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Appliances and other electronic equipment are getting more efficient, policy makers are pleased. But is that justified, are we heading in the right direction? Or are we deluding ourselves? According to the IEA (International Energy Association), more than 50% of the targeted reduction in CO2 emissions required to reach international climate goals of 2030 must come from energie conservation. Politicians at the Dutch and European level have been working on this issue for a long time, but the total energy consumption of European households has only increased in the period from 1990 to the present.

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There lies a collective awareness on the urgency in getting involved with and influencing current environmental issues and climate change in today’s society. This phenomenon is known by the general public as: Greening. It is important, for museums to participate in this occurrence any way possible. To be able to sustain the quality and quantity of our cultural heritage, museums must take matters into their own hands. Visitors (and sponsors) will start demanding it from them. But the real reason museums should start Greening their museums has less to do with a demand from the outside world and far more to do with two essential aspects: an ethical and a financial essence of sufficient and sustainable museum management practice.

Sight Light presents herewith a high bay downlight that emits a warm white light.

This article shows the measurement results. Many parameters are also found in the Eulumdat file.

See this overview for a comparison with other light bulbs.

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In March of 2009,  I bought a house in my hometown – Jiaxing, which is in China.  Jiaxing is located on the southeast coast line of China,  120 km  from Shanghai. The house I bought has an interior area of 250 m2 with 3 floors and a basement.  It also comes with a garden of  55 m2.  With this house,  I found an opportunity to try out a Ground Source Heat Pump system. For years I have been looking at the development of new trendy technologies.  Now I am especially interested in new and renewable energies.  By attempting to install such a Ground Source Heat Pump system in home,  my intention is to use the ground heat for basic heating, cooling and providing all of the warm water needed for living in my home.

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It is possible to fine tune your central heating system by balancing the radiators and applying a modulating thermostat in cooperation with a modulating boiler.  The first measurements revealed a 37% reduction in gas consumption. Read further  how I discovered this amazing fact.
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Saving energy makes sense if it’s done correctly. This simple example shows that replacing often used light bulbs for Compact Flourecant Lights has a return on investment of less than 7 months. With some small modifications the replacement also looks pretty good!

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Since WEO-2008, the economic downturn has led to a drop in energy use, CO2 emissions and energy investment. Is this an opportunity to arrest climate change or a threat that any economic upturn might be stifled at birth?

What package of commitments and measures should the climate negotiators at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen put together if they really want to stop global temperatures rising? How much would it cost? And how much might the developed world have to pay to finance action elsewhere?

How big is the gas resource base and what is the typical pattern of production from a gas field? What does the unconventional gas boom in the United States mean for the rest of the world? Are we headed for a global gas glut? What role will gas play in the future energy mix? And how might the way gas is priced change?

All these questions and many others are answered in WEO-2009. The data are extensive, the projections more detailed than ever and the analyses compelling.

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As I own several hundreds of megabytes of digital photographs, documents, spreadsheets and letters, the urge to use a good backup solution raised over time. I do not want to wait and see on one day a fatal harddrive crash…

In search of a solution (besides backup procedures to CD-ROM/DVD (optical media, which last for 3-5 years before degradation kicks in), I used an external USB harddisk drive. Really easy and simple to use. But a crime when you make manual backups. With the Apple Mac Mini and OS/X 10.5 Leopard, Time Machine will take care and backup the necessary files.

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The Apple Mac Mini is a small and efficient computer for domestic use.  By default, there are nowadays (August 2009) 3 different configurations available: all 3 based on Intel Pentium Core2Duo processors, but all vary in the range of harddisk capacity and memory capacity.

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Since January 2008,  we are busy in our household trying to reduce our energy consumption. We succeeded in this task quite well. We reduced our gas consumption with 30% and our electricity consumption by a staggering 90%.  Are you curious how we did this?

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