The evolution of floating wind turbines mirrors almost exactly that of offshore oil exploration and production structures. Norwegian oil company Statoil’s decision to build the first floating wind farm represents Continue Reading
U.S. regulators cut annual requirements for how much ethanol must be mixed into the nation’s fuel supply. But the reductions were smaller than originally proposed, softening the blow to ethanol Continue Reading
U.S. oil companies will likely push past 10 percent ethanol and other biofuel content in motor fuels in 2016 after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set levels on Monday that Continue Reading
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the final volume requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program today for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, and final volume requirements Continue Reading
The corn ethanol lobby is shocked—shocked, it says —that the United States government has declined to list the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) as one of the measures the country will Continue Reading
While companies have been increasingly buying renewable energy for several years, Las Vegas is joining an emerging trend of US cities switching to green energy. Las Vegas now plans to Continue Reading
When Congress announced the US Renewable Fuel Standard a decade ago the aim was to combat the growing need for foreign oil as well as increase the production and promotion of clean, renewable biofuels. As 2016 approaches, and the Environmental Protection Agency is days away from the updated renewable volume obligations (RVO) for 2014, 2015, and 2016, the landscape that led to these implementations has changed considerably. Demand for foreign oil in the US has dropped tremendously as domestic oil production has increased to its highest level in 17 years, while the growing increase in fuel-efficient vehicles has led to total gasoline retail sales by refiners dropping to more than half of their 2005 levels. With the EPA proposing lowering the volume requirements by 20.5% (4.2 billion gallons), as well as growing support and creation of anti-RFS lobbying groups, US ethanol and gasoline traders and brokers hesitantly await the […]
POWER PLAY | Cheap electricity, a changing climate This is part of a series exploring how the world’s hunger for cheap electricity is complicating efforts to combat climate change. Wind turbines sit in the North Sea at the London Array offshore wind farm, a partnership between Dong Energy and Abu Dhabi-based Masdar. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg News) LONDON — After standing dormant for 34 years, the Bankside Power Station was reborn last month. The onetime oil-fired, soot-spewing electric power plant, shut down and then converted into the Tate Modern, the world’s most popular contemporary art museum, is back producing energy again. Its roof has been coated with solar panels, which soak up the sun’s rays even on a cloudy London afternoon and help illuminate the avant-garde works in the galleries below. But rather than a shiny vision of modernity, the solar installation may become a sad remnant of a lost future. […]
« ROEV Association forms to promote public EV charging interoperability | Main | Renault-Nissan Alliance installing 90 new charge spots for COP21 summit in Paris » Researchers of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies ( IASS ) in Potsdam and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have achieved the proof-of-principle for a innovative technique to extract hydrogen (H 2 ) from methane (CH 4 ) without the formation of CO 2 as a byproduct. At this stage, cost estimates are uncertain, since methane cracking is not yet a fully mature technology. However, preliminary calculations show that it could achieve costs of €1.9 to €3.3 per kilogram of hydrogen at German natural gas prices—without taking the market value of the solid black carbon byproduct of the process into consideration. Most of the world’s hydrogen production is currently based on conventional technologies such as steam methane forming (SMR), which also uses […]
Land-based wind power now entrenched in national electricity grid, a report from the U.S. Department of Energy finds. File photo by Pat Benic/UPI WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 (UPI) — With more than 30 percent of new electricity coming from wind power, the U.S. Department of Energy said the industry is becoming entrenched in the power sector. The Department of Energy published a 24-page document highlighting trends in the renewable power sector . Wind energy, the report said, is becoming a "mainstream power source," accounting for 31 percent of all new electricity capacity added to the U.S. grid between 2008 and last year. "Wind now provides 4.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation, 23 states have at least 500 megawatts of wind installed, and in nine states, wind exceeds 10 percent of total in-state electricity generation," the report said. As of last year, there were 65,000 MW of land-based wind power […]
