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326 consecutive months of above average global temperatures

May 25, 2012 by Gernot Wagner
with 5 views
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Paul Volcker may have $3 billion of “I told you so” J.P. Morgan Chase losses to point to. Al Gore has 326 months, and counting. Somehow I doubt either feels gleeful, although I wouldn’t blame them:April was the 326th month in a row the global temperature was above average when compared with the 20th century:The last time the globe had a... [read more]

Brazil's first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant

May 24, 2012 by Doris de Guzman
with 128 views
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Cellulosic biomass technology developer GraalBio is planning to help build Brazil's biorefinery industry with a R$300m ($146m) investment of a new 22m gallons/year cellulosic ethanol plant to be constructed in Alagoas using sugarcane bagasse and straw for initial feedstock.GraalBio is also developing a new type of cost-competitive... [read more]

Limits We are Reaching – Oil, Debt, and Others

May 24, 2012 by Gail Tverberg
with 184 views
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The world is clearly reaching many limits. From peak oil to debt crises, limits seem to be dominating the headlines. What other limits are the human and natural systems reaching now? [read more]

Can the US Military Afford More Biofuels?

May 24, 2012 by Geoffrey Styles
with 129 views
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Last week the US House of Representatives passed the fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act by a wide, bi-partisan margin. It included two controversial provisions relating to energy that will presumably be debated when the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up the bill this week.  Sections 313 and 314 would exempt the... [read more]

Captured CO2 + Geothermal = Ultra-Clean Power

May 24, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 202 views
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image via Shutterstock

In a novel combination of carbon sequestration used in conjunction with geothermal power production, a South Dakota geothermal firm will use sequestered carbon dioxide instead of geothermal fluids to produce geothermal power.Rapid City-based Heat Mining Company can use the carbon dioxide captured in carbon capture and... [read more]

Gregory Jaczko’s Parting Message: Fukushima Was “A Wake-Up Call”

May 24, 2012 by Mason Inman
with 159 views
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Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced his resignation this week, but he is still making pointed comments about the need to strengthen regulations to ensure nuclear power plants are safer.“I think the Fukushima event was a wake-up call, hopefully for everyone,” Jaczko said in a news conference today... [read more]

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Audio Archive: Avoiding the Clean Tech Crash

May 23, 2012 by Henry Spethmann
with 78 views
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Avoiding the Clean Tech Crash:Can Renewable Energy Achieve Subsidy Independence? Federal clean tech funding is poised to decline 75 percent by 2014 compared to 2009, according to a recent report from a diverse group of think tanks titled "Beyond Boom and Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence". The coming expiration... [read more]

Startup Act 2.0 Even Better Than 1.0

May 23, 2012 by Clifton Yin
with 162 views
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Yesterday, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Mark Warner (D-VA) unveiled the Startup Act 2.0, bipartisan legislation that builds on the Startup Act introduced by Senators Moran and Warner last December. The new variant – which the Senators describe at length in a Politico piece – includes key... [read more]

New Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Proliferation.

May 23, 2012 by Charles Barton
with 275 views
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During World War II the United States spent a large amount of money on developing nuclear technology. Much of that investment went into industrial systems designed to separate U-235 from U-238, or to transform U-238 into Pu-239. Here such systems were built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, My childhood hometown. The Uranium separation... [read more]

The new Energy Bill is everything the UK doesn't want

May 23, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 117 views
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The draft Energy Bill, published today, will do nothing to help energy efficiency or make it easier for new renewable energy companies to enter the market place. It is too complicated, biased towards the Big Six, gas and nuclear, and still contains many uncertainties. Even the Institute of Directors thinks so. Corin Taylor, its Senior... [read more]

Stop-Gap Energy vs. Stable Energy

May 23, 2012 by Mark Green
with 80 views
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Scroll down a bit in this wrap-up of last weekend’s G8 Summit from The Hill newspaper, and you’ll see that the president and other G8 leaders hinted that they might ask for a draw on the world’s oil reserves to offset disruptions in supply from Iran. Their statement:“There have been increasing disruptions in the supply of oil to the... [read more]

Bioenergy From Cleared Forests A Climate Killer

May 23, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 244 views
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What are the climate-change ramifications of clearing away forests? In a finding that could influence how climatologists forecast the pace of global warming – and that strike a blow against some forms of bioenergy – UC Davis researchers say it all depends on what’s done with the wood taken out of the forests.Writing in the journal Nature... [read more]

Report Shows Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline Will Raise Gas Prices and Cut Midwest Oil Supplies

May 23, 2012 by Rocky Kistner
with 179 views
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Despite all the industry hype over jobs and purported energy security benefits from building the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline—benefits a Brooklyn bridge-builder could propose—a new report shows the mammoth Canadian tar sands pipeline will cut the amount of gasoline produced in the U.S. and... [read more]

EV Scooter Dials Down Power, Range For Value

May 22, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 192 views
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High-performance electric vehicles (EV) generally grab the headlines, since the idea of an EV going fast is still enough of a surprise that the people tend to sit up and take notice when one comes along.Even so, while souped-up EVs stir up plenty of online chatter this doesn’t often translate to sales. Largely because making a high-... [read more]

Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From

May 22, 2012 by Breakthrough Institute
with 295 views
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The ongoing shale gas boom has expanded domestic energy production, pushed wholesale electricity prices to record lows, and accelerated the closure of America's aging coal plant fleet, lowering national power-sector carbon emissions. This revolution in natural gas -- unleashed by a flood of recently accessible shale gas reserves, once... [read more]