Yesterday, the European Parliament approved by overwhelming majority the "Thomsen Report" on the Roadmap for Renewable Energies in Europe. Crucial for the future of solar thermal: the call for the adoption in all Member States of renewable heat obligations, at least in new buildings and those undergoing major renovation.

In a speech this week, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke announced New Zealand's intention to commit to 90% renewable electricity by 2025, according to a press release issued by the New Zealand government. The country already uses 70% renewable electricity, primarily hydro- and geothermal power and will continue to increase its use of renewables over the next 20 years. 

Companies that have switched to renewable energy are reporting a number of bottom line advantages, including reduced corporate greenhouse gas emissions, diversification of energy sources to hedge against fluctuating fossil fuel prices, as well as strengthening customer relationships and brand differentiation.

Today, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) released its much-anticipated Global Corporate Climate Change Report (CDP5). This is the fifth annual report by the CDP tracking carbon disclosure and attitudes toward climate change in the world's largest companies. The CDP additionally this year launched the Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI), an honor roll for companies who are best addressing climate change issues.

New research in the August Issue of Physics Today explains how low-intensity electric fields can disrupt the division of cancer cells and slow the growth of brain tumors. The team of researchers used alternating electric fields that shift electric particles in cells back and forth hundreds of thousands of times per second. These low-intensity alternating electric fields were once thought to only heat cells but after several years of experiments, the researchers have shown the fields to disrupt cell division in tumor cells placed on a glass dish.

Vertical urban agriculture offers a potential silver BB in this domain ... with a new concept from Seattle offering one of the most integrated and interesting approaches that I've seen to date.

China is proposing an international multilateral science and technology cooperation scheme to hasten development of clean renewable energies.

The state's Public Utilities Commission wants to require developers to build homes so energy efficient that they will require no net energy from the grid by 2020.

Keynes goes further, to explain how economists move from simplifying assumptions to abandonment of the actual facts, and to conclude that reality is what their model says.

Renewable energy in the United States is on the rise. America now generates twice as much electricity from the wind and the sun as we did just four years ago, and 2007 promises to be another year of record growth.

This paper examines the incentives that generation firms have in restructured electricity markets for supporting long-term transmission investments. In particular, we study whether generation firms, which arguably play a dominant role in the restructured electricity markets, have the incentives to fund or support incremental social-welfare-improving transmission investments.

The British government plans to build a wave farm off the Cornish coast that could supply electricity for 7,500 homes.

But even if we put this to one side, 51 mpg is hardly cause for celebration. In 1983, the standard Peugeot 205 managed 72 mpg on highways[6].

a number of the renewable energy-rich areas are too far from the electric transmission grid to render them useful. "We've made tremendous progress developing the transmission plan to bring electricity from the wind-rich Tehachapi Mountain area to Southern California customers. Our goal with RETI is to identify the next Tehachapi." -- Dian M. Grueneich, Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission In an attempt to alleviate this dilemma, California has formed a public-private partnership called the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) to consider the feasibility of building new transmission lines to access renewable generation.

Any answers to these questions would be purely speculative, but if the industry had continued expanding at its previous rate, then instead of the current 104 reactors, we might easily have 200, contributing 40% of our total electricity supplies. Coal-fired power plants would supply only 32% of our power needs, instead of 50%, and we'd emit roughly 650 million tons less CO2 per year.

Even a 5 percent drop in peak demand can yield substantial savings in generation, transmission, and distribution costs – enough to eliminate the need for installing and running some 625 infrequently used peaking power plants and associated power delivery infrastructure.

n electro-magnetic rail system would provide an interesting option for launches from the Moon, which has 1/6 the Earth's gravity and no atmosphere.

KEMA, in partnership with the civil engineering firm Bureau Lievense and technology illustrators Rudolph and Robert Das, has developed an "Energy Island" concept to store power generated from an offshore wind farm. The concept design is the initial result of an on-going feasibility study being conducted for Dutch energy companies.