Anchorage, Alaska is joining the growing list of towns switching some of their street lighting to energy efficient LED lamps by joining the LED City program. The city will be converting about a quarter of its street lights to LED lamps at a cost of $2.2M. The savings from this investment could be as much as $360,000 per year.

The LED City program was started by Cree, a US-based manufacturer of LED components in 2007. They have a number of cities around the world already signed up for the program, including Raleigh, NC; Ann Arbor, MI, Austin, TX; Toronto, Ontario; Tianjin, China, and Torraca, Italy.

A report from the University of Texas at Austin suggests that as much as 3% of the US’ electricity needs could be generated from cow manure derived biogas.

According to the report, the US generates over a billion tons of cow manure annually, most of which is left in storage areas to decompose naturally. That decomposition process produces air pollution and greenhouse gases (we reported earlier that an Argentinian study had concluded as much as 30% of that country’s greenhouse gas emissions could be coming from their cattle).

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