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First Takes: EV Charging Gets a Boost, Making Smart Meters Work for You, and More

EV chargers at home, at work, and on the side of the road, as well as a new shipping method from Office Depot are among the items on today's morning radar. Read More

(Updated on July 24, 2024)

EV-Friendly Homes & Home EV Chargers a Sign of EV Market Growth: There’s been a lot of news in the last couple days suggesting that electric vehicles are poised to hit prime-time. First, Nissan announced a partnership with eco-home builder City Ventures to pre-wire 190 homes in Southern California with EV charging systems. And along the same lines, GE rolled out its WattStation Wall Mount home and business EV charger, which follows on GE’s partnership with Lowe’s from last month to sell home charging stations at the home improvement chain.

Triple-A Offers Roadside EV Charging: Another sign that EVs are making strides: The automobile club AAA this week announced that it had a solution to “range anxiety,” one of the big challenges electric vehicle makers have to overcome to break into the car market. AAA will be rolling out emergency EV-charging vehicles in select markets this summer. The trucks, starting in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Knoxville, and Tampa, provide 10-15 minutes’ worth of charge, enough to get drivers to a charging station and fuel up.

A Master Class in Sustainable Energy: Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley announced this week that it has created a Master’s degree program in sustainable energy as part of its School of Engineering offerings. The program draws on faculty from engineering, the business school and the college of arts and sciences, and is designed to meet demand for renewable energy offerings — the school’s alternative energy coursework has been oversubscribed since they first hit the curriculum in 2006.

How to Make Smart Meters Work for Everyone: California’s public utility commission is requiring that all utilities provide the information they gather from smart meters to their customers. And as more utilities adopt smart-meter technology, Greentech Media’s Katherine Tweed has a post about how to make sure your customers understand the benefits of smart meters for them.

Office Depot’s ‘Revolutionary’ Paper Bag: Office Depot yesterday announced that it was rolling out nationwide a green office delivery program. Office Depot bills it as “revolutionary,” but the concept is simple: Instead of sending your office supply order in a cardboard box, you’ll get a paper bag. Simple. But Office Depot says that simple change can have big impacts: The five million bags it hopes to ship in the next 12 months will save more than 20,000 trees’ worth of paper resources.

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