Despite price hikes, energy supply in the UK is increasingly precarious. Are brownouts in the future?

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The World Energy Council and Bloomberg New Energy Finance are combining forces on a comprehensive energy cost report.

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Few years ago a CSR report released by an oil company sounded like an oxymoron. Even later on when these reports have become more common, it still looked to many people as a greenwashing attempt. After all, can a company really show it cares about the environment and stakeholders when its core business is oil production? I was hoping Chevron’s 2011 CSR report would prove this assumption to be wrong and that the “bad guys try to be better.” Is it too much to ask in 2012? Apparently yes, although to be honest, there is no simple answer of Yes or No to this question. While it does look that Chevron is making some progress, these are mostly baby steps, and when you’re one of the largest oil companies in the world baby steps might not be enough.

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Last August, I posted an article on Thorium reactors, a form of nuclear power that supposedly overcomes many of the concerns associated with traditional nukes. Despite my admittedly anti-nuclear bias, I had heard enough good things about this technology to want to learn more and share what I learned. The technology has attracted an enthusiastic following, many of who feel that this is the best of all currently available alternatives.

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CSRHub launches fracking as a new special issue. This allows users to filter for companies within the CSRHub data set that participate in fracking.

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The top eleven remarkable moments at the Wall Street Journal’s Eco:nomics Conference

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Wind and solar energy are currently prohibitively expensive to store. Environmental and electrical engineers have made recent developments towards making green energy a more integral part of the grid.

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Bill Gates is dedicating an increasing amount of time and resources in pursuit of clean energy solutions. His goal is to get the world’s emissions to zero within 75 years.

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One of the main stories the New York Times ran on its front page on Friday was on how the United States is getting closer to becoming independent from foreign energy sources. Another story the newspaper ran was on Obama’s support for the southern leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Both articles show how energy independence became extremely connected and depended on the rise of domestic gas and oil production.

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Sanergy aims to sell low-cost toilets to microenterprise entrepreneurs who will then collect the waste and bring it to central processing areas, where it will be broken down for energy and fertilizer.

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While smart buildings and campuses show amazing results due to asset management and building improvements that impact energy use, spatial planning and inhabitant safety, smart cities go beyond structural enhancements to impacting urban planning, environment, energy and water, transportation, education, health, public safety and government and agency administration.

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“Is the emergence of shale gas a positive or negative development with respect to sustainability?” This was one of the most interesting questions discussed on one of the panels at KPMG’s Global Summit last week in New York. Given the growth of both interest and dispute around shale gas, the question was basically if shale gas is a bridge to a sustainable future or a bridge to nowhere.

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With few exceptions, water is necessary to generate and distribute energy. In turn, water can’t be collected, purified and transported without energy. A term has been coined to describe the relationship: the Energy-Water Nexus.

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Bloomberg recently reported that India’s clean tech investments, “reached $10.3bn in 2011, some 52 percent higher than the $6.8bn invested in 2010. This was the highest growth figure of any significant economy in the world. There is plenty of room for further expansion – in 2011, India accounted for 4 percent of global investment in clean energy.” [...]

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When MIT spends three years studying something, it’s probably worthwhile to pay close attention to the results. In this case the university is calling for a new framework for spurring innovation in how energy is produced, delivered and used. Basically put, think regionally for solutions because the federal government is “structurally unable” to be the [...]

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This article highlights the amount of embedded energy in food waste while exploring ways to tackle America’s dual problem of hunger and clean energy.

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The legal battles surrounding the Deepwater Horizon 2010 drilling disaster promise to be just as messy—and more lengthy—than the spill incident itself. The latest shots in this seemingly neverending exercise in passing the buck were fired last month when oil giant BP went to court in New Orleans claiming that US contractor Halliburton (yes, that Halliburton) [...]

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In our increasingly mobile life, the need for technology to make things even easier has become almost mandatory. Our mobile devices like cell phone, laptop, Kindle, iPad, iPod, iPhone, Blackberry and others use up a lot of energy both during their manufacture and use. Not only do they use electricity when they are charging, they also [...]

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Kraft Foods, the second largest food producer in the world, recently announced the results of a survey measuring its climate impacts, land and water use. The study was intended to provide a more thorough picture of the company’s complete environmental footprint, going beyond direct use and emissions to look at the entire supply chain. The project [...]

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The following post is part of the course work for “Live Exchange” the foundational course on communication for The MBA Design Strategy Program at California College of the Arts. The rest of the posts are presented here. By Ryan Wilday As an industrial designer, and design strategist, I am a prolific user of paper. Whether [...]

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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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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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It was nearly 30 years ago, in the wake of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, when the classic Nukespeak from Sierra Club Books was published and immediately shaped public debate on the immense risks of nuclear technology. Now an extensively revised and updated edition promises to continue to fuel that debate in the aftermath [...]

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The United Nations recently released a Human Development Report that brings to light the global challenges of sustainability and equity. The report points out that although living standards in most countries have been rising, from now on if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify, the least developed nations will show a downward growth by 2050. [...]

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Facebook‘s Menlo Park Campus is all set to have a cogeneration system (aka combined heat and power system or CHP) installed soon with the help of Cogenra Solar. Cogenra is a provider of distributed solar cogeneration systems and renewable energy service solutions. By harnessing the heat naturally created by the system and putting it to good [...]

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Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn wrapped up this week’s BSR conference with a commitment to helping consumers save on energy at home – a great step toward tackling the company’s “scope 3” carbon footprint, as well as good customer management.   Specifically, the company will pilot “learning centers” at three Best Buy stores as well as a [...]

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Community choice aggregation can help communities achieve energy independence but with the changing energy and policy landscape it might be a distracting and unnecessary step.

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Take a look at energy consumption and renewable energy capacity in a global context.

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At SOCAP 2011, many international companies solving global poverty issues were represented, but poverty is also a reality for millions of North Americans.  In this interview, Donna Morton, the CEO of First Power Canada, discusses her program for building jobs and reviving the economies of first nation Native Americans all over North America.  Morton works [...]

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Neil McPhail, board member, Alliance to Save Energy and senior vice president, new business customer solutions group at Best Buy discusses how power companies and consumer technology retailers are coming together to establish working relationships and best practices that will work toward creating better, more efficient and most importantly, greener products from store shelf to in-home outlet. Best Buy, a consistent leader in sustainability, is hosting its 3rd Annual Energy Summit and Neil shares with readers some of his key insights and takeaways from the discussions leading up to summit.

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