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 →
Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange March 21, 2012 just after the opening bell.
There seem to be few limits to the number of risks that can circle any new energy project, whether it be an oil well or an efficiency-boosting technology designed for the home. From politics to privacy to financing to a lack of metrics, the obstacles often inhibit needed investment in the US and abroad as infrastructure ages while global demand grows. Keep reading →
Fuel cells’ prospects of becoming a significant energy source are growing as costs decline and technology advances, helping the two leading players in the US industry, FuelCell Energy, and Bloom Energy.
In a signal of growing confidence in the full cell business, Bloom Energy is the subject of speculation that it will go public this year, said Sam Jaffe, research manager at IDC Energy Insights. Keep reading →
Men with Cabot Oil and Gas work on a natural gas valve at a hydraulic fracturing site on January 18, 2012 in South Montrose, Pennsylvania.
The oil and gas industry is facing a traffic jam of federal regulators rushing to regulate hydraulic fracturing, and industry representatives says the Obama administration needs to do more to consolidate new rulemaking. Keep reading →
Mining giant Anglo American has traditionally been treated by energy markets largely as a coal producer, and it remains a key provider of the fossil fuel, but the firm’s position as a supplier of materials like copper used in new energy technology and revamped energy infrastructure, is gaining it new attention from the energy business.
Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll and Financial Director Rene Midori discuss Anglo American’s year-end results in this video, and while both linger over high-profile dealmaking in the diamond business in 2011, the importance of new expansions in raw materials mining is repeatedly underlined as the two discuss ways the company has invested throughout a multi-year commodity cycle that has boosted its results. Keep reading →
The US energy system will be transformed beyond recognition in the next quarter century, but the only certainties are that no one knows what it will look like and it will cost a lot of money.
Electricity’s future is about “disruptive technologies,” speakers including Secretary of Energy Steven Chu told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and the Department of Energy’s National Electricity Forum Feb. 5-9 in Washington DC, and the power industry needs “partnerships” with state regulators to invest in the uncertain new era. Keep reading →
Policymakers must make more effort to de-risk geothermal exploration for investors and companies, said a vice-president at a leading US generation and utility company.
Jonathan Weisgall, VP of legislative and regulatory affairs at MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, said: “We need to de-risk this industry. The tech costs have to come down for investors too, and all the time there is the spectre of low natural gas prices. But above all we need regulatory certainty.” Keep reading →
Investors representing staggering sums of money gathered at the headquarters of United Nations to hear a day of discussions on climate risk and energy solutions this week.
The packed room included bankers, pension fund executives, policy-makers and the usual crowd of climate change professionals largely made up of consultants that cycle in and out of public and private organizations wearing different hats but often propounding the same message. Their message is one that seemed welcome in the last decade – that markets could be harnessed to solve climate change problems, that a price on carbon emissions would be good not just for health but for businesses currently facing (in the oft-quoted Nicholas Stern phrase) “a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen.” Keep reading →
