A new online database, ShippingEfficiency.org, gives efficiency and emissions ratings for 60,000 ships worldwide to push fleet owners to start using cleaner and more efficient ships.

The project was created by billionaire Richard Branson to empower exporters, importers and even cruise-vacation-goers to choose the most efficient ships to do business with.  The database lists engine size, type of ship, energy efficient features, emissions and other information about each ship along with overall ratings based on those facts.

The builders of the database have great expectations for the project.  They expect it to reduce shipping CO2 emissions by as much as 25 percent.

The shipping industry has a very large carbon footprint and has been hard to regulate because shipping is a global business and national or regional restrictions are hard to enforce.  The database is aiming to solve the problem by putting the power in the hands of businesses and consumers to affect change, instead of governments.

via Treehugger

For years we have been watching as LED technology has improved and the cost of LED replacement bulbs has gotten lower and lower. Compact fluorescent bulbs have become commonplace, which has been instrumental in saving energy and lowering electricity costs for millions of consumers. But still, we've been waiting for LEDs to reach the point where they start being widely used. And now, it looks like that point may be here.

By the middle of 2011, a new 12-watt LED bulb from Osram Sylvania is scheduled to be available from all Lowes stores.

The Osram Sylvania Ultra A-Line LED bulb produces 810 lumens. This compares quite well with a standard 60 watt bulb (the one I checked is listed at 830 lumens). The LED bulb uses 12 watts, versus the 60 watt incandescent, wich is an 80% energy savings. And the LED bulb should last 25 times as long as a conventional bulb.

The biggest remaining question will be consumer acceptance. Does the LED bulb provide an adequate distribution of light, without the "hot spots" and dim areas characteristic of some earlier LED bulbs? And, is the color rendering of the LED good enough to make it an acceptable substitute for an aincandescent bulb? The A-line bulb has a color temperature of 2700 Kelvin and a color-rendering index (CRI) of 91. (An incandescent bulb has a perfect value of 100.) Most fluorescent bulbs have a CRI ranging from the low 50s to the high 80s, so the quality of the light should be quite good.

LED lights may have some end-of-life issues with circuit board materials, as do compact fluorescent bulbs, but, especially with RoHS regulations in place in many parts of the world, those are minor compared with the question of mercury in compact fluorescents. Of course, it's not a problem if the CF bulb is recycled (and more and more places are now taking those bulbs for recycling so that is becoming less of an issue, as well). And the total amount of environmental mercury is lower when considering the amount of mercury put into the atmosphere by burning coal to produce all the additional electricity that a conventional incandescent bulb requires as compared to the amount that would be spilled if a bulb was broken rather than being recycled, so concerns over CFLs should already be pretty well settled.

The 8 watt A-Line bulb is around $20 and is available right now. The 12 watt A-Line bulb should be in stores in the first half of 2011.