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"Shell, on behalf of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, a joint venture among Shell Canada (60 per cent), Chevron Canada Limited (20 per cent) and Marathon Oil Sands L.P. (20 per cent) has proposed a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. The Quest CCS Project would be based at Shell's Scotford Upgrader, located near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Commissioned in 2003, the Upgrader turns bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands into synthetic crude oil, most of which is turned into consumer products such as gasoline."

This story is surprising. Is there an untapped potential for hydro?

Six page article from 2003 provides an in depth discussion on existing and Future Nuclear Systems:  "In Response to the difficulties in achieving sustainability, a sufficiently high degree of safety and a competitive economic basis for nuclear power, the U.S. Department of Energy initiated the Generation IV program in 1999. Generation IV refers to the broad division of nuclear designs into four categories: early prototype reactors (Generation I), the large central station nuclear power plants of today (Generation II), the advanced lightwater reactors and other systems with inherent safety features that have been designed in recent years (Generation III), and the next-generation systems to be designed and built two decades from now (Generation IV) [see box on opposite page]. By 2000 international interest in the Generation IV project had resulted in a nine-country coalition that includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. Participating states are mapping out and collaborating on the research and development of future nuclear energy systems."

An innovative U.S. green technology company, with its main office located in Vancouver, Canada, has developed and owns the world-wide patents to, including Canada, United States, and Taiwan, a sophisticated new automotive muffler system that looks like a regular muffler, has no additional material or automobile-related installation costs, reduces vehicle emissions by an incredible 97% and remarkably, according to the inventor, improves gasoline mileage by 20%.

With an investment of US $10 billion dollars in energy efficiency improvements, India's economy would benefit from its potentially vast annual energy savings of 183.5 billion kilowatt hours, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute (WRI). "India's energy demand is expected to more than double by 2030. There is a dramatic need for domestic and international energy efficiency technology providers, service providers, and equipment manufacturers to develop innovative ways to conserve energy," said Robin Murphy, WRI vice president of external relations.

Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk Davidoff, from the University of Maryland, conducted an experiment aimed to demostrate what huge wind turbine fields could do to the environment, extra to producing electricity. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm. What did they get with this simulation? They got a decrease of the wind speed with 2-3 meters per second (5.5 - 6.7 mph), plus a disruption of the air currents over all the north hemisphere. And that could be a source for storms, hurricanes, and other meteorological phenomena.

Electric vehicles approved on Vancouver city streets (not highways)

Are high energy prices good or bad? Another piece of the puzzle.