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Alternative Energy

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

February 3, 2012 by Gil Friend
with 171 views
1

Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It's a rugged mix of bad news and good.) Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence -- more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big... [read more]

Painkillers – the Real Drivers of Innovation for the Electricity Value Chain

February 2, 2012 by Christine Hertzog
with 154 views
0

One of the largest US-based industry conferences for electricity, gas, and water utilities just wrapped up in San Antonio, Texas.  The entire value chain for electricity was well-represented there – you could find products for generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption of electricity.  These products modernize the... [read more]

Super Hot Salt: The Newest Energy Storage Innovation?

January 31, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 634 views
1

 Policymakers and energy industry experts often talk about clean energy as though it isn’t reliable. In fact, while an MIT study recently found the existing grid would probably be up to the challenge of absorbing clean energy, intermittency does present a real challenge that renewables must address to get to high levels of... [read more]

ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit Preview

January 26, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 144 views
0

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... [read more]

Advanced biofuels could create millions of jobs while greening the economy

January 26, 2012 by Annegrethe Jakobsen
with 346 views
1

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance - launched during World Economic Forum at Davos - estimates the socioeconomic prospects of deploying advanced biofuels in eight of the highest agricultural-producing regions in the world, i.e. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, EU-27, India, Mexico and the USA.The report was commissioned... [read more]

The Future of Global Climate Policy: Clean Energy Innovation Imperative

January 25, 2012 by Jesse Jenkins
with 385 views
5

It is time to take stock of our current climate trajectory, and consider what it means for climate policy. In Part 1 of this week long series, we argued that our current climate trajectory means we must 1) redouble efforts to reduce CO2 emissions as quickly as possible, and 2) we must proactively build resilience to the uncertain impacts... [read more]

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Are Hybrid Ribbons the Future of Renewables?

January 24, 2012 by George Green
with 386 views
0

  Weather based renewables tend to be, by their nature, unpredictable. Your solar panel works most efficiently when there are clear skies and no clouds, while wind power clearly needs wind. Anything based on rain requires a good downpour. This means that, although you can store energy in batteries for later, these renewables are... [read more]

America's First Solar Power Tower

January 23, 2012 by Nino Marchetti
with 714 views
3

On the EarthTechling Utterly Cool Projects Scale™, the EnviroMission Solar Tower project might be unrivaled. More than 2,600 feet tall, with a mile-in-diameter greenhouse canopy at its base creating hot air that is sucked up into the tower, spinning electricity-creating turbines along the way – it’s like something a kid would build in... [read more]

How Bainbridge Island Cut Peak Power Consumption

January 23, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 309 views
0

The 23,000 citizens of Bainbridge Island in Washington State are showing how a combination of transparent price signals, online social networking and old fashioned community organizing can make a big difference in reducing energy consumption. Located in Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island has been a major energy hog — with residents consuming... [read more]

Applying Innovation to Oil & Gas

January 23, 2012 by Geoffrey Styles
with 361 views
3

This Friday at noon Eastern Time I'll be participating in a webinar on The Energy Collective covering the application of innovation to the emissions from oil and natural gas. The topic is timely, not just because of the current debate over the fate of the Keystone Pipeline, but because despite the growing importance of renewable energy,... [read more]

Thermoelectric Materials Advance Could Drop the Cost of Waste-Heat Harvesting

January 22, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 247 views
0

New research could lead to more cost-effective materials for using waste heat for electricity and cooling – opening up innovation in a new class of waste heat conversion technologies. High-efficiency thermoelectric materials – technologies that allow excess heat to be converted to electricity, and electricity to be converted into... [read more]

A Look Forward to 2012 from Carbon War Room

January 10, 2012 by Jigar Shah
with 186 views
0

Dear friends, colleagues, and fearless change-makers,The Carbon War Room had a very busy and productive 2011 which would not have been possible without all your support. As we enter 2012, we also acknowledge strong headwinds in the form of an embattled global deal, low carbon prices, and increased carbon emissions even during the... [read more]

Clean Energy Fuels Gets $150M in Investment + Energy News Roundup

December 30, 2011 by Benjamin Lack
with 212 views
0

Clean Energy Fuels gets $150M in investmentClean Energy Fuels Corp., a leading provider of natural gas fuel for transportation in North America, said it has received $150 million from investors, including Boone Pickens. The investments resulted from the exercise of Mr. Pickens’ warrants to purchase 15 million shares of the company’s... [read more]

Ushering in a Hydrogen Economy

December 15, 2011 by Charles Arthur
with 760 views
6

Making It interview with Dr. Mustafa HatipoÄźlu, managing director of the International Centre for Hydrogen Energy Technologies (ICHET), a UNIDO project supported by the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. [read more]

Oil Companies Invest in Fossil Fuels Fifty Times More Than In Alternatives

December 14, 2011 by Simon Mui
with 275 views
0

Trend would be shifted with California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard NRDC has long supported efforts by companies to invest in cleaner technologies. We have started tracking oil industry investments in renewable fuels such as advanced biofuels, down to the company level. In a new analysis, NRDC compares those investments to traditional... [read more]