Legislators in Massachusetts’ State Senate expect to wrestle with the state’s high electricity costs, a debate that begins with a public hearing on Sept. 29. [Boston Globe] UK energy company Drax has abandoned a £1bn project to introduce carbon capture technology to cut emissions. [BBC News] Researchers have reported an advance on a potentially cheap… Keep reading →
If you wonder when you should turn off your personal computer for energy savings, here are some general guidelines to help you make that decision. Though there is a small surge in energy when a computer starts up, this small amount of energy is still less than the energy used when a computer is running… Keep reading →
States can lower their electricity bills for consumers and businesses by complying with the Obama administration’s climate rule for power plants, a new report has concluded. [The Hill] The British government has announced plans to cut the costs of subsidies for renewable forms of energy, including solar and wind. [The NY Times] France have passed… Keep reading →
Most U.S. homes are heated with either furnaces or boilers. Furnaces heat air and distribute the heated air through the house using ducts. Boilers heat water, and provide either hot water or steam for heating. Steam is distributed via pipes to steam radiators, and hot water can be distributed via baseboard radiators or radiant floor… Keep reading →
Smart meters, which provide detailed electricity use data throughout the day, are a critical piece of a smarter, more resilient 21st century energy system. But they are not a cure-all for modernizing our antiquated power grid. In Matthew Wald’s recent New York Times article, entitled “Power Savings of Smart Meters Prove Slow to Materialize,” he… Keep reading →
Supercritical CO2 power cycles are gaining increasing attention in the engineering world. sCO2 is an ideal working fluid for use in power generating turbines because it offers high efficiency in a compact footprint and can be matched to many different heat sources. sCO2 power turbines could potentially replace steam cycles in a wide variety of… Keep reading →
Breaking Energy featured the Top 10 New York Energy Entrepreneurs back in June as part of an extremely popular top 10 series that ran during New York Energy Week. The entrepreneurs were chosen by their energy industry peers via an open nomination process that returned a robust list of candidates. Whittling the impressive list of… Keep reading →
Thank your lucky stars, Australia. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) left town before too much damage could be done. Meanwhile, a message to U.S. wave energy fans: Don’t lose faith. Oregon, which also suffered a big OPT disappointment, seems to be bouncing back just fine. First the Australia story: OPT last week pulled the plug on… Keep reading →
In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008-2009 the public learned that using a so-called “bad bank” concept can indeed work ‘nicely’ if a clear line between good and bad assets can be drawn. In this way, the severely impacted financial institutions were able to improve their financial strength – with toxic assets off… Keep reading →
In 1954, Lewis Strauss, the Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, promised a future of energy that would be “too cheap to meter”. He was talking about nuclear power. Now, 60 years later, nuclear is an increasingly hot and divisive topic in the energy debate. Is nuclear, as Strauss said, too cheap to… Keep reading →
