A Few Easy Pointers to Increase our Energy Efficiency

With regard to the productivity of biopharmaceutical R&D, I often hear it said that, "All of the low hanging fruit has been picked."?? By "low hanging fruit" people generally mean that there was a time when drug discovery was easy, that there were plentiful drugs targets available and that these targets were easily converted into ...

TYLER COWEN has everyone talking about the exhaustion of much of the rich world's easy sources of rapid growth—its low-hanging fruit. Yesterday, President Obama visited America's border with Mexico to remind us all that there are plenty of growth opportunities out there waiting to be plucked. The president is, at long last, renewing his call for immigration reform, including creation of a path to citizenship for the country's undocumented immigrants.

 In his post introducing our series on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s new book “Poor Economics” (reviewed here), my colleague mentiones that the book’s genesis lies in a 2006 article on the economic lives of the poor, which drew upon the results of a large number of household surveys in various countries. 

“There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them." – Jean Monnet "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." –Herbert Stein

Last week, as part of the administration’s initiative to reduce energy use, waste and costs in Federal operations, the Commerce Department joined the other Federal agencies in releasing our annual updates on energy and sustainability performance. In October 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13514 (PDF), directing Federal agencies to lead by example in clean energy and to meet energy, water, pollution, and waste reduction targets. These performance scorecards benchmark annual agency progress and enable us to target the best opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce pollution and eliminate waste.

Do small businesses have a lot of low-hanging fruit? You bet they do. Owners and managers ask me about the economy, then I ask about their business, and I'm often stunned by the opportunities being missed. So I asked some sharp consultants about the most common low hanging fruit. This article is about their advice ...

By WideMoat Capital:The IEA is warning that energy is set to become "viciously more expensive" as global demand for energy is set to increase 40 percent by 2035. If we add to the equation the fact that several of the currently less expensive and more utilized energy sources are facing serious problems, there is a strong case to be made for renewable energy and efficiency.

Today Secretary Locke