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Alberta Tar Sands

Time for a tar sands reality check.Here's the top 10 reasons Canada needs to rethink their unrelenting desire to expand tar sands operations.[read more]

“America is too dependent on foreign oil” is a frequent refrain of American politicians and policymakers with an agenda. Now, it seems possible that the immense new discoveries of American shale gas and its liquid twin “tight oil” may be able to displace these imports. But is this realistic?[read more]

ethanol/shutterstock

Texas Rep. Pete Olson, along with more than a dozen cosponsors reintroduced legislation this week that would permit natural gas-based ethanol to compete with corn-based ethanol for a federal biofuels mandate.[read more]

energy investment/shutterstock

There are cleantech markets that add up to trillions of dollars of revenue opportunity per year that are practically screaming out to be overtaken by new, more efficient technologies and market processes.[read more]

rendering of Belo Monte Dam

Large hydropower projects are the bedrock of clean energy production, by virtue of their sheer size and reliance upon natural rainfall. But climate change's effects on rain patterns could affect new hydropower projects.[read more]

DOE and manufacturing

Originally enacted in 2007 and reauthorized in 2010, this legislation directly supports science and technology institutions that underpin U.S. innovation, particularly in clean energy.[read more]

what of future energy needs?

 

If carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are to stop increasing, then nearly all of oue future energy consumption must come from technologies that produce zero emissions.[read more]

desertification

Drought and desertification have become increasingly pressing problems for a growing number of countries. The UN estimates land degradation costs between 3-5 percent of global agricultural Gross Domestic Production.[read more]

Paris, city of (smart) lights?

Silver Spring Networks, the smart grid networking company that wants to expand its reach to streetlights, traffic signals and other “smart city” devices, will get a chance to try it out in a city famous for its lights, Paris.[read more]

Gas vs. Ethanol

While it’s true that on a gallon-to-gallon basis ethanol historically has been cheaper than gasoline, ethanol contains far less energy than gasoline and therefore has cost consumers more to travel the same distance.[read more]

ocean temperatures/shutterstock

The average amount of energy the ocean absorbed each year over the period 1993 to 2008 was enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs for each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.[read more]

electric car/shutterstock

Even if there is enough lithium to displace the 1 billion internal combustion engine cars that now pollute the earth with electric cars, it is the electronic waste problem that should dominate the question.[read more]

wind farm/shutterstock

How many people support renewables or nuclear energy, or for that matter fracking? A closer to look at polls shows that support numbers should be treated with caution.[read more]

wind energy in Iowa

When Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Energy announced the new investment, it gave full credit to the extension of the production tax credit for enabling it to expand its wind generating capacity.[read more]

women in the wind energy industry

Women are under-represented in wind and the other renewable energy industries, according to Kristen Graf, Executive Director of Women of Wind Energy.[read more]

fat for energy?

Oil and fat accumulating under the streets of London is apparently causing a bit of an issue. However, the city is going to burn these fatbergs in order to create electricity — about 130 GWh of electricity per year.[read more]

solar vs nuclear energy costs

Germany’s solar program will generate electricity at quadruple the cost of one of the most expensive nuclear power plants in the world, raising serious questions about a renewable energy strategy widely heralded as a global model.[read more]

Nuclear energy costs

 

On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Times published a lengthy piece that argues the two reactor installation proposed for Levy County, Florida is a more expensive option than a natural gas power plant.[read more]

natural gas/shutterstock

Natural gas is a fuel for electricity generation that serves as a bridge to a Smart Grid that fully integrates renewables and energy storage into the energy portfolio.[read more]

solar energy investment

The solar energy investment attractiveness of a country is based on many factors. Some important ones are the overall investment attractiveness of a country, solar policies in the country, and natural solar power potential.[read more]

Robert Gubbins / Shutterstock.com

With the EV industry reeling from grim news regarding Coda’s bankruptcy announcement and Fisker Automotive’s apparent demise, Tesla Motors is basking in a trifecta of great news stories that emerged from their camp.[read more]

RGGI's new cap rules

RGGI’s new cap not only falls short of creating real price pressures due to its closeness to baseline emissions, its excessive compensatory measures, and its failure to deal with leakage, but also runs the risk of locking in emissions.[read more]

LNG tanker

President Obama is preparing to decide how much liquified natural gas (LNG) from the the U.S. boom in shale natural gas production it makes sense to export. Economically and geopolitically a lot hangs in the balance.[read more]

Bill McKibben/wikimedia commons

Munich getting half of its energy from solar panels is quite simply impossible, for the simple reason that the majority of energy consumption is not in the form of electricity.[read more]

wind energy/shutterstock

I wanted to find a means of estimating the cost of a one million mega watt (Mgw) wind generator and compare that to the cost of one million Mgw of nuclear generation capacity.[read more]

rising carbon costs/shutterstock

If the prospect of serious limits on greenhouse gas emissions translates into a real risk of stranded assets for fossil fuel companies, carbon may become the next housing bubble.[read more]

fracking and water

David Biello over at Scientific American had a story in 2011 that looked at research establishing a link between methane contamination in well water and nearby hydraulic fracturing of shale rock.[read more]

proposed Spectra natural gas pipeline

A new pipeline promises new natural gas supplies for New York City. Some tout the economic and environmental benefits that will come from it. Others decry the potential problems it brings.[read more]

DOE Asst. Secretary of EERE David Danielson

Buried in the President’s FY2014 budget proposal is an interesting reform that could impact energy innovation without relying on Congress for any new – and hard to come by – federal investments.[read more]

renewable energy forecasting

Breakthrough renewable energy forecasting technologies may be two years away from revolutionizing the efficiency of wind and solar generation on America’s grid.[read more]