Electricity from solar thermal plants could cost as little as €0.04/kilowatt hour (kWh) [US $0.06/kWh] by 2015 to 2020, Bernhard Milow from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said. And using solar thermal power to desalinate seawater could cost the same.

Growth in the renewable energy industry is set to reach more than US $250 billion by the year 2017 with the electric car, sustainable cities, non-U.S.-based energy firms, geothermal energy and the greening of the shipping industry helping to lead the way. That's the prediction made by Clean Edge in its Clean Energy Trends 2008 report released on Wednesday.

The European Commission is pushing for the liberalisation of electricity markets as part of a wider attempt to forge an EU energy policy. EurActiv takes a closer look at the liberalisation drive, including power trading and challenges specific to the electricity sector.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has released its 2008 Environmental Outlook. Without new policies, the world risks irreversibly damaging the environment and the natural resource base needed to support economic growth and well-being, according to the report. But the Outlook finds that tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity and the health impacts of pollution is both achievable and affordable.

The capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of the electrical energy produced in a given period of time to the electrical energy that could have been produced at continuous maximum power operation during the same period. For a conventional fossil-fuel power station, the capacity factor is determined by planned maintenance downtime, unplanned equipment failure, and by shutdowns when the station’s electricity is not needed. For wind and solar energy, power output is also determined by the availability of wind and sunlight. The maximum power output, or ‘installed capacity’, is a rather theoretical value that is rarely reached. It would be clearer to quote the mean power for solar and wind energy, but because peak power is more commonly quoted, it’s important to know the capacity factor as well, to make sense of the peak numbers.

Cassandra's story is very old: she was cursed that she would always tell the truth and never be believed. But it is also a very modern story and, perhaps, the quintessential Cassandras of our age are the group of scientists who prepared and published in 1972 the book titled "The Limits to Growth". With its scenarios of civilization collapse, the book shocked the world perhaps more than Cassandra had shocked her fellow Trojan citizens when she had predicted the fall of their city to the Achaeans. Just as Cassandra was not believed, so it was for the "Limits to Growth" which, today, is still widely seen as a thoroughly flawed study, wrong all along. This opinion is based only on lies and distortions but, apparently, Cassandra's curse is still alive and well in our times.

The EU is unprepared for future conflicts over energy resources, according to a new report written for the meeting of EU leaders on 13-14 March. The report, seen by the Guardian, predicts that global warming might lead to energy wars, mass migration, failed states and political radicalisation. The report highlights the “scramble” over natural resources from the thawing Arctic region as a potential new conflict area with Russia.

An article in today’s Washington Post reported on new scientific research suggesting that emissions of greenhouse gases must be reduced to zero by mid-century, in order to prevent global warming that could persist for hundreds of years, perhaps eventually producing average temperatures higher than for millions of years. As the climate debate focuses increasingly on policy, the impact of such findings on efforts to craft practical frameworks for reducing US and global emissions becomes as important as the scientific result itself. The implication of the need for truly radical change contained in this latest report might either galvanize action on capping our emissions, or convince us that none of the current pathways for reducing emissions is truly worth pursuing.

The New Scientist of 19 Jan 2008 carries an article, "Coal: Bleak outlook for the black stuff" (subscription required for full article), belatedly drawing attention to an interesting piece of analysis by Professor David Rutledge of CalTech in a lecture last October, where he suggests that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century. It's well worth watching the whole hour of the lecture, because the PowerPoint alone [3MB] doesn't do his argument justice.

This one’s been swirling around for a tick, but Leviathan Energy’s brilliant new turbine is just too good to pass up. Showcased at the Cleantech Forum in California, this contraption would reportedly generate power from the downward movement of water through pipes in a municipal system. In other words, there’s potential to conjure up energy from simply flushing one’s toilet. Of course, there’s nothing revolutionary about yet another hydroelectric generator, but using such a device to grab power from such a dirty place takes things to a whole ‘nother level.

An argument often heard against wind is that it costs a lot in public subsidies for a solution that will always have a limited impact (because it still produces only a small fraction of overall needs, and because of its unreliability linked to its intermitten nature). This is an argument worth addressing in detail, especially when it is pointed out, as the graph shows, that wind is already almost competitive with the other main sources of electricity, which suggests that it might not even need the subsidies then (and the increase in commodity prices since that graph was prepared using 2004 data, only reinforces that argument).

Xcel Energy, (NYSE: XEL)in partnership with the University of Minnesota, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Great Plains Institute, will soon begin testing a one-megawatt sodium-sulfur battery storage system to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and dispatch it to the electricity grid when needed.

In the impact assessment of its 23 January 2008 climate/energy package, the Commission foresees a 30% share of these new biofuels by 2020.

An international team led by Physics and Chemistry teams from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and directed by Professor Jose Javier Saiz Garitaonandia, has achieved, by means of a controlled chemical process, that atoms of gold, silver and copper - intrinsically non-magnetic (not attracted to a magnet) - become magnetic. The article has been published in the February issue of the prestigious international magazine in nanotechnology, Nanoletters (Vol.8, No. 2, 661-667 (2008).

In 2007, domestic products accounted for 56% of the annual market, compared to 41% in 2006,” said Li Junfeng, Secretary General of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association.

Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using an innovative wave powered boat. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion.

“The question has two sides, of course. On one side, how do we in the developed world preserve the essential aspects of our quality of life, while navigating the massive shift to sustainable and renewable life styles? And on the other side, how do we together make it possible for the people of the developing world to acquire the basic comforts of modern life? How do we make it possible for others to enjoy the same gains that transformed America?”

The researchers, working under the banner of the Aurora Research Institute in Inuvik, N.W.T., plan to conduct 10 days of tests next month on Richards Island and the west side of Mallik Bay. The drill site itself, where a service rig is being set up, is about 65 kilometres west of Tuktoyaktuk and 130 kilometres north of Inuvik. About a kilometre underneath that rig is 113.3 billion cubic metres of methane, frozen in an ice-like state under about 600 metres of permafrost.

Osaka Gas Co. of Japan announced that an energy-saving house in Saito Asagi, Ibaraki City, Osaka Prefecture, equipped with a "double-generation system," which is made up of a co-generation system using a household-type polymer electrolyte fuel cell and a solar photovoltaic system, would be open to the public. The house will remain open until the end of May 2008.The fuel cell is rated at one kilowatt and simultaneously generates power and heat, with the heat being effectively utilized for heating water. The combination of the 4-kilowatt photovoltaic system and this fuel cell enables the average household to reduce primary energy consumption by about 55 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by about 70 percent over conventional systems.Moreover, although blinds are typically set inside of windows, the blinds in this house are set outside of windows in order to cut sunlight in the summer, while absorbing thermal energy from sunlight in the winter and transmitting it to the specially designed walls; thus, energy requirements for heating and cooling are reduced. With the latest gas facilities and home-security systems, visitors can enjoy experiencing the exceptional functionality this concept house offers.

If hydrogen is introduced into the energy system, the cost to reduce one unit of CO2 decreases by 4% in 2030 and 15% in 2050, implying that hydrogen is a cost-effective option for the reduction of CO2