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Two new massive 350MW arrays in the Netherlands will supply power to Dutch people at €87/MWh, which translates into under 10 cents/kWh.
The United Kingdom will almost certainly miss its 2020 targets for renewable energy, the National Grid has said.
Solar is becoming cheaper - fast.
Ikea made it much easier for British people to green their homes – for a while. Then, after the government reduced subsidies for renewable energy, the company quietly stopped selling the panels, and now they’ve resumed them again. Why Ikea selling solar panels matters When Ikea starts selling something, it’s safe to say it’s become mainstream. […]
We may be reaching a historic moment.
Scotland has met and overcome its objective for green energy in 2015
MIT researchers have created a powerful new tool for energy monitoring: a citywide urban building energy model of unprecedented scale and detail.
According to a study conducted by NASA in 2013, using nuclear energy instead of coal saved almost 2 million lives since 1979 - by allowing us to not use coal.
Denmark's wind turbines set a spectacular world record as they alone generated over 42 percent of domestic electricity use in 2015 - the most ever done by any country.
A new study from Stanford University found that the world could realistically go 100% renewable in a few decades, using only wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). Right now, we’re still a long way to go. Less than 5% of the planet’s energy demands are satisfied with renewables, but things are improving fast. “As of the end of […]
Almost all of Costa Rica’s energy came from renewable sources in 2015, making it one of the few countries to achieve virtual independence from fossil fuels. The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) announced that the country achieved “99 percent renewable electricity generation” this year, running 100% renewable in 285 days so far. The bulk of the […]
The Scottish government announced that it approved the construction of UK's first, and the world's largest floating offshore wind farm.
Morocco is poised to become a solar superpower, as they revealed plans for the largest concentrated solar power plant, powered by the Saharan sun.
Scientists working at Monash University in Melbourne have developed the most energy-efficient ‘artificial photosynthesis’ method to date. The process relies on running an electrical current through water to separate it into oxygen and hydrogen, and the team behind it say it could be used to power our home on the cheap in just a few years.
Investment in the renewable project is estimated to reach £650m ($1bn), which will be partly funded through aids from the European Commission, and construction works would create around 1,100 jobs. Environmental technology firm Abengoa, based in Spain, along with Japanese industry giant Toshiba will be leading the project for their client, MGT Teesside, subsidiary to the British utility MGT Power.
Most days are windy in Denmark, but Thursday was unusually so – it was so windy that the country got its entire energy needs and more solely from wind turbines. During the afternoon it was already reported the Nordic nation’s wind turbines were producing 116 per cent of Denmark’s electricity needs, and the figure rose to […]
Germany is taking some serious strides in its attempt to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent until 2020: the European country announced that it will shut down several coal-fired plants and move towards more sustainable energy sources. “Coal-fired plants with a capacity of 2.7 gigawatts will be shut down,” said the government sources, who declined to […]
In March, we were telling you about Tesla Motors' new development, a new battery that could take your home off the grid and eliminate one of the major problems associated with renewable energy - storing it. Now, Tesla is already rolling out the new generation with some remarkable feature. The coolest one? Liquid cooling!
More job opportunities could be created by investing clean energy sources than fossil fuels.
In only 15 years, renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro) could surpass fossil fuels as the main provider of energy. According to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report, renewables could provide more than 50% of the energy market by 2050. But even so, they warn, without bolder emission cuts, we'll be blowing past our current climate targets.
Converting the power infrastructure to rely on clean, renewable energy seems like a daunting, expensive and some would say, unachievable task. But Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and his colleagues, including U.C. Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, are the first to outline how each of the 50 states can achieve such a transition by 2050.
The island country is preparing to launch a new energy policy, seeking to curb costs and promote the use of environmentally friendly sources of power.
In its “Energy Security and Sustainability Strategy” (ES2 Strategy) report, the US army outlines the steps it should take to increase resilience and adapt to an ever changing world. Energy makes the go world round, and for an army it's literally a matter of life and death. Not surprisingly, the authors note given the current climate of affairs the "army will prioritize solutions that reduce multiple resources. The Army can use energy more efficiently by purchasing energy efficient products, modernizing buildings and utility systems, purchasing energy efficient vehicles, and using more renewable/alternative energy sources." Basically, being dependent on a finite resource (oil) is a security vulnerability, which isn't something new. Military strategists have been aware of this for a long time - maybe the most during WWII when many lives were claimed in battles over oil rigs in North Africa and the Middle East, and oil refineries were being bombed on the clock. What's changed today is the feasibility of renewable energy sources. Drawing the line, in those situations were oil is a liability (and we can only expect these to become ever numerous in the future), it'll be scrapped in favor of renewable energy systems, both for generating and storing energy.
A shocking conclusion came from an International Monetary Fund report: they found that fossil fuels will be subsidized by a whopping $5.3 trillion dollars, way more than total health spendings of the entire world combined.
In unanimous vote, the city of Vancouver, Canada, passed its Greenest City Action Plan – to become the world’s greenest city by 2020; one of their goals is to use only renewable energy in only 5 years. In light of that and other recent developments, it’s starting to feel like much of the world might actually go […]
The world's first grid-connected wave power station has just been activated off the coast of Australia. Taking energy directly from the waves and sending them to the grid is a remarkable achievement which will hopefully be replicated in Australia, as well as in other parts of the world.
The Dutch Windwheel is a concept for a sustainable landmark that will not only generate wind energy silently, but also capture rainwater, recycle tap water, produce biogas - and most importantly, house 72 apartments. It will also have some rotating cabins providing a brilliant view of the Dutch city of Rotterdam.
Australian solar researchers have converted over 40 percent of solar light’s energy into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported by any team for this kind of system. The key for the design is a custom filter which captures sunlight that is normally wasted by commercial solar cells on tower. “This is the highest efficiency ever reported […]
Among the more common arguments against wind turbines you usually have noise and ugliness. Personally, I really don’t find wind turbines ugly and studies have found that generally wind turbines are very quiet but hey – this is the general perception. For these reasons, French engineers have spent three years developing beautiful and quiet urban versions of […]
It may be gloomy, windy and rainy, but the Scottish weather may have its upsides too. in October, Scotland generated enough power from wind to power up every single home in Scotland and a bit more. “Wind turbines alone generated an estimated 982,842MWh of electricity, enough to power 3,045,000 homes in the UK – equivalent […]
We keep hearing more about developments made in the photovoltaic field, but we have to keep in mind that this is not the only way in which solar energy can be harvested and used. A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants, absorbing […]
Denmark’s climate minister says that the country should ban coal use by 2025 to make the Nordic nation a leader in fighting global warming; other measures he encourages are using bicycles and improving the wind energy infrastructure. Denmark is already one of the world’s leaders when it comes to green energy. They have considerable oil and natural gas […]
Germany has taken a pioneering role in terms of renewable energy, in Europa and even worldwide. Many countries are now negotiating or even applying renewable energy systems, but in Germany the situation is different – most of renewables are owned by individuals (as opposed to companies), and most of them are produced in the rural […]
Kenya has announced the launch the world’s largest single turbine geothermal power plant, which will add 140 Megawatts (MW) to the country’s national electricity grid. The project will bring much needed cheap energy to an impoverished country and fuel development in the area. A suitable area The Olkaria Area is an region located immediately to the […]
A trio of newly published studies showed once again that natural gas is not a clean energy bridge – the studies highlighting the various problems associated with natural gas. Firstly, it was shown that emissions databases underestimate the methane released from fossil-fuel extraction in the U.S. Southwest. “A global gas boom is not a replacement for […]
The UK’s first floating solar farm has been unveiled in Berkshire; the array features 800 photovoltaic panels and has a capacity of 200W. The project cost £250,000 ($405,400) and has been installed on a reservoir at Sheeplands Farm near Wargrave. Solar energy provides many advantages, but also raises many problems. Among those problems is land area […]
I was reading this morning how excited some journalists were in reporting “the biggest oil discovery in decades”, and I got a little curios: how big is it? According to US oil company Apache, the field could have potentially up to 300 million barrels of oil in place – Australia gets a lot of oil, […]
Even though coal is still Germany's number one energy source, renewable energy is developing incredibly fast, with wind and solar energy catching up fast. If the trend continues, they will soon become the dominant energy source.
A new study conducted by Stanford Researchers demonstrates a practical “roadmap” for converting California’s all-purpose energy infrastructure over to renewable sources by 2050. The paper proposes running the state on a mixture of wind, water and sunlight (WWS). To make things even more interesting, the paper does it all with available technologies – of course, […]
Wind is already the cheapest form of energy in Denmark, and prices will plummet in the near future, the country’s government declared – 2 years from now, in 2016, wind energy will be 2 times cheaper than fossil fuels energy. Wind and solar energy are already nearing parity with energy from fossil fuels in many […]
Renewable energy is clean, getting cheaper by the day and in many respects becoming more efficient thanks to rapid advancements coming from the world’s top-notch labs. It has one major drawback – storage. Before people can find a clever and cost-effective way to store all of that excess energy from wind and solar farms, chances […]
The energy industry simply isn’t keeping up with what Elon Musk wants to do. Musk, chairman of the solar installer SolarCity and founder of electric car company Tesla Motors announced that SolarCity will acquire a solar panel manufacturer and start building factories “an order of magnitude bigger” than those existing today. This comes just a […]
The falling cost of renewable energy shouldn’t surprise anyone by now – all we’re waiting for is the tipping point where some type of renewable energy becomes more cost effective than conventional energy – but what if we’ve already reached that point? Portugal is one of Europe’s (and the world’s) leading countries in terms of […]
The problem with many sources of clean energy is the limited conditions which they can use to produce energy – solar energy doesn’t work during the night, wind energy requires wind (heh), geothermal energy is complicated and can only be applied to some places. But if Solar Wind Energy Tower has its way, Arizona may soon get […]
It may be one heck of a coincidence, or it could be the fact that renewable energy causes a major drop in emissions – choose your pick. Remarkable new figures from Spain’s grid operator have revealed that greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s energy sector have fallen by approximately 23.1% last year, as wind and […]
Stanford researchers claim the inherent disordered molecular structure of polymer semiconductors is actually desirable. Current organic solar cells made with semiconducting polymers try to mimic orderly silicon structures as much as possible; this direction of research may be fundamentally wrong according to the Stanford researchers. A balance between molecular order and disorder at the polymer […]
The world is spending half a trillion dollars on fossil fuel subsidies every year, according to a new report released by the Overseas Development Institude (ODI). Let me say that again: about $500.000.000.000 are spent each year with the aim of promoting the beneficial economic and social outcomes of the oil industry – that’s what […]
It almost seems too good to be true – a novel device that uses only sunlight and wastewater to produce hydrogen gas could provide a sustainable energy source, while also improving the efficiency of the waste water system. A sustainable, self-driven system In a paper published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, a […]
France’s ban on hydraulic fracking was completed, with the court upholding a 2011 law which prohibited the practice and cancelled all exploration permits. The decision posted on the court’s website said the ban “conforms to the constitution” and is not “disproportionate,” effectively protecting it from any future legal challenge. In other words, the decision is […]
A new government report by the UK’s Department of Energy And Climate Change shows that the country has reached record rates in terms of the energy it derives from renewable sources, for the second consecutive quarter: 15.5% of the country’s electricity came from renewables, a jump of 5.8% compared to the last period. About half […]
