
• a seasonal schedule for operating building systems
• motion detectors to turn off lights in unused areas, and
• a night setback to turn off lights and lower office temperatures.

Caterpillar also:

• reduced water use 50% by adding a new irrigation system to minimize landscaping consumption
• developed a green cleaning program to use only environmentally friendly chemicals
• adopted a pest management program that uses the least toxic methods to control insects
• enhanced its recycling program to reduce environmental impacts of materials it uses, and
• conducts regular audits to continuously seek out new waste-reduction opportunities.

Result: Caterpillar’s HQ is the first building in Illinois (outside of Chicago) to earn a gold certification from EPA’s LEED green building program.

Don’t ask for plastic, that’s for sure. It’s what got the first of many normal Americans arrested by the Green Police in the spoofy Superbowl ad for the 2010 Audio A3 TDI. Its special green feature: clean diesel power.

It actually took a long time to get to the point about the greeniness of diesel in the ad. But it was a fun wait, as the Audi Green Police systematically bring the Tea Party’s worst nightmare to life –  hordes of socialist green police arresting unwary Americans in the act of not-being green. Was easy to picture Al Gore directing this gem of a commercial.

First a guy gets knocked down and cuffed for asking for a plastic grocery bag, “Ya picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy!” growls the burly green cop.

Then backed by a 1980’s style rock ballad extolling the virtues of the green, you see shots of:

• police discovering a battery that was in the trash instead of being recycled
• a helicopter putting a spotlight on a homeowner committing a “compost infraction” for putting his orange peel in the garbage disposal
• the arrest of a home owner for using incandescent light bulbs
• a couple being harassed for heating their hot tub to 105 degrees, and
• a cop scolding two teenagers as he empties their plastic water bottles.

Then, finally, in a traffic roadblock to check on all sorts of anti-green driving, the Green Police let the driver of the Audi A3 TDI out of the backup and scoot him on his way because he’s driving a clean diesel car. “You’re good to go, sir!”

Usually great green ideas save money. But that’s not a good idea on Valentine’s Day!

The cheapskate thing doesn’t work when you’re telling loved ones how much they mean to you.

Valentine’s Day is the time to open up the wallet, and there are plenty of eco-friendly ways to spend freely. Some suggestions:

1. Don’t use Valentine’s Day as an excuse for skipping the Be My Valentine card thing in the name of saving a tree. And don’t send your lover an e-card unless your partner’s a totally, true believer, and even then, it’s risky. Better idea: Send Valentine’s Day cards made with recycled content or even greener, tree-free paper.
2. Flowers are natural, but not any flower will do for the eco-aware. Look for roses and other flowers with the Veriflora certification that means they’re sustainably grown and that growers follow fair labor practices. Other options: seek out florists who offer locally grown plants and flowers, or purchase flowers from stores known for their commitment to sustainability, such as Whole Foods. Other green flower gift ideas are detailed by Anne Meyer on her blog.
3. Chocolate. Always a welcomed gift, but only if you buy organic, fair trade chocolate, which helps family farms around the world. For chocolate lovers, one blog offers 10 ways to mix love and treats.
4. Make a donation to an environmental organization in the name of your loved ones. Just be sure it’s a real green group. Don’t do like George Castanza did on the Seinfeld TV show when he created the fictitious Human Fund.
5. Jewelry, of course, is a popular way to warm a heart. But the green way is to recycle, so look for jewelers who source their gems and precious metals from certified suppliers that follow ecological and socially responsible principles.
6. Dinner is always welcome. But reserve your date at a restaurant that offers an organic menu or features locally-grown foods. The locally-grown food not only helps reduce excess processing and refining of foods, but it cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions related to long-distance transportation, or
7. Top off your Valentine’s day with a holistic massage to soothe the soul. Not sure what that is? WorldwideHealth.com offers a quick introduction.

Got a better idea? Share your green Valentine ideas in the comments below.

By upgrading to energy-efficient lighting systems in all of its retail stores, auto parts and tire seller Canadian Tire says the $12 million savings it’ll reap in 2010 are just the beginning.

The more efficient lighting systems saved the company’s stores more than 45 million kilowatt hours (kwhs) of energy in 2009 and will expand this savings to more than 85 million kwhs in 2010 and beyond.

The lighting upgrades are also improving the company’s environmental footprint by cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 11,500 tons in 2009 and 20,500 tons in 2010.

But this is just the opening stage of a campaign to boost the company’s bottom line by chopping energy costs. For example, Canadian Tire is building so-called smart stores that are 30% more energy efficient than standard stores built just three years ago. The mix in a smart store includes:

• florescent lighting
• Energy Star approved products
• daylight harvesting
• motion sensors to turn off lights in unused areas
• high efficiency heating and cooling systems, and
• increased insulation.

Full details are reviewed in the company’s first-ever Community and Business Sustainability Report.

The school expects to save $500,000 a year in lower electricity bills thanks to newly installed software that maximizes energy efficiency of a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system at its Austin, TX, campus.

That’s a lot of green credit thanks to the significant emission reductions that come with the upgrade, which the school says is well worth the one-year return on investment to install the software from Optimum Energy, LLC.

The design cuts power demand by six million kilowatts, which in turn reduces the university’s indirect greenhouse gas and conventional air pollutants generated by its electrical suppliers.

The energy-optimization software can be used in a variety of building applications, including:

• office towers
• schools and universities
• government facilities
• data centers
• laboratories
• medical facilities
• airports
• hotels
• casinos, and
• shopping centers.

The OptimumHVAC software runs controllers provided by Johnson Controls to operate the university’s first, 100% variable-speed drive HVAC system.

Adding green ways to manage stormwater will save companies money.

Doing nothing and sticking with the status quo — letting stormwater run into storm drains — is the losing proposition. It’s going to cost companies a lot more to rely on this old way of handling stormwater.

The 79,000 businesses in Philadelphia are bracing for huge new water utility fees, and some will be hit really hard — up to $10,000 a month more for large operations like an airport, according to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

But many more companies stand to see cuts in their water utility bills, especially those that can reduce the amount of impervious surfaces on their property, mainly parking lots and roofs. These winners range from chemical companies to hospitals and commercial buildings.

The key to cutting water bills: using low-impact development (LID) designs and other green infrastructure to capture all your stormwater on your property (away from buildings), keeping it out of a storm drain and letting the soil do the treatment work on your property.

To encourage businesses to use green solutions to manage stormwater, the city will base fees on the amount of  impervious surface at a facility. The more a company does to reduce the impervious surface, the smaller the fee.

Some of the green solutions to cutting your water utility fees include adding:

• rain gardens on your property, including in a parking lot
• green rooftops, which not only capture stormwater, but help cut heating and cooling bills, and
• porous pavements for parking lots.

Most cities are spending billions on giant underground concrete vaults to store runoff and treat it after a storm passes.

But Philadelphia has adopted a different approach, one that EPA favors, designing stormwater controls that mimic nature’s way of absorbing most stormwater. For example, hardly any stormwater leaves a forest. It generally percolates into the soil where it falls.

A handful of towns were expecting clean, green renewable power from their new wind turbine installations this winter. However, it ain’t happening because the turbines freeze and can’t spin during the cold blasts that make Minnesota so famous.

Problem: The turbines were made in sunny California. But in a Minnesota winter, the grease, oil and hydraulic fluids that lubricate the turbines freeze up and the turbines can’t spin. They just sit there, still. Result: No power.

The turbines were supposed to be on line before Christmas. But they haven’t been working since frigid weather settled in back in. The Minnesota Municipal Power Agency told the StarTribune that the 115-ft wind towers that were supposed to supply clean power to 11 towns won’t be back in operation for another couple of months, when spring comes around.

Meanwhile, in another setback for wind power, officials in Sangamon County, Illinois, are clamping down on zoning rules to restrict placement of future wind farms. The Illinois Times reports that county officials are considering new rules to require bigger buffers between communities and wind farms.

Wind farms would have to be at least half-a-mile away from communities of 10,000 citizens. Larger communities would get a 1.5-mile buffer between them and the turbine farms.

That’s the message President Obama floated this week.

When it comes to a choice between jobs and cap-and-trade, jobs are clearly the president’s top priority this year, even though just last week Obama voiced support for cap-and-trade during his State of the Union address.

Obama told a town hall meeting in Nashua, NH, it was time to put plans to create green jobs — by promoting renewable energy projects — on a separate track from capping U.S. GHG emissions. “We may be able to separate these things out. And, it’s conceivable that’s where the Senate ends up,” he told the New Hampshire crowd.

Oddly enough, it was Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) who was the fastest and loudest to denounce Obama’s apparent willingness to give up on a cap-and-trade bill, according to a report in The New York Times. The White House quickly insisted that cap-and-trade is still a Presidential priority.

However, Graham dismissed Obama’s plan to separate cap-and-trade from an energy policy as “half-assed.” The South Carolina Senator fears an energy-only bill won’t promote nuclear power and expanding off-shore drilling for oil.

Graham doesn’t think environmentalists will support his nuclear power and drilling goals without a cap-and-trade program. That’s why he’s seeking a compromise position.

Fill out this form to receive your information

Say goodbye to hopes of an early springtime. It’s time to invest in fossil fuels.

Mixing the two sciences leads to a surprising conclusion: Wind and solar power have a limited future in a warmer world.

So it might be prudent to invest in coal and petroleum for those who have to survive winter weather, which will routinely last six weeks past Feb. 2. The winter of 2010 will be extended because the great prognosticator of winter, Punxsutawney Phil, indeed saw his shadow yesterday as he was carried outside his hut in Pennsylvania.

The tradition of relying on a groundhog to predict the weather evolved from the Dark Ages in Europe when sunny skies on Candlemas Day (Feb. 2 under the old style calendars) meant an extended winter. The Germans added the hedgehog to the prediction technique. This idea emerged in America in 1887 with the twist that a sunny sky meant Punxsutawney Phil could see his shadow, therefore winter would last longer.

Why is this good for coal and fossil-fuel suppliers?

For a couple of reasons, Phil will be increasingly predicting longer winters.

The thinking: As global warming increases in intensity, a warmer Earth will decrease wind activity, which cools land and sea. Warmer seas would bring on more cloud cover, which would hang around for longer periods, so there would also be less sunlight to power up your cell phone.

Conclusion, at least from blogger Hank Green: Global warming will make it hard to generate green power from solar and wind technologies.

One plus from all the extra cloud cover: Fewer visible full moons, so fewer appearances of the Wolfman and other creatures born of the full strength of moonlight.

(Note: Not to rain on groundhog scientist too much, but officially, the Spring Equinox is March 20, so technically, Phil’s always wrong about a late spring arrival. Phil’s prediction of six more weeks of winter brings us to March 16. That means spring always comes early — by four days — according to Phil’s predictions about winter.)