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At 250 kilowatts, the fuel cell produces 40-50% of the electricity for the Environmental Science Center. Its electricity production alone is 47% effective, and the addition of heat recovery allows for up to 60% efficiency

While designed to run on pure hydrogen, Yale’s fuel cell is actually powered by natural gas, 80% of which is usable hydrogen. The fuel cell takes in natural gas and water and produces water, electricity, and hot air.

How can we get oil from algae? It's like getting juice from an orange -- with an additional chemical reaction thrown in

Unlike other renewable energy sources, biomass can be converted directly into liquid fuels, called "biofuels," to help meet transportation fuel needs

Today, ethanol is made from starches and sugars, but NREL scientists are developing technology to allow it to be made from cellulose and hemicellulose,

First of all, biofuels come in many varieties, but in general, there are two main products, those that replace (or blend with) gasoline, and those that replace (or are blended with) middle distillate fuels, such as diesel fuel, or home heating oil.

Wind energy is a pollution-free, infinitely sustainable form of energy. It doesn’t use fuel; it doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses and it doesn’t produce toxic or radioactive waste.

Most folks don’t realize the depth of the economic problem that fuels cells pose for mass adoption.  Often there are price quotes running in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.  That’s because the catalysts of choice are the noble metals platinum or palladium.  These are very rare metals, more so than gold and have considerable market presence already in the automotive field.

Biofuels are basically any fuel that can be burned in air to produce heat that is produced by biological means, normally by plant growth. Currently the most prominant biofuels are ethanol and bio-deisel because these can be burned in existing internal combustion engines and are thus a direct replacement for oil. The most important biofuel historically is wood with oth

Biofuels are currently cheaper than oil although this is only because we are seeing very high oil prices at the moment. Under what might be termed more 'normal' market conditions, biofuels lack any meaningful price advantage. Biofuel production is very labor intensive and very land intensive. Production of ethanol from sugar cane was pioneered by the Brazilians in the 1970's as a solution to an oil import bill they could ill afford. It worked for them as they have plenty of land they can convert to growing sugar cane and at the time, plenty of cheap labor with which to harvest it.

he simple truth is the world does not have enough land to produce anywhere near the quantity of biofuels we need to make any dent in our oil consumption. They are only in fashion now oil prices are high and it is cost effective to produce them. Sooner or later food prices will rise to such a point that biofuel production will cease to be economic.

most all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the pollution caused by producing these "green" fuels is taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months as scientists have evaluated the global environmental cost of their production. The new studies, published by the journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially," sai

he production process converts oils and fats into chemicals called long-chain mono alkyl esters, or biodiesel. These chemicals are also referred to as fatty acid methyl esters, and t

Biodiesel is produced from vegetable oils, yellow grease, and tallow.

Wave energy is generally affected by three main factors: Wind speed - higher wind speed means more wave energy, because the energy is transfered from the wind to the wave. Fetch - the distance of open water over which the wave has travelled across makes a big differenece on wave height and wave energy, as a longer fetch gives the waves longer to 'grow'. Wind duration - with a longer storm, the waves will be bigger.

For hundreds of years mankind has been making use of the energy and power generated by wind. Whether it has been to travel the world, manufacture products, or in the modern age to generate electricity, wind has provided the means. And while there have been dozens of different methods over the years, new technology is still being invented to make even further use of this ancient power source.

Windmills were one of the second most widespread uses of wind energy. The variety of uses that windmills were put to included grinding grain, as well as pumping water, up until the industrial revolution where the windmill was mostly replaced by the steam engine.

Cons:

The purchase and set-up of wind turbines can be expensive

Wind turbines require certain constant speeds to be productive (13 mph for large turbines, 9 mph for small turbines)

it offers almost unlimited potential at low costs and with no pollution.