Biomass

A Time To Reap

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“To everything there is a season, a time to sow and a time to reap ….” Now is the time for America to realize the results of our investments in renewable transportation fuels. For the past 10 years, the U.S. government and industry have invested millions of dollars to drive the development of cellulosic biofuels. The bench work is complete and technology developments have exceeded expectations. Today pilot facilities across the country are producing cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues, dedicated energy crops and municipal waste. But the real promise of these breakthroughs will not be recognized in pilot-scale.

The discouraging truth is that market access for renewable transportation fuels is restricted by formidable barriers. A primary barrier is infrastructure. Consumer demand will never become a driving factor in renewable fuels adoption until there are real options that allow consumer choice and create open-market competitive solutions. It is time for a new direction in biofuels policy. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 23, 2011 at 9:05 AM

Scaling Biofuels For Viability At REFF

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Renewable fuels have long been held to be the most direct way to wean America of its addiction to imported oil.

But at a Tuesday afternoon REFF Wall Street session dedicated to looking at investments and finance of biofuels, panelists noted that the fragmented and still immature market is unappealing to investors. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 22, 2011 at 11:10 AM

Podcast: OMEGA Means Space Voyages Fueled By Waste

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Before NASA went to space, it focused on flying on Earth.

With oil prices rising, and some calling for global tariffs on jet fuel, NASA is leading the way on alternative fuels for airplanes and other vehicles. In this podcast, AOL Energy’s Felicity Carus discusses NASA’s recent OMEGA project-aimed at creating fuel from algae-with bioengineer Jonathan Trent in this AOL Energy podcast. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 16, 2011 at 1:00 PM

Fuel Cells ‘Bloom’ In Delaware

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Plans to open a fuel-cell manufacturing plant in Delaware represent a significant step forward in the development of a technology that is already helping to power companies like Google, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart.

California-based Bloom Energy said on June 9 that, starting in 2012, it would like to begin manufacturing its fuel-cell servers in a former Chrysler factory site in Newark, creating 900 jobs and supplying 30 MW of electricity to the local utility, Delmarva Power. It plans to do this for 21 years. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM

China Becomes World’s Top Energy User

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When it comes to topics of energy, China has been making plenty of headlines. We’ve recently reported on China’s surge forward as the world’s leader in wind-energy capacity, surpassing the United States in 2010, and have covered reports showing that China now dominates the world in terms of clean energy investments as well. Now, based on a report from British Petroleum (BP) we learn that China holds another energy record of sorts.

BP’s report shows that global energy consumption grew by 5.6% last year, the biggest surge in energy use since 1973 Keep reading →

 /  Published June 15, 2011 at 4:00 PM

Arava’s Energy Partnership Aims to Bridge Borders and Reduce Emissions

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Nestled deep in Israel’s Negev desert, just several miles from the Gaza Strip on one side and Jordan on the other, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is a multinational education center whose aim is to use environmental projects to scale back more than just carbon emissions.

“We live in a very small region: I’m talking about a few kilometers in distance” Director of Arava’s Center for Renewable Energy, Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed told Breaking Energy. “We have the same climate, the same problems, the same air pollution, the same water scarcity, the same food, the same traditions, but we have this border that we made.” Keep reading →

 /  Published May 27, 2011 at 5:11 PM

A Novel Approach to Renewables

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The electricity grid of the future needs to be flexible in order to integrate growing use of renewables, a new book from the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.

In Harnessing Variable Renewables: A Guide to the Balancing Challenge, the agency uses case studies of eight geographic regions, each facing unique energy challenges, to develop a four-step Flexibility Assessment (FAST) method. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 25, 2011 at 3:00 PM

Biomass Debut For G-8

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Leveraging biomass and biofuels may provide a unique opportunity for developing countries to join the energy race.

In a global first, the Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) announced today that its 17 participating countries had agreed on a set of 24 voluntary sustainability indicators that would aid countries in developing bioenergy. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 24, 2011 at 11:50 AM

Can the World’s Energy Infrastructure Be Repurposed?

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Through efficiency and flexibility, significant portions of the current infrastructure can be repurposed for greener energy sources; that was the tentative consensus of a panel discussion earlier this week at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

The question put to the panel, titled Repurposing Energy Infrastructure, by Milken Institute Senior Fellow Joel Kurtzman was this: Keep reading →

 /  Published May 18, 2011 at 5:00 PM
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