January 31, By Timothy Hurst

While the two GOP frontrunners in Florida, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, both recognize human-caused climate change as a legitimate concern, no GOP candidate is sincerely addressing the critical climate and energy issues facing Florida, and the rest of the U.S. In fact, the GOP presidential field is...

January 31, 2012 By Joshua S Hill

A new report shows that multifamily buildings—analyst-speak for apartment buildings—could save residents and owners both up to $3.4 billion across America if simple energy efficiency upgrades were made.

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January 31, 2012 By Maria Surma Manka

Dear GOP Presidential Candidates,

Remember back when energy and climate change were less partisan issues? When President George W. Bush’s administration agreed that climate change was cause by humans, the Pentagon took it seriously enough to deem it a threat to national security, and when one of you and Speaker...

January 30, 2012 By Pete Danko

Here’s an easy way to generate heat: Raise the issue of the health effects of utility-scale wind power production. Massachusetts just did so in a big way, releasing a draft report by an independent panel that dismisses the most explosive charges by wind critics—that living near big wind farms can cause a range of devastating health effects sometimes...

January 30, 2012 By Rav Casley Gera

Concentrating solar power, the rapidly-growing alternative to photovoltaic power, continues its expansion. A joint venture between two energy companies, one from Spain and one from Abu Dhabi, is set to build 6 GW of new CSP in the next three years in Spain, the US, and the Middle East.

The company, Torresol Energy, is a joint venture between Spain’s Sener and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar. It recently opened two new 50-MW...

January 29, 2012 By Andrew Burger

The intermittent, yet often complementary, nature of wind and solar energy has long been observed and increasingly remarked upon of late. Minnesota’s Ecos Energy is looking to take advantage of that by building the state’s largest solar photovoltaic (PV) array on a 13-acre site in southwestern Minnesota, home to more wind farms than any other region state-wide, the StarTribune reports.

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January 29, 2012 By Kristy Hessman

Have you heard the term smart grid? If you answered yes, you are among the 49 percent of American consumers who are at least a little bit familiar with the term. Now comes a bit harder question: Can you explain what the term means? If you said no, you are hardly alone. According to findings in the SGCC Consumer Pulse Study, conducted for the Smart Grid Consumer...

January 28, 2012 By Lauren Craig

The amount of power generated by a wind turbine depends largely on the wind speed, but that’s not the only factor that comes into play. Individual turbines in a wind farm can experience the same wind speeds but different wind profile “shapes,” such as turbulence and wind shear (the difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere)—with significant impact.

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January 27, 2012 By Timothy Hurst

Looming above a test plot full of mirrors like some kind of Transformer-inspired arachnid, the tower at the center of Masdar City's concentrating solar power plant is almost menacing at first glimpse. 

Although still only...

January 26, 2012 By Green Ways and Words

In about a month, D.C.’s Gaylord National Conference Center will be teeming with energy researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, corporate executives, and a couple of wild Bills.

The third annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit promises to bring together the type of leaders that can develop energy solutions for the future, and boy did they round up some well-known and wealthy problem solvers this year.

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January 26, 2012 By Pete Danko

Offshore wind got the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assessment treatment 15 months ago, with a big fat report that made the case for robust power development on the seas. We’re still waiting for the first watt of offshore wind power to waltz ashore, but the Obama administration did at least follow up on the report by unveiling a process that has seemingly real...

January 26, 2012 By Zachary Shahan

The focus of solar innovation and investment is shifting from panels to installation, according to a new Lux Research report, “Swimming Downstream: Evaluating Up-and-Coming Solar Installers and Developers.”

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January 26, 2012 By Drew Kerr

Researchers in North Carolina have created a better way to convert hog manure to energy, but producers in the Midwest are unlikely to rush to implement it.

Their reservations are based on a combination of factors, but center primarily on the upfront costs involved.

With low energy costs and a price tag that can top $1 million, anaerobic...

January 25, 2012 By Susan DeFreitas

Shutterbugs — do you revel in the sight of the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm‘s many wind turbines spinning in the mountains of Southern California? Or perhaps the sun setting behind the offshore turbines of the United Kingdom’s Thanet Wind Farm? If so, you could have a shot at €1,000 in goods from Amazon and a...

January 25, 2012 By Lauren Craig

A 2011 study by the Marine and Atmospheric Research Department at Australia’s national Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found that an expected increase in light wind speeds across Australia, due to climate change, could cause wind energy production to vary by several...

January 25, 2012 By Joshua S Hill

Owners of the popular Chevrolet Volt electric car may soon have the option to recharge their cars using renewable energy, thanks to a new solution from OnStar.

According to OnStar, “the  technology is enabled as OnStar receives a signal from PJM Interconnection that shows the percentage of available renewable energy on the grid. Data from this forecast is downloaded to the OnStar cloud, or Advanced Telematics Operating Management System (ATOMS). OnStar uses this signal to...

January 24, 2012 By Joshua S Hill

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese Government has hit back against a US investigation into the Chinese export of wind turbine towers to the US, saying that the slowly escalating trade disagreement between the two countries is likely to affect global efforts to curb carbon emissions and could also damage clean-energy cooperation between them.

...

January 24, 2012 By Adam Johnston

Debating how the US geothermal industry can best take advantage of California’s superb renewable energy rules, and working for extending the geothermal federal tax credit, were the two hot topics at the fourth annual Geothermal Energy Association Finance Forum in San...

The Ohio Power Siting Board, the state utility regulatory agency, has given the green light to start building the Black Fork Wind Farm, a 200-megawatt facility that will be capable of generating enough clean electricity to power 10,000 homes.

The approval clears the way for Black Fork Wind Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of...

January 23, 2012 By Nino Marchetti

An investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) into possible fire hazards of the Chevy Volt’s battery pack has turned up no real issue, the government agency concluded as it winded things down on Friday. It had been investigating since late November, concluding things in a rather quick fashion for such an issue.

The NHTSA, in...

January 23, 2012 By Joshua S Hill

Work on the largest Hawai’ian solar project has now been launched by KIUC and REC Solar. The 12-megawatt solar project is to bbe located on Hawai’ian Homelands in Anahola on the northeast side of Kauai.

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January 21, 2012 By Tina Casey

The Department of Defense has been on a roll with new solar energy installations, but the real action is going on behind the scenes in laboratories where DoD is quietly supporting research into low cost, lightweight...

January 20, 2012 By Joshua S. Hill

Britain’s wind sector has reached 6 gigawatts of installed capacity, says trade association RenewableUK, creating enough energy to supply 3,354,893 homes with electricity.

The 6GW mark was reached with the completion of the Ormonde offshore wind farm, located off the coast of Cumbria, which is now outputting up to 120 megawatts, enough to power 67,000 homes.

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January 19, 2012 By Lauren Craig

25 is magic number in the solar industry. Why? Because it is the number of years that most crystalline silicon solar panel manufacturers warranty the power output of their panels. But what happens next? Although the panels can still technically generate power beyond this point, their power output begins to decrease significantly.

As the industry continues to grow over the coming decades, and today’s solar modules approach the end of their...

January 19, 2012 By Timothy Hurst

"Climate change is not a mirage," says Masdar Carbon Director

Masdar Carbon, one of the five business units of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi national clean energy conglomerate, announced yesterday in Abu Dhabi that it is moving ahead with a carbon capture and sequestration facility and capture nearly 1 million tons of CO2 annually at the Emirates Steel complex at Mussafah.

The CO₂ feed stream from the Emirates Steel plant will be compressed, dehydrated and then pumped through 50km of pipeline and...

January 19, 2012 By Andrew Burger

France’s Alstom and Scotland’s SSE Renewables on Jan. 17 announced the world’s ocean wave energy development project to date. The partners’ plan for the Costa Head Wave project calls for floating arrays of AWS Ocean Energy’s AWS-III wave turbines with total clean, renewable electricity generating capacity as high as 200-megawatts (MW) to be installed in waters ranging from 60-75 meters (198-247.5 feet) deep 5-kilometers off the coast of Orkney Main Island, according to ...

January 18, 2012 By Geoffrey Styles

A pair of items in today's Financial Times could signal a longer run of high oil prices, even if Europe were to slip into recession and economic growth elsewhere slow. The first article (registration required) reported that Saudi Arabia has raised its target oil price to $100 per barrel, up from the $75 level that...

January 18, 2012 By Pete Danko

California regulators have approved five power purchase agreements that could boost the state’s renewable energy capacity by 1,088 megawatts (MW) and produce 2,927 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy. The projects, two for wind and three for solar, are divided among the state’s biggest utilities – Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric – all of which are required to source 33 percent of their energy from...

January 18, 2012 By Lauren Craig

Energy storage with batteries has been gaining some ground lately as an aid in dealing with the variable nature of power produced by renewable energy technologies. Wind farms in Hawaii and West Virginia have incorporated battery banks to manage fluctuations in power production. More recently,...

January 16, 2012 By Susan Kraemer

As of of January 1st, 2012, China’s renewable energy projects will no longer be eligible for funding from the EU cap and trade market, through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that allows polluters in the EU to offset carbon emissions at home by building clean energy abroad.

So in December China rushed through 139 CDM-eligible projects in a last-ditch effort to gain the last of the funding for clean energy development before the cut-off date.

Under the European Trading System (ETS) cap and trade system,...

January 16, 2012 By Angeli Duffin

Imagine if every day when you arrived at work, you might or might not have electricity to power your laptop, which is at 33 percent battery charge. Definitely throws a wrench into your agenda. While you could call it a day and hope for the best tomorrow, the deadline still looms and you’re nowhere closer to getting done what needs to get done. In San Marco, in Kigali, Rwanda, the problem isn’t yet about laptops, but about powering the most basic of needs – lighting. This is a place where girls and young women have many tasks to...

January 16, 2012 By Christine Hertzog

Ben Franklin, the first American genius, achieved fame and notoriety for his electricity research, which included that famous kite-flying experiment.  But did you know that he first described the concept of treating energy efficiency as an energy resource?  He memorably stated “A penny saved is a penny earned,” back in the 1700s, but today he would be talking about negawatts and energy efficiency. 

The ...

January 15, 2012 By Lauren Craig

Migratory bat fatalities happen frequently at wind power plants, but the causes of deaths are not fully understood. Some research suggests that bats can’t react quickly enough to avoid fast-moving turbine blades, and that flying through varying air pressures created by the turbines can cause their internal organs to explode. Other research shows that plant...

January 14, 2012 By Lou Grinzo

My RSS news feeds are simply bursting at the seams with the news that scientists have figured out that by concentrating on non-CO2 greenhouse-effect emissions we can get a pretty big and speedy bang for the buck. Can we slow down the victory parade for just a moment and think about this?

A pretty representative article on the development comes from Andrew Freedman at Climate Central,...

January 13, 2012 By Dan Haugen

When is hydropower a renewable energy source?

The answer, at least from a policy perspective, depends on the state.

How hydropower is counted toward renewable electricity standards varies from state to state perhaps more than any other type of generation.

More than 30 states have passed renewable electricity standards, which require utilities to generate a percentage of their power from renewable sources.

Every state counts some...

January 12, 2012 By Dan Yurman

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted unanimously on Dec. 22 to approve the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design for use in the United  States. The action sets the stage for construction of two of these reactors at Southern's Vogtle site in Georgia and two more at Scana's V.C. Summer station in South Carolina....

January 12, 2012 By Pete Danko

With 2,305 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, wind power plants in eastern Oregon are bringing lots of clean power to the grid. And in Sherman County, where more than 40 percent of that capacity resides, the wind revenues are spinning out significant cash payments to every resident. But some folks in wind country have...

January 12, 2012 By John Farrell

Solar grid parity, when installing solar power will cost less than buying electricity from the grid, is considered the tipping point for solar power.  It’s also a tipping point in the electricity system, when millions of Americans can choose energy production and self-reliance over dependence on their electric utility.

But this simple concept conceals a great deal of complexity.  And given the stakes of solar grid...

January 11, 2012 By Pete Danko

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the fast-growing, brilliantly bright sunflower offers guidance on how best to gather solar energy. Researchers from MIT and RWTH Aachen University in Germany recognized that possibility, and they ran with it. They’re reporting now that by mimicking the spiral pattern of the sunflower in laying out the heliostats in...

Januray 11, 2012 By Harry Tournemille

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As a result of the December 31 presidential signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA; H.R. 1540), the Department of Defense, or DOD, is prohibited from funding any LEED Platinum or Gold certification of new buildings for the current fiscal year,...

January 10, 2012 By Susan Kraemer

In writing about yet another huge wind project being put out to bid by Morocco this morning, I started to look at California’s own renewable targets. It might seem odd to compare the two, but here is why the thought arose to compare the two. The wind project is part of a target for 2,000 MW from wind by 2020.

Morocco has a relatively small population of 31 million, or about the same as...

January 10, 2012 By Kristy Hessman

Forget Orlando. Miami could soon give tourists to the Sunshine State a run for their money once the new location of the Miami Science Center (MiaSci) opens. In the works for quite awhile now, the museum is slated for construction in late February. MiaSci will be centered around an indoor and outdoor “living core” of terrestrial and aquatic spaces, featuring a 600,000-gallon aquarium, a full dome 3-D planetarium and...

January 10, 2012 By Susan Kraemer

There is nothing a president can do to force Congress to pass climate bills, but President Obama has advanced more renewable energy than any other, anyway. The executive branch does have jurisdiction over granting energy leases on 245 million acres of public lands through the cabinet level Department of the Interior‘s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Obama has made...

January 10, 2012 By Barbara Finamore

Power plant emissions and air quality standards targeting some of the most harmful impacts of coal are coming under greater scrutiny starting this year in China. As of January 1, new thermal power plants have tougher restrictions on soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides (92% of the current fleet is coal-fired). Mercury will be controlled starting in 2015. Small particulate matter and ozone standards will take effect nationwide in 2016; Beijing announced just last week that it would publicly release...

January 7th, 2012 By Steve Duda

Volvo is set to unveil its brand new concept, a made-for-America plug-in hybrid version of the popular XC60 at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

The XC60 Plug-In Concept is essentially an alt-fuel version of Volvo’s best selling gasoline model, the XC60. That car, Volvo’s smallest SUV, while not a hulk compared to other gas-chugging models, is a...

January 6, 2012 By Joseph Baker

Exelon Corporation has announced that its power plant operations subsidiary Exelon Power has brought a wind farm online in Michigan.

The Michigan Wind 2 Project, which was developed and constructed by Exelon Power's wind division Exelon Wind, is made up of...

January 6, 2012 By Angeli Duffin

While the rest of the world is taking small steps to reduce energy consumption – changing to CFL light bulbs or Energy Star appliances, and installing a few solar panels – one Hong Kong-based architecture firm has taken it about 1,001 steps further. Arguing that zero-impact is just not enough, 10 Design created a concept for the Indigo Tower which actually interacts with its surrounding environment to purify urban air using passive solar and nanotechnology.

January 4, 2012 By Steve Duda

Utility companies love smart meters. Consumers, not so much. Not yet at least.

The new monitoring and meter technology, utilities argue, bolster an emerging smart grid infrastructure, saves energy, allows for careful planning and empowers end users to tailor their energy usage to times when power is...

January 4, 2012 By Tom Vandyck

Even as they become more common, small-scale wind turbines remain a source of dispute in the renewable energy community.

Proponents say small wind turbines are ready to be an indispensable part of any home or small business’s energy mix, while critics say they’re inherently expensive and inefficient.

Planted firmly on the supporters’ side are Tony Magnotta and Jay Nygard, the founders of Minnesota Wind Technology in St. Paul. They met by chance two years...

January 3, 2012 By Pete Danko

You can add green building advocates to the list of people who have a gripe with the National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law on New Year’s Eve (despite his own reservations). The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) funding bill has come under scathing criticism from civil liberties and human rights organizations for its provisions concerning the detention of military combatants, but...

Pennsylvania has one year of experience with deregulation of its electricity markets.  Residential, commercial, and industrial customers can now switch to alternative electricity suppliers in a quest to manage the generation and transmission costs on their electricity bills.  With some suppliers, they can even get energy from renewable sources to “green up” their electricity. 

My mother lives in a retirement community in Pennsylvania, and I was there for the holidays.  She handed me a stack of promotional...

January 2, 2012 by Christopher DeMorro

It doesn’t come as much surprise — this Congress has set the record for its anti-environmental efforts — but if you haven’t heard, Congress has let three tax credits for electric vehicles expire… to “save the government” money, presumably (as if keeping us addicted to...

January 1, 2012 By Kristy Hessman

While great strides are being made to recycle obsolete electronics, often called e-waste, the amount expected to be thrown away is still expected to double in the next 15 years. That’s the latest news from a ...