Renewable Energy

The American Wind Energy Association is lobbying hard for congress to extend the production tax credit to help support the wind industry so that thousands of jobs could be saved or created through the end of 2016.

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In the building industry, designers and builders must balance a client’s desire for expansive outdoor views with the need to minimize solar heat gain and loss.  Often, these desires are not well balanced and solar heat is allowed to penetrate through windowpanes and into a space.  

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Last week the solar industry finally generated good news. Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings agreed to buy First Solar’s Topaz solar farm, a 550-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm currently being built in Southern California (construction began last month and is set to finish by early 2015). The financial details of the purchase of the plant were [...]

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Something has to cancel out the environmental effects of those $399 sofas and $1.49 place mats, so IKEA is investing more and more in solar.

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Wind power is growing quickly in some midwestern states and a company called Clean Line Energy is moving just as fast to take advantage of the excess capacity in this rapidly expanding energy sector. Last week, Clean Line won approval for its Grain Belt Express Clean Line, LLC affiliate to operate as a utility. That [...]

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As the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra scrambled to find bidders for the company’s assets, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s investigates the true cause of Solyndra’s untimely demise.

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As we seek to discover new methods of generating and harnessing energy, there is one source that is worth discussing: the human body.

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Last week we released Sustainable Industries’ new microsite, the 2012 Sustainable Energy Guide. The guide contains an overview of everything an Operations or Facilities Manager needs to get started on the road to sustainability. We get a lot of questions about transitioning to renewable energy and purchasing carbon offsets and you’ll find updated information about [...]

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By: Sarah Backhouse Future360 travels to New Orleans, Louisiana to meet actor and star of Treme, Wendell Pierce. Pierce is on a mission to rebuild Pontchartrain Park using renewable energy and clean technology.

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A sense of optimism pervaded the atmosphere in Durban on the penultimate day and final morning of the UNFCCC’s 17th annual climate change treaty talks, according to one solar industry observer. Rumor was that an agreement to commit to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol and also extend it beyond its 2020 expiration date were within reach.

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Back in May, I wrote about GE’s new FlexEfficiency 50 power generation technology. This groundbreaking system really extends the state of the art with a high efficiency combined-cycle gas turbine system that has breakthrough efficiency and agility. The agility, which is the ability of the system to quickly respond to changes in demand, makes it [...]

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The United States Navy will use a biofuel blend to fuel both aircraft and warship during a Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, the globe’s largest naval war games, next year near Hawaii.

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With stimulus initiatives in the form of soft loans, cash incentives, tax credits  and grants expiring, the U.S. energy sector must find new investors and new tax-based equity financing structures over the next 18 months or risk a sharp decline in new project builds, according to a report by the specialist research firm Bloomberg New [...]

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“For an intense week we listened and discussed perspectives on the difficult global context for sustainability,” said Gonen Sagy. Gonen is an alumnus of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the premier environmental education and research program in the Middle East.

The Institute is preparing future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges as bridges of understanding between people. Located at Kibbutz Ketura in the southern Negev region of Israel, it has a student body comprised of Jordanians, Palestinians, Israelis, and others from around the world, and a curriculum based on “nature knows no borders.”

The environment is a tool to stimulate, teach, and maintain effective cross-cultural communication and reconciliation. Arava generates capacity-building for conciliation and cooperation in the Middle East, in order to transcend political boundaries and achieve environmental change.

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Global demand for rare earth minerals will increase over seven percent a year, but now various reports suggest that prices for these materials will start trending downward.

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SLDI Responds to Presidio Students’ open letter to the David and Lucille Packard Foundation

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This week in Doha, Qatar, over 12,000 attendees will gather for the triennial World Petroleum Congress (WPC), which promises to be carbon neutral.

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By: Paul SanGiorgio Have we hit peak oil? How long can we rely on cheap coal for power generation? Is hydro-fracking worth the environmental impact? To each of these pressing and controversial questions, Nobel-prize winner and Stanford physics professor Robert Laughlin would respond that, in the long run, what’s the difference? Powering the Future: How [...]

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Walmart is installing one of Louisiana’s largest solar projects in a partnership with Cleco Power in the town of Many.

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Geothermal power’s grown at a much slower rate than other forms of renewable energy over the past decade. That’s not due to a lack of resource potential, however. Recent studies have shown just how abundant geothermal resources are in many parts of the world. Growth rates are expected to be high in Kenya, Iceland, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, while activity’s also ramping up in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines.

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The world’s first wind power consumer label, WindMade was launched on November 18th at an event hosted by WindMade and the UN Global Compact in New York. WindMade allows participating companies, which includes include Bloomberg, LEGO Group, and Motorola Mobility, to let consumers know how much wind power is used overall as part of their [...]

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Carl Pope, the long-time Executive Director of the Sierra Club announced last week that he would be stepping down as Chairman of the organization next year. This follows his move last year, to turn over the Executive Director’s reins to Michael Brune. Pope’s decisions in recent years to seek cooperative action with corporations, and in [...]

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How can the US government possibly consider taxing carbon when they’re still subsidizing oil? Isn’t this an obvious contradiction?

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A tour of Panasonic’s “Ene-Farm” outside of Osaka gives a clue about Japan’s current and future economic transformation. Fuel cells will be part of Japan’s future growth.

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A report released earlier this week by The Analysis Group, entitled “The Economic Impacts of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on Ten Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States,” tracked the dollars collected and spent by the program over its first three years of existence. The report finds that the program, despite continuous criticism from conservatives as being burdensome and costly, added a net value of $1.6 billion, to the ten member states, or roughly, $33 per person.

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The Green Energy Park is where energy storage, solar power and smart grid technologies will provide the next level of not only innovation, but revenue streams as well.

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During the last part of the 19th century cattle ranchers and farmers battled for supremacy in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Farmers won the battle, and farming has been entrenched in the Valley’s fertile soil ever since. Today another battle is being waged, and this time it is between farmers and those who want to develop [...]

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Let’s play the word association game. I’ll start with ‘solar energy’ – what’s the first thing you think of? Is it ‘the energy of the future’ or ‘bankruptcy’ or maybe even ‘waste of American taxpayers’ money’? Until not too long ago, the answer would be probably be the former rather than the latter. Yet, in [...]

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Times remain hard across the country, but solar power is a bright spot in Tennessee’s economy. The Volunteer State is Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie polysilicon and Sharp Solar plants, and solar power projects are cropping up around the Tennessee Valley despite the state’s lack of a Renewable Power Standards (RPS).

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This post outlines key considerations for property owners to evaluate when leasing their land for renewable energy development. There are pros and cons to leasing your property to a renewable energy developer and/or owner to earn revenue. It is important to understand how to navigate the complexities of benefits and risks when dealing with newly emerging renewable energy development land leases.

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