New discoveries of potential “tight oil” deposits are being made around the US, and no one is sure just how much oil the nation has waiting in geological formations that can now be tapped through new technology.
But the discoveries have already created one boom area, bringing a sparsely populated region of North Dakota gushes of jobs, people and problems no one foresaw. Keep reading →
Once an obscure technology, smart grid nearly become a household name this year when the White House announced this June a multi-pronged smart grid strategy.
“Even in today’s information age, many utilities don’t have real-time information about the state of the grid,” the White House said at the time. It lauded two high school girls, Daniela Lapidous & Shreya Indukuri, juniors at the Harker Upper School in San Jose, California who successfully implemented a smart sub-metering system in their school. Keep reading →
During the recent economic downturn, Springdale Lumber closed its timber mill in the already economically stressed Stevens County, an hour’s drive north of Spokane, Washington, leaving 25 employees without jobs.
When the Recovery Act offered business a chance for new life, local small business owners Dale and Sharon Borgford decided to reuse the mill–as an energy generation plant. The mill, in turn, will use recylced energy–from biomass–to produce electricity. For that they received $771,00 from the Recovery Act‘s DOE’s State Energy Program as well as $4 million from the US Forest Service. Keep reading →
Ambitious offshore wind targets in the UK could result in the country becoming the world leader in the technology and help accelerate the global industry through lower costs, a British energy minister said yesterday.
“We have to accept that there are some technologies where we can really influence the global price and there are others where we can’t,” said Charles Hendry, minister of state for the Department of Energy and Climate. “UK offshore is a fantastic example of where the work that we do here will influence the global price. There are other areas, solar for example where the UK market is not significantly large enough to change the price. So we’re focusing our resources and efforts on where we can see the change in the pricing structure.” Keep reading →
Here is the current draft text circulating #durban bit.ly/ttT0Ns
@kate_sheppard
It took three years, but the EPA has finally decided that hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Wyoming has in fact been contaminating local ground water.
When residents of Pavilion, Wyoming claimed three years ago that fracking fluid–a mix of water, sand and chemicals–as well as gas had leaked into their water supply, the EPA constructed two monitoring wells in the area. The agency also tested and retested public and private drinking water wells. Keep reading →
Building awareness of wind energy usage for consumers is part of a multi-pronged strategy that will help companies like Danish wind giant Vestas compete even in an increasingly challenging operating environment.
The company is a major sponsor of the WindMade label, an effort that has garnered support from more than a dozen new corporate entities since it launched this summer, and which celebrated its first six months and its new members at a recent event in New York City. Among the new members were Deutsche Bank and global medical technology firm BD. Keep reading →
Get used to the tail wagging the dog.
Until a few years ago, renewable energy resources were like a small tail on a big dog–utility owned and operated fossil-fueled generation. With their increased penetration in many parts of the world, the tail has grown big relative to the dog. In a few cases, the tail is now wagging the dog, rather than the other way around. The trend can only grow over time with important implications for both the dog and the tail. It is already happening in certain places and during certain times. With passage of time, it will become more commonplace, and troublesome. Keep reading →
For the first time, EPA implicates fracking for causing groundwater pollution http://huff.to/sMQlo2 @HuffingtonPost
Energy Politics Supercycle Falters: AOL Energy Comment
By Peter GardettMarkets run in cycles; we are all at the mercy of ups and downs in the macro and micro. Commodities markets, including those for energy, are often held to the dictates of “supercycles.” Infrastructure for commodities is so expensive, development timelines are so lengthy and the underlying shifts in demand and supply occur over such long phases that energy prices and resulting investments rise and fall over decades, not months.
The modern energy economy was born in one great supercycle around the middle of the twentieth century, and we are still its heirs. In the wake of a privately-sponsored boom in energy technology development and deployment in the 1920s, the US government responded to the inequities of the Great Depression of the 1930s by investing in huge electrification projects, choosing technologies, firms and energy types by fiat as it went. Keep reading →