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U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of Physics at Stanford, returned to campus Monday to speak about the role of clean energy in combating global climate change. A sustainable energy revolution, he said, is not only vital in mitigating climate change, but is a critical step in ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are evaluating the feasibility of developing renewable energy production on Superfund, brownfields, and former landfill or mining sites.

Yes, "green" energy has great emotional and political appeal. But before we wrap all our hopes -- and subsidies -- in it, let's take a hard look at some common misconceptions about what "green" means.

Normally these academics would be fine without our fascination. They weren't looking for glory when they decided to study organisms most people either can't see or wish they hadn't. But when the Deepwater Horizon exploded in April 2010, our collective bias toward cute big creatures started to matter a great deal. That's because the instant the spill-cam was switched off and it became clear that there would be no immediate mass die-offs among dolphins and pelicans, at least not on the scale of theExxon Valdez spill deaths, most of us were pretty much on to the next telegenic disaster. (Chilean miners down a hole—and they've got video diaries? Tell us more!)

Mike Utsler, BP's Unified Area Commander, summed up its findings like this: "The beaches are safe, the water is safe, and the seafood is safe." Never mind that just four days earlier, more than 8,000 pounds of tar balls were collected on Florida's beaches—and that was an average day. Or that gulf residents and cleanup workers continue to report serious health problems that many scientists believe are linked to dispersant and crude oil exposure.

For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill's impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean. And these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented. Among their most striking findings are graveyards of recently deceased coral, oiled crab larvae, evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities, and a mysterious brown liquid coating large swaths of the ocean floor, snuffing out life underneath.

Renewable energy will be the fastest-growing source of energy throughout the world over the next 28 years, helping to meet a projected 49% increase in world energy use, according to DOE's Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) today released the complete version of the Annual Energy Outlook 2010 (AEO2010), which includes 38 sensitivity cases that show how different assumptions regarding market and policy drivers affect the Reference case projections that EIA previously released in December, 2009. In addition to considering alternative scenarios for oil prices, economic growth, and the uptake of more energy-efficient technologies, the AEO2010 includes cases that examine the impact of changes in selected policies, such as the extension of existing policies that are currently scheduled to sunset as well as the sensitivity of natural gas shale production to variations in drilling activity and the size of the resource base.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration projects energy consumption only through 2035. This is probably intelligent–crystal balls start to get a little hazy once you get past 25 years out.

In 2007, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released its first “Prism” model and Model for Estimating the Regional and Global Effects of Greenhouse Gas Reductions (MERGE). 

EPRI updated both analyses in 2009 to reflect economic and technological changes that have the potential to affect projected emissions and the technologies to address them. 

The Prism analysis projects that by 2030, 60% of the total U.S. generation mix would consist of low- or non-CO2 emitting generation

A robust transmission system is the cornerstone for large-scale integration of wind power in the United States. Therefore, perhaps the greatest barrier to achieving this goal is building new transmission to connect the large amounts of location-constrained wind resources to the load centers. Another goal-limiting factor is the lack of appropriate market rules across the various interconnections in the US. Furthermore any reversal of policy decisions made at Federal and State levels (e.g. Renewable Portfolio Standards) in support of renewable energy could send the wrong signal to the industry causing uncertainty in the markets, potentially stalling the investments in new wind plants. The reality is that there are five election cycles between now and 2030 so it is important that wind energy related policies are sustained during this period.   Other potential barriers to achieving this 20-by-2030 goal include: a surge in the global demand for wind energy which could limit the supply of turbines in the US; another financial crisis during the next two decades which affects the credit and investment markets; and lastly the lack of skilled work force to operate power systems with high penetration of variable generation.

Many politicians are supportive, not least Barack Obama, the US president, who in October promised $3.4bn in grants to pay for smart grid equipment.However, an investment on that scale does no more than lay the foundations: a full smart grid for the US will require an investment that is orders of magnitude greater. The commercial and regulatory framework to deliver that investment has not yet been developed.

The epithet “smart” can be applied to a wide range of network technologies. But among industry leaders, there is broad agreement about what a smart grid entails: the use of intelligent devices at all points in the electricity network, from the high-voltage transmission lines to appliances in the home, that can send information and receive instructions.