Japan's Energy Saving Technology

Japan Sees a Chance to Promote Its Energy-Frugal Ways from the NY Times. I was curious what other nations were doing on energy saving research when the US stopped funding it largely due to cheap oil. The article outside of steel processing does not have a lot of content.

It would be nice to know what other energy saving technologies are in Japan that are not widely used other places?

I hope these are some of them:

• Appliances that use electricity, even when turned off is one.
  
• Another is efficiency of appliances.
  
• There are so many energy savings that can be done with building design.

China's Environment

From the Economist, Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air - And don't expect the government's environmental watchdog to do much about it.

Key Points:

1. Environmental agency in China is underfunded and it's competitors for agriculture and industry are much more powerful. So wonderful sounding regulations are enacted (sounds great!), but actual implementation is poor.
2. Local environmental agencies are usually focusing on the same goals of local governments (grow the economy at any cost).
3. Environmental damage in 2004 may have lowered GDP by 3.05%.
   

So why does this matter outside of China? Because many goods in China are exported to the US, and poorly implemented regulations can lead to issues such as food safety/contamination. Pollution also has a habit of ignoring national borders, not to mention Global Warming. Japan's Prime Minister has China to reduce pollution due to fear in Japan that Acid Rain is being caused by Chinese pollution.