Fuel

Onshore US: New Frontier for Sub-Salt?

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Enormous finds offshore Brazil have drawn global attention to the promise of sub-salt oil and gas, but Houston-based Swift Energy is seeking to attract partners to a sub-salt prospect much closer to home.

Swift is seeking deepwater players as future partners in a potential sub-salt find in the “onshore” US Gulf of Mexico, under its Lake Washington field, which lies in water depths of 10-15 feet just off the southeastern Louisiana shore. It says the sub-salt prospect could hold as much as 350 million barrels of oil equivalent. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 15, 2013 at 2:45 PM

Enhanced Geothermal Breaks Through In Nevada

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Breaking new ground – literally – enhanced geothermal system technology is unlocking heat trapped deep beneath Earth’s surface and, for the first time, turning it into electricity on the U.S. grid.

The U.S. Department of Energy said an Ormat Technologies EGS project that it backed with $5.4 million (to go along with $2.6 million in private sector money) had boosted production at a Churchill County, Nev., geothermal field by 38 percent, pumping 1.7 megawatts of new power to the grid. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 15, 2013 at 9:00 AM

You’ll Pay Less at the Pump this Summer, But Not Much

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Summer driving season is officially underway and the good news is Americans look set to save on gasoline compared with last summer, but not by much.

The US Energy Information Administration just released their Summer Fuels Outlook and expect “that regular‐grade gasoline retail prices, which averaged $3.69 per gallon last summer, will average $3.63 per gallon during the current summer (April through September) driving season.” Keep reading →

 /  Published April 12, 2013 at 4:45 PM

Video: ‘James Hansen on NASA Retirement and Climate Action We Need’

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James Hansen was a NASA scientist for 46 years and a prominent climate change critic credited with being one of the first to speak out about the issue. He recently left his position at the government space agency so he could freely address climate change on a full-time basis.

In this brand new video, he discusses his decision to leave NASA and suggests increasing the price of fossil fuels at the policy level can help accelerate a transition to cleaner energy solutions. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 12, 2013 at 3:15 PM

New DOE Initiative to Boost Manufacture of Clean Energy Products

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DOE’s Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative would accelerate manufacturing of clean energy products and strengthen competitiveness of the U.S. clean energy sector in the global energy market.

On March 26, 2013, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a new program – the Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative – to support manufacturing of clean energy products in the U.S. The DOE announced the initiative at the opening of its Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Technology Facility in Tennessee. The facility manufactures cost-efficient and lightweight carbon fiber used in electric vehicles, energy storage components, and wind turbines. According to the DOE, carbon fiber can reduce the weight of a passenger car by 50% and enhance fuel efficiency by approximately 35%. DOE estimates that the material could cut the weight of vehicles by up to 750 pounds by 2020. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 5, 2013 at 8:30 AM

How Green Are Your Brackets?

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The 2013 NCAA Tournament has been full of upsets, but heading into the first weekend of April, the greenest pick is still standing.

Looking for the best ways to make the smallest impact on the environment may not be the first thing that typically comes to mind during March Madness. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 4, 2013 at 8:30 AM

Tesla Expects its First-ever Profit

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Tesla Motors is expecting to report its first-ever quarterly profit after sales of its all-electric Model S exceeded expectations.

The announcement about the just-ended first quarter pushed Tesla (TSLA) shares up more than 5% in premarket trading. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM

Solar-powered Plane Across America: Flight Path Announced

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Breaking Energy recently spoke with Solar Impulse co-founders Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg about their ambitious goal to fly around the world in a solar-powered airplane that uses zero liquid fuel and can fly through the night.

A major milestone along the path to that goal will be reached in the coming weeks when Solar Impulse flies from San Francisco (Moffett Airfield) and stop in four US cities including Phoenix, Dallas Fort Worth and Washington D.C. before reaching New York’s JFK airport, its final destination in early July. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 1, 2013 at 9:00 AM

The World may Consume Less Oil than Expected

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The world’s swelling population and continued economic growth will require increasing volumes of oil to power the cars, trucks, trains and planes that transport people and goods around the planet. But the Citi commodities research team has questioned the extent of that assumption in a new research report titled “Global Oil Demand Growth – the End is Nigh.”

This rethinking of global oil demand trajectory is driven by the analyst’s view that natural gas will increasingly be substituted for oil in the transportation, power generation and industrial sectors, while considerable gains in fuel economy “raise the possibility that the tipping point for oil demand may come much sooner than the markets are expecting.” Keep reading →

 /  Published March 29, 2013 at 10:30 AM

Slideshow: Shams 1 Solar Plant and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, UAE

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Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, Masdar, recently inaugurated the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant and took a group of journalists on a tour of Masdar City, a grand urban sustainability experiment.

When it reaches 130 degrees fahrenheit in the summer, the UAE requires lot of air conditioning that is currently supplied mostly with natural gas, much of it imported. The country’s rapidly expanding economy and population has caused natural gas consumption to outstrip production and imports to surpass exports. The UAE is one of the few countries to both import and export LNG. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM
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