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The U.S. currently produces 9.2 billion gallons of ethanol a year and consumes 9.6 billion gallons.

With a key federal tax incentive about to expire, the U.S. installed a 5.5 gigawatts of wind power in December to cap off a year that saw a record 13.2 gigawatts of wind energy come online, according to a report released Friday by research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The U.S. now boasts a total of 60 gigawatts of wind energy, accounting for 6% of the nation’s total generating capacity. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wind power prices have dropped more than 21% since 2010. Falling prices and the looming expiration of the production tax credit, which pays a premium for wind energy, unleashed a wind farm building boom last year. “It’s clear that the economics, aided by the PTC, drove wind growth in 2012,” Amy Grace, a wind analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in a statement. “Eleven gigawatts of capacity was built in states without any near-term state mandated demand.

The fossil fuels are then burned to heat water.

Carbon dioxide contributes to global warming by absorbing heat energy from the earth, trapping it and preventing its release into space.

The Transesterification process is the reaction of a triglyceride (fat/oil) with an alcohol to form esters and glycerol

Unless soybean oil prices decline dramatically, it does not appear that biodiesel can be produced in large quantities at a cost that is competitive with petroleum diesel

Biodiesel from soybeans costs an estimated $2 to $2.50 per gallon to produce. Biodiesel from yellow grease is about $1 a gallon cheaper, but the available supply in the U.S. is much smaller – enough to make 100 million gallons per year. Producers of biodiesel from pure vegetable oil are eligible for a federal excise tax credit of $1 for every gallon blended with conventional diesel. Biodiesel from used cooking oil earns a credit of 50 cents per gallon.

Electric generators are essentially coils of electric conductors, usually copper wire, that are tightly wound onto a metal core and are mounted to spin around inside an array of large magnets

The theory of global warming is nothing new. The Nobel Prize-winning chemist Svante Arrhenius first proposed the idea of global warming in 1896. Carbon dioxide, he knew, traps heat in the Earth's atmosphere. He also knew that burning coal and oil releases carbon dioxide (CO2).

The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity.

The World Energy Council has estimated that approximately 2 terawatts (2 million megawatts), about double current world electricity production, could be produced from the oceans via wave power.

Wave energy is generally considered to be the most concentrated and least variable form of renewable energy. It is the high power density of wave energy that suggests it has the capacity to become the lowest cost renewable energy source.

Wave energy is a renewable, zero emission source of power