Wind

Can Demand Response Programs Help Meet the Renewable Energy Integration Challenge?

By


California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) requires that, by 2020, all utilities in the state use renewables to generate at least 33 percent of the electricity provided to retail customers. Reaching this RPS target will also play a key role in determining whether or not California will meet its ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Many other states are in similar situations: Currently California is one of 29 states (plus the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories) (1) that have RPS targets, and another eight States and two more U.S. territories (2) have adopted renewables portfolio goals (see Figure 1).

Achieving these goals will require a number of states to rely much more heavily on electricity generated by intermittent wind and solar resources. In California, wind and solar generation are expected to provide virtually all of the additional renewable energy needed to achieve the state’s RPS target (see Figure 2). Keep reading →

 /  Published August 9, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Senate Panel Boosts Offshore Wind with Tax Credit Vote

By


It’s not the whole answer but it’s an important step in the right direction.

That’s the take of America’s nascent offshore wind industry on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee’s recent approval of a plan to extend an investment tax credit on offshore wind installations by one year until the end of 2013. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 9, 2012 at 8:30 AM

US Army Seeks $7 Billion Worth of Renewable Energy Projects

By


Hear a bugle blowing? For the beleaguered renewables industry, the cavalry may be riding to the rescue.

The US Army is inviting suppliers who can build, own and operate solar, wind, geothermal or biomass generation to qualify for a pool of contractors who will perform an anticipated $7 billion worth of work for military installations. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 8, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Wind Power Hits 57% Mark in Colorado

By


During the early morning hours of April 15, with a steady breeze blowing down Colorado’s Front Range, the state’s biggest utility set a U.S. record — nearly 57% of the electricity being generated was coming from wind power.

 /  Published August 6, 2012 at 1:30 PM

Defined by Oil and Gas, UAE Invests in a Global Diversified Energy Future

By


The United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s richest countries, blessed with extraordinary access to the kind of fossil fuels that the globe depends on. The rush to develop the oceans of oil and gas this smallish desert country sits on has transformed it from an isolated sultanate to a major player in an increasingly integrated world on the hunt for greater and more reliable access to energy.

The challenges of sudden wealth and success are not to be dismissed, and UAE officialdom is working to find ways to leverage its comparatively recent role as one of the planet’s economic leaders into longer-term leadership. The country has sought to invest more and more abroad, with many of its investments focused on the energy sector, a natural focus for a country where the wealth flows from the world’s hunger for energy commodities. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Wind Power: The Danish Example

By


Denmark has been a European haven for cleantech companies seeking to install new renewable energy infrastructure. As other European countries have labored under the impacts of an economic slowdown rooted in a currency and sovereign debt crisis, Denmark – still outside the eurozone if closely linked to it – has remained comparatively committed to ambitious clean energy goals.

Situated on a windy peninsula that divides the North and Baltic seas, Denmark has turned to wind power as an obvious mechanism for building out its clean energy capacity. Huge windmills turning serenely along the water are a feature of the above video, as are interviews with a number of officials, energy industry executives and politicians attending a recent European Wind Energy Association meeting. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 25, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Renewable and Environmental Markets Relieved at Dodd Frank Rule

By


Renewable energy developers, financiers and utilities breathed a collective sigh of relief last week when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued its long-awaited final rule on a crucial exemption from the Dodd Frank Act.

The Dodd Frank Act was enacted in 2010 after the financial crisis to restrict the trading of derivatives, a $700 trillion industry which was blamed for triggering the 2008 crisis. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 19, 2012 at 3:00 PM

Wind’s Midlife Crisis

By


As new technologies go, wind has enjoyed three decades of continuous innovation, performance and reliability improvements and falling costs – benefits of economies of scale, technological advancements and learning by doing. The law of diminishing marginal returns, however, appears to have gotten in the way of further cost reductions.

That appears to be the underlying message from a new report, The Past and Future Cost of Wind Energy with contributions of experts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and a number of European collaborators. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 13, 2012 at 2:15 PM

Big Oil Sees Big Growth for Renewable Energy

By

A police officer stands guard after the ExxonMobil annual shareholders meeting at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center May 28, 2008 in Dallas, Texas.

One of the world’s largest oil companies – ExxonMobil – expects considerable renewable energy growth over the next 30 years, primarily for power generation and mostly from wind. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 12, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Renewable Energy’s Five Year Plan: Building the Transparency Set Amid Hectic Growth

By


‘What gets measured, gets managed,’ is an long-standing cliché of business, but its truth is often self-evident when it comes to governance. In planning energy policies, regulators and businesses and even voters must have access to the right kind of data before they can even see which problems are most pressing and which solutions most viable.

The International Energy Agency’s new five-year forecast for the renewable energy sector joins the fuel-specific reports covered by its widely read oil, natural gas and coal mid-term reports. Those fossil fuels need little introduction, and in the developed countries covered by IEA and its parent organization – the OECD – production, processing, use and reserves of the traditional energy complex is very advanced and taken as fact. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 6, 2012 at 4:20 PM
Page 19 of 391...151617181920212223...39