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The cost of operating an automobile has intrigued me since I started riding a bike as an adult. From asking owners, I estimated in 1965 that a car cost about 25¢ a mile to operate, which caused a fellow student to scream at me. In the late 70's, when I was an owner, I figured the operating cost at 14¢ a mile, which was unrealistically low. We tend to believe what we want to believe.

Can you explain to me and the readers why solar panels are so expensive? Why can we not get the cost of this energy down to US $0.15 per kWh while we're paying off the equipment? Why are we paying for future production capability today? It is like the current electricity providers are saying, "Well, your house will use 12,000 kWh this year so we want our $1,800 now" or worse "give us 20 years up front" as the solar industry does today! If the solar market really wants to see a green planet then I feel they need to get the green out their eyes! Can they not see that they can truly make every home owner self sufficient if they bring their costs in line. It seems as though this renewable energy game is for the wealthy. If I want my home to be totally self-sustaining, it would cost me $80,000! A: Ian, I am happy to respond to your question since I have spent my own money on both my net-zero-energy home and my zero-energy office building - so I am acutely aware of the costs.

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Jerome a Paris has an excellent (and long) article at TOD about the economics of wind power - The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind. I'd like to try to clear some of the confusion that surrounds the economics of wind power, as it is often fed and used by the opponents of wind to dismiss it. As I noted recently, even the basic economics of energy markets are often wilfully misunderstood by commentators, so it's worth going in more detail through concepts like levelised cost and marginal cost, and identify how different electricity producers have different impacts on electricity (market) prices (which may or may not be reflected in retail prices) and have different externalities. Value for society of a generation source may also include other items that are harder to acount in purely monetary terms (and/or whose very value may be disputed), such as the long term risk of depletion of the fuel, or energy security issues, such as dependency on unstable and/or unfriendly foreign countries or vulnerable infrastructure.

Their mission: to deliver cost-efficient solar electricity. The Nanosolar company was founded in 2002 and is working to build the world's largest solar cell factory in California and the world's largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt.

In a significant milestone in the deployment of flexible, printed photovoltaics, Konarka, a solar-cell startup based in Lowell, MA, has opened a commercial-scale factory, with the capacity to produce enough organic solar cells every year to generate one gigawatt of electricity, the equivalent of a large nuclear reactor. Organic solar cells could cut the cost of solar power by making use of inexpensive organic polymers rather than the expensive crystalline silicon used in most solar cells. What's more, the polymers can be processed using low-cost equipment such as ink-jet printers or coating equipment employed to make photographic film, which reduces both capital and manufacturing costs compared with conventional solar-cell manufacturing.

Earlier today I received an email from the office of Pittsburgh city councilman Bill Peduto announcing an ambitious plan that will reduce Pittsburgh's carbon footprint while saving the city millions in electricity costs. Peduto, who has been the only city legislator to propose green legislation of any sort over the last few years, wants the city to convert all 40,000 of its street lamps to energy efficient LED lighting. The cost of the program will be around $24 million and will be paid using a combination of the annual costs savings and funding from the state's Guaranteed Energy Savings Agreement. Pittsburgh would join cities such as Austin, Raleigh (home LED manufacturer CREE), and Toronto as major cities who have adopted LED lighting on a large scale. According to Peduto, Pittsburgh would be the largest city in the US to roll out a complete conversion to LED lighting. This would be great news for Pittsburgh's green agenda, especially in light of today's Pittsburgh Penguin's press conference, where they announced the 21 year naming rights deal for their new arena, which will be known as the Clean Coal Center.

A detailed infographic mapping our the entire UK's solar pv cost, payback period, earnings and ROI by region. If you have been wondering wether solar panels are a good investment and make financial sense, this infogrpahic will give you benchmark figures for domestic solar pv systems in your region. Simply find your location and read off the figures!

The cost of oil peaked above $140 a barrel this summer, nearly double the price a year earlier and 40% higher than worst-case scenarios discussed just months earlier. Gas prices followed suit, peaking well above $4 a gallon during peak driving season and sending drivers, carmakers and politicians all into fits. Heating oil prices started climbing to record levels months before heating season.

Going solar seems to get easier by the day - both logistically and financially. Before, homeowners had to save up to pay the huge upfront cost of buying and installing solar panels. Now, would-be solar energy users don't need to put up startup funds - nor do they even have to deal with an extra repayment bill! The latest company making solar power accessible is Renewable Funding, a financial company with a new solar-friendly product called CityFIRST. CityFIRST basically allows homeowners to install solar panels with no upfront cost - using a solar installer or contractor of their choice - then pay for panels over 20 years via a line item on property tax bills.

Technology Review has an article on advances in wind turbine technology - Better Wind Turbines. ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent. The new generator runs efficiently over a wider range of conditions than conventional generators do. When the shaft running through an ordinary generator is turning at the optimal rate, more than 90 percent of its energy can be converted into electricity. But if it speeds up or slows down, the generator's efficiency drops dramatically. This isn't a problem in conventional power plants, where the turbines turn at a steady rate, fed by a constant supply of energy from coal or some other fuel. But wind speed can vary wildly. Turbine blades that change pitch to catch more or less wind can help, as can transmissions that mediate between the spinning blades and the generator shaft. But transmissions add both manufacturing and maintenance costs, and there's a limit to how much changing the blade angle can compensate for changing winds.

Feed-in Tariffs in 70 words or less: Government and power utility offers premium, long-term contracts to residential, commercial, and industrial citizens to generate power on-site. Rates are based on the cost of buying and installing various renewable energy systems, but only paid on actual power produced. Citizens purchase back grid power, as per usual, from utility at regular prices. Increase in cost is paid for with a small surcharge to all electricity ratepayers.

Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for a number of U.S. states, says a new series of reports from the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The researchers conclude that the costs have already begun to accrue and are likely to endure. Combining existing data with new analysis, the eight studies project the long term economic impact of climate change on Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and Ohio. Studies on additional states are in the works.

Innovative concept could make wave energy more affordable A device consisting of a giant rubber tube may hold the key to producing affordable electricity from the energy in sea waves. Invented in the UK, the 'Anaconda' is a totally innovative wave energy concept. Its ultra-simple design means it would be cheap to manufacture and maintain, enabling it to produce clean electricity at lower cost than other types of wave energy converter. Cost has been a key barrier to deployment of such converters to date.

Last week, Pickens stopped by The Times to discuss his push to wean the U.S. off foreign oil by dramatically ramping up development of its infrastructure for wind and natural gas. Below is a partial transcript. T. Boone Pickens: We are now importing oil that costs us $700 billion a year. That's four and a half times what the Iraq war costs. Nobody running for president even speaks about this. Yet they talk a lot about the Iraq war. When you look at it, the world oil supply is about 85 million barrels of oil a day. And demand is about 86-plus million barrels a day.

Are you ready to find out if in fact your home is as energy efficient as it can be? Most of us have some big and some small things that they can do to better the cost efficiency of home. Whether you just want to drop a few dollars off of your gas bill or you are looking for a better way to fuel your home altogether, doing just a few things can make a tremendous amount of difference in your home.

Going solar seems to get easier by the day - both logistically and financially. Before, homeowners had to save up to pay the huge upfront cost of buying and installing solar panels. Now, would-be solar energy users don't need to put up startup funds - nor do they even have to deal with an extra repayment bill! The latest company making solar power accessible is Renewable Funding, a financial company with a new solar-friendly product called CityFIRST. CityFIRST basically allows homeowners to install solar panels with no upfront cost - using a solar installer or contractor of their choice - then pay for panels over 20 years via a line item on property tax bills.

March 3, 2009 Arizona based First Solar has achieved a major milestone in reducing the manufacturing cost for solar panels below the $1 per watt price barrier - the target necessary for solar to compete with coal-burning electricity on the grid or grid-parity. Using cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology in its thin-film photovoltaic cells, First Solar claims to have the lowest manufacturing cost per watt in the industry with the ability to make solar cells at 98 cents per watt, one third of the price of comparable standard silicon panels. The efficiency is in part due to a low cycle time - 2.5 hours from sheet of glass to solar module - about a tenth of the time it takes for silicon equivalents.