Finance

solar energy in UK/shutterstock

In last week’s Guardian Jeremy Leggett had a post that seems to argue that solar energy is the UK’s best option for keeping the lights on. Well, how about solar?[read more]

bound by oil prices?

So, when gas prices go up, we all suffer and our economy lags. What we really need are more choices to break the iron-clad grip that oil prices have on our lives and our economy.[read more]

new AES energy storage

AES’s new software platform isn’t the first to address the energy storage and energy markets nexus. Projects around the globe are testing value propositions to be derived from storage, as stand-alone or linked to renewable power.[read more]

algae biofuel R&D

ExxonMobil has been quietly researching algae biofuel in partnership with California-based Synthetic Genomics Inc. for the past four years, and it just announced a new co-funding agreement last week.[read more]

wind energy and the grid

Wind only sets the market price if it is the most expensive resource on the system, and that almost never happens because wind has a zero fuel cost. If wind is setting the price, everything else in the area has been turned off.[read more]

German solar production

This idea, that you build wind farms where it is windy and solar panels where it is sunny is a curiously controversial one. Some would even lobby accusations of you being “anti-renewables” if you put it forward.[read more]

oil economics at the pump

The recent growth in U.S. production has helped reduce the price of Brent crude, a leading global benchmark, by about $25 a barrel. That’s big, because the cost of crude oil is the single biggest factor in the price of gasoline.[read more]

coal-fired plants

Now, the inexorable growth of coal in China in the last decade is often news even to people who make some kind of living writing about energy, but could it possibly be slowing down? And could wind be growing faster than coal?[read more]

climate change future?

Terrorism seems to be the only actionable trigger in our leaders' minds. Perhaps we need to brand Mother Nature a terrorist to provoke action on climate change?[read more]

nuclear energy/shutterstock

Attempts to impose a policy of not selling to any country that will not agree to permanently forgo domestic nuclear fuel production will lock US-based suppliers out of the most important energy technology in the world.[read more]

South Korean carbon emissions

With roughly 18 months until launch, South Korea appears ready to create the world’s most ambitious cap and trade market, with the highest global price on carbon.[read more]

new DOE Secretary Moniz

The budget proposal for FY2014 would give Moniz a solid start in advancing the low-carbon economy, by increasing funding for renewable energy, advanced vehicle research and development, and energy efficiency programs.[read more]

jobs multiplier effect?

LNG exports are projected to produce annual increases in revenue to federal, state and local governments of between $6.4 billion to $9.3 billion in the base scenario to $27.9 billion to $40.4 billion in the high-export scenario by 2035.[read more]

North American Young Generations in Nuclear group

It will take me several days to digest all of the things I learned and heard at the Nuclear Energy Assembly, both from the podium and in the valuable “hallway conversations.”[read more]

overpopulation/shutterstock

We seem to be headed for collapse, because humans’ growth is so far out of line in relationship to that of other species. In addition, there are many other limits, including the cost of oil extraction and availability of fresh water.[read more]