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 few articles from around the web about wind energy this week. Wind energy is a clean, renewable source of energy, but often unpopular because of the unsightliness of wind farms filled with towering windmill towers. For residential use, the smaller vertical turbines, like the Sea Hawk pictured, fit in better and make almost no noise in operation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Wind Energy
Over at the Energy Power Alternatives blog they have an article discussing the advantages and disadvantages of wind energy.

China’s Wind Power Set to Hit 100 Gigawatts
EcoGeek is reporting on China’s plans for wind energy. China is attempting to generate at least 15% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020; a new report suggests that they will likely meet this target. For comparison, the US is trying to reach 7.5% by 2013 (though Al Gore has challenged the US to meet 100% by 2018).

China is generating 6GW of electricity from wind today, and plans to increase that to 20GW by 2010, and 100GW by 2020.

The Right Wind Turbine for You
Over at WorldChanging, Sarah Kuck asks whether wind power is right for you, and provides some useful pointers for getting more information about residential wind power solutions.