As fuel costs continue to rise, alternative sources of energy become more attractive to individuals and businesses. For those who are concerned about pollution or about the depletion of natural resources, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power have presented themselves as possible alternatives to oil and coal.

The American Solar Energy Society is based out of Boulder, Colorado, and is a non-profit organization whose focus is on furthering the uses of clean-energy power resources in the United States. The organization condones the efficient use of energy resources and has members based all over the country. The organization claims more than 11,000 members nationwide, including energy professionals as well as the sort of tree-hugging individuals who typically join this sort of outfit. The American Solar Energy Society is an organization formed for the benefit of educating people about alternative energy outputs, and their focus is not limited in scope to Colorado, but rather focuses on the world’s resources at large – they take note of expanding technological resources worldwide. They publish an award-winning magazine, as well as a blog that features articles on how to make your own local environment greener and more energy efficient.

When it comes to alternative energy, or renewable energy as it’s also known, people tend to have different levels of commitment. Very few of us would take the view that, in the modern world, developing cleaner, greener ways of running our affairs is a bad thing. Yet there is a surprising spectrum of people for whom the philosophy of alternative energy has very different meanings

The world’s reliance on oil is staggering, and it seems that new predictions for when we will run out of petroleum are popping up every day. World governments are moving to start drilling in new places, in a desperate attempt to secure more black gold. Oil is used for a variety of products, including fuel, which is the number one commodity that people associate oil with.

Energy efficiency, rather than the more conscience-based energy conservation, is a technology-based harnessing of natural resources for power. Conservation seeks to use less energy by turning on lights less often, watching less television, etc, and thereby using less power, but energy efficiency is a science that allows for us to do the same things we normally do, only what we use needs less resources to work. Examples of this science are compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), and high efficiency air conditioners, refrigerators, boilers, and chillers which all use less power than their non-efficient counterparts, though they work just as continuously and perform just as well. The following is a list of green energy methods that could be used in the state of Washington D.C., as well as how efficient these methods would be for the area.