Consumer electronics could be the winners in the quest for energy storage – cleantech’s holy grail – rather than electric vehicles or the integration of renewables.
Dan Adler, president of the influential California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF), told last week’s Cleantech Forum in San Francisco: “It is the holy grail and that’s why we continue to focus on this notion that there’s some piece missing.” Keep reading →
IT is poised to revolutionize the energy industry by ceding control of consumption and generation to consumers and lead to an “age of empowerment”, an influential figure in the wholesale power sector said yesterday.
David Crane, the outspoken CEO of NRG Energy, told the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco: “We’ve come a long way from the days of the legendary Henry Ford and his comment that the American consumer can have any color of model T as long as it’s black. Keep reading →
Amid rising gasoline prices at filling stations across the US, energy prices are still too cheap to force dramatic changes in consumption, Shell’s chief executive said recently.
Peter Voser told Silicon Valley investors at a dinner held by the Churchill Club: “For certain things energy prices need to go up otherwise the behavior will not change. Keep reading →
Solar trade tariffs released today in a preliminary ruling from the US government were much lower than expected and would disappoint petitioners trying to block cheap Chinese photovoltaic imports, said industry advocates.
The Department of Commerce announced its preliminary determination in the countervailing duty (CVD) investigation of imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China, which was initiated last year at the request of SolarWorld Industries America, the largest PV manufacturer in the US. Keep reading →
General Wesley Clark became the latest recruit to the clean energy industry yesterday with a call to arms for the American solar industry.
Gen. Clark told delegates at PV America West in San Jose yesterday that the solar industry could play a pivotal role in kick-starting the US economy. Keep reading →
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory biofuels lab.
Corn-based ethanol production is set to peak this year as the Environmental Protection Agency’s advanced biofuels mandate has capped production of conventional ethanol at 15 billion gallons, or about 357 million barrels. Keep reading →
Developers of new advanced biofuels technologies are evaluating the entire energy production, service and delivery chains for commercial opportunities.
OriginOil’s ambitions are much larger than its small IPO from last year’s registration suggests, and the company claims it has pioneered technology that will revolutionize the service industry for advanced biofuels as Halliburton and Schlumberger had done in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. Keep reading →
Golden Gate Bridge
Over the next decade, a battle over the next generation of oil will be waged not in a Middle Eastern Gulf, but San Francisco’s Bay. Keep reading →
Growth in California’s solar market will be driven by demand for wholesale distributed generation, as utilities shift away from central power stations to rooftop installations of one megawatt or less, said the executive director of a leading clean power consultancy.
Craig Lewis from the Clean Coalition told the PHOTON Solar Electric Utility Conference in San Francisco that he had been advising the California governor on his 20 GW of additional renewables by 2020. Lewis compared installation rates between California and Germany: in 2011 Germans installed an additional 7.5 GW and while California added around 40 0MW. Last year, the US had an installed solar capacity of 3 GW, versus 18 GW in Germany. Keep reading →
Californian utilities are showing signs of softening their resistance to policy that would have accelerated the deployment of cost-effective solar in the state, the chief of a leading trade body in the US said last week.
Julia Hamm, president and CEO of the Solar Electric Power Association, told the PHOTON Solar Electric Utility Conference in San Francisco last week: “In 2007/2008, feed in tariff conversations really started to pick up here in the US. There was significant resistance from utilities toward the concept of the feed in tariff. My own personal perspective is the idea of a utility mandated to buy power at a price that they can’t control is not appealing to them. That was the initial opposition.” Keep reading →
