In mid-October, President Obama moved to raise the amount of credit extended to small businesses. If Congress approves his plan, the measures would enable community banks to borrow at low rates from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It would also raise loan caps on some Small Business Administration (SBA) programs. To qualify, the banks would have to show how they would increase lending to small enterprises. The relief could not come a moment too soon. The job-creation engine known as small business has been slammed, not only because of falling demand but also because the normal flow of financing has slowed to a trickle. Small enterprises have created two-thirds of all new jobs since 1994 and they employ more than half of all private-sector employees. (The SBA's definition of a small enterprise is "an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.") In September, for the second straight month, they laid off more workers th...
International Green Energy Council The mission of the International Green Energy Council is to provide advice and to render opinions pertaining to all of the issues affecting the “Green” industry Internationally and on all Federal, state, county and municipal levels of government; to maintain surveillance, review and analysis of all governmental activities, whether International. federal, state, county or local in nature, which affect the “Green” industry, whether legislative, executive or judicial in form and scope; to maintain liaison with all levels of government; and to initiate, defend, and otherwise support environmentally sound initiatives that support sustainable energy practices and the sustainable industry in all its forms.
By Jeff St. John Comverge ( COMV ) has landed another deal that calls for it to turn down homes' energy use during peak demand times with pagers at first, and with smart meters later on.The deal is with Dominion Virginia Power ( D ), and calls for Comverge to manage about 117 megawatts of commercial and industrial power loads . Comverge will also provide its Apollo software platform to manage demand response devices for about 150,000 homes – representing roughly 150 megawatts of power use – which the utility wants to hook up with smart meters eventually. The idea is to turn down home air conditioners, water heaters and pool pumps – the devices Comverge can now control – using its existing mainly pager-based communication system at first, said Mike Picchi, Comverge's interim president and CEO. Then, as Dominion rolls out its smart meters, made by German manufacturer Elster, Comverge will switch over to using them as the gateway into the home instead, Picchi said. Comverge'...
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