Carbon and De-carbonization

Buoyed by low prices, environmental benefits and thousands of newly created jobs, the push to produce more natural gas in the U.S. is reaching its stride thanks largely to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. But do we understand the implications, some of which might negate the environmental gains? The answer to many objective analysts is: not yet.[read more]

After two weeks of largely fruitless climate negotiations at the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn/Germany, the world is one step closer to miss the overarching target of international climate policy: limiting the mean temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.[read more]

Capacity Markets/shutterstock

There is a difference between energy and capacity, and power plants are compensated for both because both are important to maintaining the electrical system in different ways.[read more]

Examining Nuclear Energy and Fossil Fuels

A federal appeals court ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to perform more thorough evaluations in support of its new Waste Confidence Rule, particularly with respect to the potential impacts of long-term storage of spent fuel at plant sites.[read more]

Logging and Renewable Energy

Back in 2011, the federal Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency commissioned the Australian Energy Market Operator to investigate two future scenarios in which the National Electricity Market was fuelled entirely by renewables.[read more]

natural gas/shutterstock

There are opportunities beyond electricity generation – in buildings, manufacturing and transportation – where expanded natural gas use could help reduce emissions in the near and medium term.[read more]

fossil fuels/shutterstock

38 of the ministers who voted against the amendment to set a decarbonisation target for 2030 last week in the House of Commons have received support from, or are in some way connected to, the fossil fuel industry.[read more]

US-China relations

President Obama and President Xi announced a breakthrough in bilateral cooperation on climate change, by agreeing to work together on a phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons.[read more]

energy poverty

Providing access to clean fuel and electricity is the foundation that enables improvements and developments in health, education and business and provides the key to leaving poverty behind.[read more]

global carbon market

At the very end of May Carbon Expo was held in Barcelona. There were quite a few exhibitors at the Expo hoping for life in the project mechanism market of the current “global carbon market.”[read more]

fighter fuel?

National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced a switchgrass-based jet biofuel process that is expected to involve 95 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional jet fuel production.[read more]

EV emissions

It’s time to bust this thing wide open. "Electric cars aren’t green" is a great bit of counter-intuitive headline bait, but it’s bad maths.[read more]

renewable energy in Australia

Australia may be one of the most coal-dependent economies in the world, but a new analysis of government data compiled finds Australia on track to not only hit 22% renewables by 2020, but an unprecedented 51% of all electricity by 2050.[read more]

light truck cleantech?

 

An innovative retrofit for medium-duty trucks (such as delivery trucks and garbage trucks) could improve fuel efficiency and reduce smog and particle emissions by 90 percent.[read more]

lawn as metaphor for innovation?

Think of energy innovation policy as a group of people mowing an Earth-sized, overgrown lawn. It is the problem we’re trying to collectively address and we’re implementing a coordinated set of policy solutions to do so.[read more]