Union Pacific Railroad just announced handsome Q3 profits driven in large part by the US energy boom. Although crude oil shipments were down from the corresponding period last year, shipments of sand for hydraulic fracturing operations have been strong. Less expensive diesel fuel also helped the rail company’s bottom line. “Today you’re seeing lots of… Keep reading →
Breaking Energy had the honor of touring Masdar City in Abu Dhabi last year – a UAE government-supported initiative to build the world’s most sustainable city – which will house research centers and corporations doing cutting-edge sustainable energy work. Masdar City reached a milestone with the opening of GE’s Ecomagination Clean Tech Hub. “The new… Keep reading →
Companies and engineers worldwide are pursuing grid-scale energy storage technology that would allow distributed renewable energy sources to easily and efficiently feed electricity into centralized power grids. Once economically commercialized, such technology would find a gargantuan market. And a US-based company will jump ahead of the competition next year with its molten salt storage technique.… Keep reading →
Energy companies love to brag about being the world’s largest, first or producing the most of something and the bragging is about to begin. The Shams 1 concentrated solar plant located in the UAE’s Western Region is currently the world’s largest, but not for long, as an enormous project in the US western desert is… Keep reading →
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 →
The Shams 1 concentrated solar power plant was inaugurated earlier this week in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, UAE. At 100 megawatts, Shams 1 is currently the largest operational CSP plant in the world. The project is noteworthy because it is a major step forward for renewable energy technology, and CSP in particular, but also because it was developed in an Opec country. Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, partnered with French oil major Total and Spain’s energy infrastructure company Abengoa. Breaking Energy attended the proceedings, along with several other international journalists, as Masdar’s guest. Masdar is a subsidiary of Mubadala, a UAE government-owned investment vehicle.
“With the addition of Shams 1, Masdar’s renewable energy portfolio accounts for almost 68 percent of the Gulf’s renewable energy capacity and nearly 10 percent of the world’s installed CSP capacity”, according to the company. Keep reading →
