According to a new study that reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008 was just released by the Environmental Law Institute and discovered that the U.S. spends about two-and-a-half times as much on fossil fuels (mostly aiding foreign oil production) than it does on renewable energy.

Middle-class New Yorkers may soon be able to hire contractors to do $13,000 worth of home improvements like adding insulation and buying new furnaces, storm windows and water heaters — and never cut a check to the contractor.

If developed countries act now, a ‘climate-smart’ world is feasible, and the costs for getting there will be high but still manageable, says a new World Bank report released today. High-income countries also need to act quickly to reduce their carbon footprints and boost development of alternative energy sources to help tackle the problem of climate change.

It's a battle between low-carb utilities and high-carb utilities. The low-carbs complain that the high-carbs want "cash for clunkers" to keep their dirty old coal plants operating. The high-carbs say the low-carbs are trying to game the allowances market to enrich themselves.

However researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate that Indium's availability is likely to constrain the manufacturing of CIGS once production reaches the tens of gigawatts level, unless levels of recovery during extraction are increased.

Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects. The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by internation competition and recalcitrance.

China was late to join the race to develop novel rare earth materials, elements that are essential constituents of everything from iPods to Patriot missiles. But Western observers agree that China is catching up fast in areas such as fuel cells and magnetic refrigeration. Today, about three-quarters of the world's neodymium magnets are made in China. Domestic industrial demand is rising: Last year, China consumed 60% of all processed rare earths. That unnerves some industry analysts and U.S. legislators, who have expressed concern about China's dominance of the rare earth supply. Last year, China satisfied 95% of global demand—now about 125,000 tons per year—and holds more than half of all proven reserves. In 2005, prices started creeping up when China began to limit production and slap export tariffs on some rare earths. In a policy paper last month, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology floated the idea of prohibiting export of three scarcer rare earths: europium, terbium, and dysprosium. If the Chinese government were to implement such a policy, it would be a big problem for other countries.

Jusqu’ici, le Japon ne visait qu’une modeste réduction de 8% de ses émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Mais après la victoire de la gauche aux élections, le futur Premier ministre Yukio Hatoyama vient d’annoncer que le Japon relèverait cet objectif à -25% d'ici 2020 par rapport à 1990, comme il l’avait promis pendant la campagne. C’est plus ambitieux notamment que les 20% de réduction visés par l’Union européenne.

The Marshall Hydrothermal Recovery System would use the heat from hydrothermal vents 7,000 feet under the sea to make electricity. Its temperature is incredibly high, hot enough to melt lead, but it does not boil because of the intense pressures at the depths where the vents are located. Superheated fluid would be propelled up through a through a (well insulated!) pipe to an oil platform located on the surface above the vent. The superheated fluid is carried by means of flow velocity, convection, conduction, and flash steam pressure as it rises and the ambient pressure is decreased.

This season I’m wondering, if the Solar Industry had a pocket-sized danger-warning reference, what would it say?  What pitfalls might it point to? 

Micro inverters are particularly well-suited for the use in small photovoltaic systems of 1 kWp or under. In some larger photovoltaic systems which use string inverters, shading of individual modules and the subsequently lower energy harvest of the entire system can be avoided by equipping and operating those modules with individual module inverters.

Smaller scale distributed and renewable power projects will become the fastest growing segment of the energy industry. Due to the large number of relatively small projects many more people are becoming involved with project development who are not power industry professionals. HOMER Energy provides software, services, and an on-line community to this wider and more diverse group of people who will be making this vision a reality.

One thing that probably goes without saying. Most pretenders don't believe they are pretenders. They are often completely sincere people who believe they have cracked the code, and thus they take exception to my characterization. The cellulosic guys, the algae guys, and even the hydrogen guys will insist that I have it all wrong. In fact, following the posting of this essay on my blog, I heard from all of them. I got numerous e-mails assuring me that they really had come up with the solution. What I have discovered in many of these cases is that people often believe this because they have no experience at scaling up technologies. They might have something that works in the lab, but this can instill a false sense of confidence in those who have never scaled a process up.

In eTec's proposed project to the U.S. Department of Energy, eTec is partnering with Nissan North America to deploy up to 5,000 Nissan LEAF EVs and approximately12,750 charging stations throughout five states: Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington.