The world's best thinkers on energy and climate
The Virginia General Assembly wraps up its 2017 session on Saturday, February 25. As usual, the results are a mixed bag for energy. On the plus side is the promise of a new solar purchase option for customers. On the downside, utility opposition to energy efficiency and distributed generation meant a lot of worthwhile initiatives never made it out of subcommittee. Putting it into perspective, it could have been worse. For clean energy … [Read more...]
Charles Hendry's report into the exciting Swansea Lagoon has given it the thumbs up. The former energy minister concludes: "I started this process with interest but sceptical. The more evidence I have seen, the more persuaded I have become that tidal lagoons do have an important role to play and there should be a government strategy in place to help this happen." But it is not a cheap source of power. It has enemies. Among them is Jonathan … [Read more...]
An estimated 62,500 power plants are operating around the world, with a total installed generating capacity of more than 6,000 gigawatts (GW) in 2015. The nine largest operating power plants in the world by capacity are all hydroelectric power plants. Four of the world’s ten largest power plants are located in China, and all four of those plants began operating in the past 13 years. The world’s largest dam, Three Gorges, is located … [Read more...]
An increasing number of corporations are directly buying (or building) their own clean electricity. For decades most Fortune 1000 companies did little more than try to manage costs as they bought electricity and fuel from the existing marketplace. This model of simply relying on the existing marketplace to meet energy needs has, however, suddenly become outdated. More and more companies are realizing the strategic advantages of sourcing renewable … [Read more...]
Brazil generates the third-highest amount of electricity in the Americas, behind only the United States and Canada. Hydroelectricity provides more than 70% of Brazil's generation. During the Olympic Games, electricity demand in the host city of Rio de Janeiro has risen from an influx of tourists, athletes, and event staff. Uncertainty over water supply has led to operational challenges for local utilities in Brazil. Recently, … [Read more...]
The Qattara Depression is a large low-lying area in the desert of north-west Egypt. Its lowest point is 133 meters below sea level. If the depression were flooded to sea level, the lake formed would cover nearly 20,000 km² -- comparable to Lake Ontario. It would come within 55 km of the Mediterranean coast of Egypt near El Alamein. Ever since the depression was first mapped by the British after the First World War, there have been proposals to … [Read more...]
The biggest constraint to renewable energy growth in the US is the availability of tax equity to support project investment. There is not nearly as much tax equity investment as is needed to support financing and building all of the renewable energy projects in development -- as a result the pace of project financing and construction is being severely constrained. Many new investors will begin to enter this tax equity investment space in pursuit … [Read more...]
In 2016, nearly 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity generating capacity is expected to come online from dams that did not previously have electric generating units, commonly referred to as nonpowered dams (NPDs). NPD capacity additions make up 92% of the 320 MW of planned hydroelectric capacity for 2016. Expected capacity additions at NPDs in 2016 are large compared to recent NPD additions, which totaled 126 megawatts (MW) over 2006–15, but … [Read more...]
The western United States, particularly California, has experienced drought over the past several years, but there are now signs of improvement. Since June 2013, most of California has been in a severe, extreme, or exceptional drought, the worst three drought designations as determined by the U.S. Drought Monitor. By mid-2014, nearly 60% of the state was in the exceptional drought category, and California's governor had declared a drought … [Read more...]
As clean, renewable energy has grown by leaps and bounds (multiple reports argue renewables will be the fastest-growing energy sector for years to come), households and utility plants have more choices than ever about how to power their homes, businesses and communities. Each type of energy comes with its own sets of pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks of some of the most popular and talked about energy sources that can … [Read more...]
The Center for the New Energy Economy (an energy policy think tank headed by Colorado’s former Governor Bill Ritter, Jr.), in partnership with the Nature Conservancy, launched a new state energy policy tool. The policy tool is called the State Policy Opportunity Tracker (SPOT) and provides a “gap analysis” of state energy policy best practices to identify the greatest opportunities for states to advance their energy policy. You can find the SPOT … [Read more...]
Mobilizing oxygen atoms from the crystal surface of a perovskite oxide electrode creates a shortcut-like pathway with an exceptionally low energy barrier to forming oxygen gas in water-splitting reactions, researchers at MIT, the Skoltech Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas at Austin report in a newly published paper. They found that strontium cobaltite (SrCoO2.7) exhibits highly active water electrolysis, much faster than the … [Read more...]
The Investment Board Nepal (IBN) approved China’s CWE Investment Corporation, a subsidiary of Three Gorges Company on April 2015. The CWE Corp will form a joint venture with Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for the development of West Seti Project. The hydro-project is storage-based with a capacity of 750 MW and costs $1.6 billion. This will be the biggest foreign investment project in Nepal’s history.The West Seti project was envisioned … [Read more...]
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