It's been some time since anyone accused GM of making a good move. The company surrendered its title as the world's top-selling carmaker to Toyota this year, in part because GM underestimated drivers' appetite for leaner, greener cars — a desire filled spectacularly by Toyota's Prius.

A shortlist of proposed plans to generate electricity from the power of the tides in the Severn estuary has been unveiled by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Plug In America drives change. We accelerate the shift to plug-in vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment.

“What really amazes us is the size of the total package, amounting to more than $50 billion in clean energy investments and roughly $32 billion for energy efficiency,” commented Alliance president Kateri Callahan.

Imagine using only the energy from the sun to power your home. You would never have to pay an electric bill again and or be impacted by power outages.  It may sound great, but there are numerous advantages to having a solar home that is on-the-grid when available.

Existing technologies for hard, brackish and sea water desalination are highly energy consuming even in the case of the best available technology nowadays, Reverse Osmosis. In addition to this problem, the construction of desalination plants requires intensive capital expenditures.

And now, CNN reports a US Army Criminal Investigations Division investigator wants the official manner of death for Sgt. Ryan Maseth to be changed from "accidental" to "negligent homicide."

The Japanese government has launched the first satellite to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide. This tool will help scientists better ascertain where global warming emissions are coming from and how much is being absorbed by the oceans and forests. The U.S. will launch a similar orbiter next month.

The book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air by David J.C. MacKay is a unique case among all of the current publications on this topic. If every author and decision maker involved with climate change and energy issues would take this book as a starting point before making any claims or proposals, the world would be saved a huge amount of discussion-energy, energy-to-disentangle-confusion, and energy-spent-on-fruitless-efforts.

Electrified transportation is the use of electrical power to run transportation vehicles and related facilities. Electricity has long been used to power transportation in the Seattle area where 150 King County Metro electric trolley buses serve 14 routes covering 115 miles. Now electrical power options are spreading to port facilities, medium-duty trucks, school buses and truck stops. Most importantly, electricity is emerging to power cars and light-duty vehicles in the form of gasoline-electric hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) which can use grid power and run longer on batteries than regular hybrids. These options are explored in the FAQ below. These questions and answers are derived from a 2007 ETWG Briefing Report written by Rich Feldman, Apollo Alliance and Patrick Mazza, Climate Solutions.

UK energy regulator Ofgem is proposing a major overhaul of the regulatory framework for the electricity transmission network to make it easier to connect renewable and other low-carbon energy sources.

The US government – the country’s largest single user of energy – is to have $80 billion at its disposal for energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation projects at its buildings and facilities.The Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) to 16 contractors including electricity utilities, renewable energy companies and heating and ventilation system manufacturers.Under the terms of the scheme, a contractor designs, constructs and raises the financing for an energy saving project and has to guarantee that the work undertaken will generate energy savings.

Each time you flick a light switch or press a power button, you enjoy the benefits of the nation's incredible electric grid. The grid is a complex network of people and machinery working around the clock to produce and deliver electricity to millions of homes across the nation. The electric grid works so well, Americans often think about it only when they receive their electric bills, or in those rare instances when there is a power outage. By taking the time to learn more about the grid, you can learn how we as consumers fit into the big picture, and how we can reduce our own home energy costs. These interactive animations were created to explain the basics of the grid in a fun and informative way. You'll learn about electricity generation, transmission, and distribution, and see how various factors affect the reliability and pricing of electricity.

Designers looking to save power and size are turning to advanced technologies, and motors are no exception. With piezoelectric technology at the heart, a new type of motor is improving small-scale motion systems in a big way. Electronic access control enhances security, convenience, safety, and flexibility in a wide range of applications from building automation to automobiles. Today, system designers are adding "smallest size" to the requirements list for the electronic actuators at the core of access control systems.

This launch event will provide an overview of tidal energy technologies,demonstrate best practice from other successful global projects, and outline keypotential tidal projects in the region; the Mersey, the Solway and Morecambe’sBridge Across the Bay. Delegates will also hear from BERR, DEFRA and NaturalEngland.

Cascading failures are an emergent phenomenon of a network, rather than the independent and coincidental failures of its individual components. Although it is true that many banks in the U.S. and Europe simultaneously overinvested in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) to their peril, positive feedbacks in the global economic system amplified those errors. Bank regulators and macroeconomic policymakers have focused too much attention on the individual nodes of the network (that is, on each bank, and each national economy) without proper regard for the system-wide amplification.

In Sustainable Energy - without the hot air, one of my main conclusions is "electrify everything" - in particular, I recommend electric vehicles. At a recent talk, someone in the audience said, yes, maybe electric cars are now viable. But surely you couldn't electrify freight? Leaving aside two possible answers (namely 1: for local freight deliveries, electric trucks are already genuinely in use, and are manufactured by a couple of companies in the UK; 2: we could make electric freight like eletric trolley buses, using overhead lines), I thought it would be interesting to investigate, using the same model I used for cars in my book, the possibility of making long-distance freight vehicles with on-board batteries.