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"The current energy landscape is rife with contradictions: Gas prices are shooting up, renewables are being implemented at a seemingly rapid pace, natural gas is being simultaneously demonized and hailed as an energy savior, and electric cars are finally starting to roll off production lines. Fortunately, your tax dollars fund a government agency devoted to making sense of energy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration explains the gritty details of our energy future in its Annual Energy Outlook 2011, which has tracked our projected energy use all the way to 2035. Don't have the time to slog through its myriad charts and tables? We do. Read on for our abbreviated look at the report's most important findings."

thanks Josh Floyd Great overview of personal energy calculus in context of climate change Saul Griffith has done a very detailed analysis of the energy portfolio required to address the problem of climate change inducing carbon emissions. He begins by examining what our maximum output of carbon emissions would be to limit carbon increases to 450 parts per million. He then calculates how much other types of energy (non carbon / fossil fuel based) will be needed. He then distributes this using a global equity system. The result is an overall reduction in energy consumption which is a quarter (25%) of current amounts. It is a useful application of backcasting and it has big applications for eco-innovation and entrepreneurship. For ICT, it implies a huge reduction in current energy consumption and a strong movement toward closed loop engineering.

"Increasingly, the energy we consume to heat and power our communities, will be produced locally. Unfortunately, many of the strategies we use to produce energy are vulnerable due to specialization. We are too dependent on specific forms of energy and the dedicated equipment used to utilize it. "

FORGET using passwords to log on to your computer, needing touch screens to navigate on your smartphone or paying expensive energy bills; in the future your daily activities will create all the energy you need to power your house, biometrics will unlock your devices, and your mind will be capable of controlling them.

Because of the hectic pace of China's economic and social development, Chinese energy demand will continue to grow rapidly in next 40 years. Beijing appears determined to pursue a low-carbon development strategy, and wind energy is going to be one of the main resources for achieving China's low carbon goals.

" Sustainable computing is a rapidly expanding research area spanning the fields of computer science and engineering, electrical engineering as well as other engineering disciplines. The aim of Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems (SUSCOM) is to publish the myriad research findings related to energy-aware and thermal-aware management of computing resource. Equally important is a spectrum of related research issues such as applications of computing that can have ecological and societal impacts. SUSCOM publishes original and timely research papers and survey articles in current areas of power, energy, temperature, and environment related research areas of current importance to readers. SUSCOM has an editorial board comprising prominent researchers from around the world and selects competitively evaluated peer-reviewed papers. "

" WASHINGTON, Jul 19, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The United States Magnetic Materials Association ("USMMA") today announced the addition of Texas Rare Earth Resources and Stans Energy as members of the comprehensive rare earth industry collaboration. The move increases the association's core membership to ten, innovative companies. "

"Investment in renewable energy last year amounted to a record 211 billion dollars, a rise of 32 percent over 2009 and 540 percent over 2004, a UN-backed report said on Thursday. China, investing 48.9 billion dollars, up 28 percent, accounted for more than a fifth of the total, marking a year in which developing countries for the first time outstripped rich economies in renewables investment, it said."

Rare earth elements massively improve energy efficiency and conductivity of metals. Yet rare earth are some of the most toxic and difficult materials to mine, and most are controlled by China. This article provokes consideration of both the need for developing super-efficient electronics with the costs associated in mining, as well as geo-political factors related to minerals extraction.

"Renewable energy showed itself to be a stalwart player on the troubled world economic scene in 2010, supplying an increasing proportion of global power consumption despite facing the headwinds of financial crisis, sagging incentives and low natural gas prices, Worldwatch Institute said."

" Enipedia is an active exploration into the applications of wikis and the semantic web for energy and industry issues. Through this we seek to create a collaborative environment for discussion, while also providing the tools that allow for data from different sources to be connected, queried, and visualized from different perspectives. "

"The REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report released today shows that the renewable energy sector continues to perform well despite continuing economic recession, incentive cuts, and low natural-gas prices."

This is the environmental documentary of the year (2010) a must see... and major wake-up call for the world. Josh Fox is my new hero!.......... "It is happening all across America-rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from an energy company wanting to lease their property... See full summary » "

Watched it the other night. Very depressing...and it's here in Australia too... http://theconversation.edu.au/switching-to-coal-seam-gas-could-drastically-reduce-emissions-so-whats-the-fraccing-problem-16 http://theconversation.edu.au/what-the-frack-is-going-on-with-coal-seam-gas-1507 g

Over the next few decades, the global food system will come under renewed pressure from the combined effects of seven fundamental factors: population growth, the nutrition transition, energy, land, water, labour and climate change. The combined effects will create constraints on food supply and if action is not taken, there is a real potential for demand growth to outstrip increases in global food production. Effects on developing countries would be devastating. Developed countries will be affected too. Expectations of abundant and ever cheaper food could come under strain. The UK can no longer afford to take its food supply for granted.

Forum for the Future is a non-profit organisation working globally with business and government to create a sustainable future. We have 15 years' experience inspiring new thinking, building creative partnerships and developing practical innovations to change our world. We aim to transform the critical systems that we all depend on, such as food, energy and finance, to make them fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

It seems like we're playing video games every day. Every morning and evening on the subway, I see people swiping their phones, whether they're slinging a red bird into a pile of green pigs, guessing a friend's drawing, or any number of fun, frivolous, addictive activities. That's a lot of time spent on games, and a lot of cognitive energy. What if all of that brain power could be put toward social issues, like finding a way out of poverty?

In the first years of the 21st century, our capacities for imagining new realities have proved inadequate. From Madrid to London, Bali to Mumbai, from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to the tsunami's devastation all around the Indian Ocean, to the most recent financial crisis, the alarms went unheeded until after disaster had struck. Now, as the first decade of the century has drawn to a close, its many shocks make plain that we are living in a world with greater potential for surprise, uncertainty, and threats to resilience. In a time of poorly understood interacting causes and consequences, we require new habits of thinking, new approaches to assessment, and new ways of engaging with the world. Emerging is a world filled with just as much opportunity as risk, but seeing both of those forces and appreciating their interrelatedness requires new lenses and an unflagging awareness of diverse perspectives. It means investing all of our energies to profoundly challenge the status quo.

International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system. The central purpose of IFs is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios. The model is integrated with a large database containing values for its many foundational data series since 1960. Through this web site IFs is freely available to users both on-line and in downloadable form.

This is a very cool trailer that depicts many of the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It is highly significant because the Communication of Foresight s one of the pre-eminent challenges we face today as societies. The dangers of climate change have been well developed by generations of climate scientists. But what about engaging various publics in the issue, garnering interest and energy for change through instigating new debates. How many other areas are like climate change - genetics, human consciousness, the list goes on. This trailer is a good example of aestheticizing the future in ways that CAN garner interest.

"We still have emissions rising and we need to get that trajectory turned around. We need to get investment shifted to clean energy sources and low emission transport," he told The Conversation. If we don't get it going this decade, you get an impossibly tough task to achieve the two degree target. It will be exceptionally costly and probably impossible to roll out infrastructure fast enough (in future)."