The “25 by 25″ resolution is the result of a big lobbying campaign by a coalition consisting of more than 600 agricultural, energy, and environmental groups, business and labour interests and NGOs.

The implementation of new high-speed transport technologies re-shapes the demand balance between transport modes and rebound effects may occur. In this paper first a definition of environmental rebound effects of high-speed transport is presented and various cases are discussed. Second, a method is developed to determine and quantify the environmental rebound effects employing life cycle assessment. The method is illustrated in a case study by investigating the greenhouse gas emissions of a frequently discussed future underground maglev train system for Switzerland.

After safety, the longevity of the batteries in a plug-in hybrid is the greatest unknown. Can a plug-in hybrid’s battery pack retain the bulk of its energy capacity over 10 years of daily use and more than 4000 full-discharge cycles? (For a deeper look at the challenges facing plug-in hybrid batteries, see “Lithium Batteries Take to the Road”.)[ LINK: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep07/5490 ] As Don Hillebrand of Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, said tartly, “Batteries are the showstopper.” Periodic demands from the grid, even for only a small fraction of the battery’s stored energy, would clearly affect the cells’ life span—but no one has data on how much. Another open issue is the development of creative financing models for replacement battery packs costing several thousand U.S. dollars even after mass production is achieved. Third-party battery leasing could be one answer, if combined with a secondary market for batteries whose performance has fallen below automotive levels. Carmakers, electric utilities, and large consumer-financing groups are quietly batting around these notions to see if they can build a financial model that makes sense for all three parties.

The photovoltaic solar electricity industry in Europe plans to voluntarily take back defective or used solar modules to recycle them and to recover valuable materials.

Large-scale power storage is crucial to our energy future: the Electric Power Research Institute, the U.S. utility industry's leading R&D consortium, says that storage would enable the widespread use of renewable power and make the grid more reliable and efficient.

As a case study of a successful approach, let’s take a look at what Spain has been able to accomplish. Spain has tackled its development of renewable energy sources aggressively. With 11,615 megawatts (MW) of installed wind capacity at the end of last year, Spain is second in the world to Germany in capacity (and about on par with the United States). The 23,372,000 MWh generated in 2006 provided just over 8.5% of Spain’s electricity: only Denmark boasts a higher percentage.

We examined the world production of 57 minerals reported in the database of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Of these, we found 11 cases where production has clearly peaked and is now declining. Several more may be peaking or be close to peaking. Fitting the production curve with a logistic function we see that, in most cases, the ultimate amount extrapolated from the fitting corresponds well to the amount obtained summing the cumulative production so far and the reserves estimated by the USGS. These results are a clear indication that the Hubbert model is valid for the worldwide production of minerals and not just for regional cases. It strongly supports the concept that “Peak oil” is just one of several cases of worldwide peaking and decline of a depletable resource. Many more mineral resources may peak worldwide and start their decline in the near future.

MIT Energy Club has put together this fact sheet on US electricity production and consumption that is quite handy. I share it here for the Energy buffs….

The three primary, longer-term objectives for the nation's energy policy should be: reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level consistent with a world-wide goal of global climate stabilization (assumes curbing U.S. CO2 emissions by 60-80% from current levels by mid-century); eliminate U.S. energy imports (i.e., oil and natural gas - now 58% and 15% respectively), while reducing overall use of oil and natural gas; phase out the current generation of nuclear power while substantially curbing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, by increasing the use of energy efficiency and making a transition to sustainable, environmentally safer renewable energy sources.

Concernant les cuisinières électriques, je pense qu’il serait judicieux de conseiller les modèles à induction électromagnétique, plus économes (rendement compris entre 80 % et 90 %) et plus rapides que les modèles à rayonnement par résistance chauffante ou par combustion de gaz.

SOME of North Yorkshire's finest views are to become even more picturesque, as work begins to bury unsightly electricity lines underground. Three areas of the North York Moors National Park have been selected for the burial scheme, with a further four lined up if funding allows. NEDL, the company responsible for maintaining the power network in our region, received a £5.5 million grant from electricity regulator Ofgem last year to carry out undergrounding work in seven protected areas.

The two reports on the impacts of EE/RE on Texas -- Role of Energy Efficiency and Onsite Renewables in Meeting Energy and Environmental Needs in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston/Galveston Metro Areas and The Economic Benefits of an Energy Efficiency and Onsite Renewable Energy Strategy to Meet Growing Electricity Needs in Texas -- were released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy (ACEEE). These studies build upon an ACEEE report released last March that examined the statewide impacts of a suite of EE/RE policies that showed Texas could meet most of its projected needs for electricity while also addressing concerns about peak demand.

In October 2006, Google announced a commitment to solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on a corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex (check out this fly-over video).

But the NDP leader was forced to drop his message of the day by Nick Annejohn, a 17-year-old high school student. The Guelph resident said it was “a terrible contradiction” that the NDP want to both cut electricity rates and promote energy conservation...

Solar proponents love to boast that just a few hundred square kilometers' worth of photovoltaic solar panels installed in Southwestern deserts could power the United States. Their schemes come with a caveat, of course: without backup power plants or expensive investments in giant batteries, flywheels, or other energy-storage systems, this solar-power supply would fluctuate wildly with each passing cloud (not to mention with the sun's daily rise and fall and seasonal ebbs and flows). Solar-power startup > Ausra > , based in Palo Alto, thinks it has the solution: solar-thermal-power plants that turn sunlight into steam and efficiently store heat for cloudy days. >

With very ambitious EU targets (5.75% biofuels to be used for transport by 2010 and 10% by 2020), Hodson and his colleagues are trying hard to keep up the credibility of the EU’s biofuels action by defining sustainability certification criteria for the use of the alternative fuels.

Data compiled by research firm Uclue indicates that the Internet burns 9.4 percent of all electricity consumed in the U.S., and 5.3 percent worldwide.

The purchase price of a two megawatt turbine has been pushed up from about $3 million to about $4.4 million as a result. The actual turbines represent from 20 to 50per cent of the final installed cost of any new wind farm, the rest being spent on site investigation, assessment and testing, as well as the installation and infrastructure costs required to connect to the grid, often from remote locations. ...Optimal sites require constant wind speeds of about eight to 10 metres per second. A wind capacity factor of about 35 per cent -- the amount of time the wind actually blows over a year -- is needed to make a site viable.

Power generation from low-carbon energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear should soon become competitive with electricity generated by coal, the cheapest of fossil fuels, the chief executive of FPL Group Inc. (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday.