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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. 

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.

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.

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. >