California Grid Operator Asks Geothermal to Help Feed the Duck

California’s 33-percent-renewables-by-2020 mandate is becoming a reality, and the state’s electricity system operator wants the geothermal industry to help keep the grid stable as more generation comes from variable resources.By 2020, due largely to solar, a graph of the change caused by variable renewables in the state’s...

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Energy: The Oxygen of Africa's Growth and Development

Historically people associate the sound of Africa as the roar of the lion; but in reality, it’s been the roar of the diesel generator. Herds of these archaic beasts are on the prowl. Their habitat includes cities, towns, factories, mines, businesses and big farms â€" anywhere where power is required and isn’t available or reliable.When...

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D-Day Legacy Threatened By Wind Turbines Off Normandy Coast?

Is the D-Day Legacy In Peril From 75 Wind Turbines Off the Normandy Coast? A proposed 450 MW offshore wind farm in the waters off the D-day landing beaches at Courseulles-sur-Mer off the Normandy Coast has sparked an understandably emotional response from many veterans of World War II. The debate is...

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100 Percent Renewable Energy And Beyond

While many countries still discuss whether or not a 100% renewable energy system â€" or “just” a 100% renewable electricity supply â€" is even theoretically possible, Germans seem no longer bothered by such unscientific doubts. To make matters “worse,” some of them (including myself) are even convinced that a transition...

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2014 Honda Accord Hybrid Achieves 49 MPG In City, Beating All Hybrids On The Market

This article first appeared on EV Obsession. The 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid has achieved 49 MPG city, 45 MPG highway, and 47 MPG combined fuel efficiency. The city rating of 49 MPG is impressive, as it exceeds that of all other hybrids on the market. Notably, this is not the 2014 Honda Accord Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV), which has ability...

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Can a Second Global Carbon Market Emerge?

At the very end of May Carbon Expo was held in Barcelona. It was an excellent event, overall attendance was good and there were still quite a few exhibitors at the Expo hoping for life in the project mechanism market of the current “global carbon market”. But this is an area of trade that is clearly struggling. The...

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Climbing Up GE’s Brilliant Wind Energy Turbine

With the launch of the first three GE brilliant wind turbines approaching, the world’s leading turbine manufacturer invited media to its test center to see its machine in operation and take a look at the inner workings.GE's (NYSE:GE) engineering continues to move competitively toward the same two broad objectives as leading international...

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Are Nuclear Energy Costs Higher Than They Should Be?

Nuclear energy in the United States and Europe is far more expensive that it should be. There is plenty of blame to spread; nuclear professionals have to accept some of the responsibility. If you want to do something about the high cost of nuclear energy, it might be best to start with taking the actions that are within your own...

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17 Tesla Battery Swap Videos (Including Q&A With Elon Musk)

I think we just lucked out. A reader has passed along a bunch of videos from the Tesla Model S battery swap demo and the follow-up Q&A session with Elon Musk. There are a lot of interesting answers in the Q&A videos that I haven’t seen or heard elsewhere (and some that we have already seen or heard). Check them all out...

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New UC-Davis Net Zero Sustainable Winery Will Turn Water Into Wine Into Chalk

The newly opened Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building at the University of California, Davis includes a full lineup of futuristic green tech bells and whistles, and the one that has us most intrigued is a system for sequestering carbon dioxide from all the fermentation that is going to take place within its walls. The system...

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Pandora's Promise, Nuclear Energy Documentary, Asks: What Are You Wrong About?

The new documentary film Pandora's Promise landed in theaters last Friday and is already sparking debate and prompting a renewed look at the role of nuclear energy in confronting global climate change and the other energy challenges of the 21st century. (Click here to view a round-up of the film's reviews).In...

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Wind Farm Energy Innovation in the UK

Community ownership of renewable energy is still an alien concept to most people in the UK. Media reports are invariably negative whenever the two words ‘community’ and ‘wind’ appear in the same sentence. And yet, there are a small number of individuals who are determined to show that it doesn’t need to be this way. Jack...

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