• U.S. lacks infrastructure to increase use of ethanol fuel

    Scientists at Purdue University say the United States lacks the infrastructure to meet the federal Renewable Fuel Standard with ethanol; researchers say the United States has hit the “blending wall” and lacks the ability to consume more ethanol than what is currently produced; less than 3 percent of vehicles on the road are equipped to handle ethanol fuels and there are only 2,000 pumps; the federal Renewable Fuel Standard requires nearly three times as much renewable fuel to be produced per year by 2022

  • Army seeks to go off the grid at Fort Bliss

    At Fort Bliss Army commanders seek to power the base using renewable power sources by 2015; plans include using solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass; military bases around the country are increasingly looking at renewable energy to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid disruption in the event of a terrorist attack

  • Pentagon prohibited from purchasing Chinese solar panels

    Obama signs military appropriations bill that prohibits the Pentagon from purchasing Chinese solar panels; the “Buy American” provision is part of a larger trade dispute with China over subsidies; the Pentagon is investing heavily in solar to reduce its energy consumption and increase fighting effectiveness; the bill is likely to raise costs for the military

  • China says it has mastered the process of reprocessing nuclear fuel

    One way to extend to energy productivity of nuclear fuel is to reprocess it after it has been used; reprocessing nuclear fuel costs significantly more than using it once and storing it as waste; it is also controversial because extracted plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons; China has just announced that it has mastered the technology for reprocessing fuel from nuclear power plants, potentially boosting the supplies of carbon-free electricity to keep the country’s economy booming

  • The best place for a wind turbine: 30,000 feet above ground

    At altitude of 2,000 feet (610 meters), wind velocity is two to three times greater than at ground level; since power production goes up with the cube of that wind velocity, this means that at 2,000 feet above ground, wind produces 8 to 27 times the power produced by wind at ground level; if we send turbines farther aloft, into the 150 mph (240 kph) jet stream at 30,000 feet (9,150 meters), than power production grows from 500 watts per meter for ground-based wind turbines to about 20,000, 40,000 watts per square meter; this is very high energy density — and NASA is examining the project’s feasibility

  • Safety concerns remain about Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design

    The United States and the United Kingdom are yet to approve the latest reactor design from Westinghouse; regulators in both countries are not convinced that the reactor can effectively withstand man-made or natural disasters; these concerns notwithstanding, China is pushing forward with an ambitious nuclear energy program which will see sixty AP1000 reactors built by 2010; the scope and pace of the Chinese program, and the fact that at its core is a reactor with possible design weaknesses, are a cause of more concerns

  • Desalinating water, producing hydrogen, treating wastewater -- simultaneously

    Fresh water and reusable energy: humans are on a constant hunt for a sustainable supply of both; trouble is, water purification requires a lot of energy, while utility companies need large amounts of water for energy production; researchers from the University of Colorado Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science may have discovered an answer

  • Fusion power nears

    The long-sought goal of a practical fusion-power reactor has inched closer to reality with new experiments from MIT’s experimental Alcator C-Mod reactor, the highest-performance university-based fusion device in the world; MIT advance helps remove contaminants that slow fusion reactions

  • Declining energy quality root cause of current recession

    A new concept — the Energy Intensity Ratio (EIR) — measures how much profit is obtained by energy consumers relative to energy producers; the higher the EIR, the more economic value consumers (including businesses, governments and people) get from their energy; to get the U.S. economy growing again, Americans will have to increase the U.S. EIR by producing and using energy more efficiently

  • World running out of cheap coal

    Most estimates of coal reserves suggest there is plenty to last at least a couple of hundred years, and a new report does not dispute this; the report says, rather, that using this coal will become progressively more expensive as the world is running out of coal that can be easily and cheaply recovered

  • Militants kidnap 7 from Nigerian Exxon platform

    After the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden boasted that he used an operation which cost al Qaeda $500,000 to finance to inflict a $500 billion damage on the U.S. economy; this was not a mere boast: experts say it was an indication that econo-jihad was an integral part of al Qaeda’s strategy to weaken and defeat the West; the recent BP disaster offered an example of one tactics terrorists may pursue in order to inflict serious economic and environmental damage on the United States and other countries: attack off-shore oil rigs: these rigs are utterly vulnerable to attack, and the damage such an attack can do is considerable; in Nigeria, a militant organization is already attacking oil rigs — if, for now, only to kidnap rig workers in order to blackmail their employers for money and political concessions; the ease with which such attacks are carried out should give all of us a pause

  • Norway looking to osmotic power generation

    Water-based energy generation conjures up pictures of towering hydro-electric dams, submerged tidal turbines, and bobbing wave-energy converters; the energy embodied in moving water — which all of these technologies exploit — is one way to make electricity from the sea, but it is not the only one; in Scandinavia, a pilot power station is demonstrating that another of the sea’s defining characteristics, saltiness, could also be harnessed to provide electricity

  • Sea-based energy could supply 50% of Europe's needs by 2050

    By 2050 Europe could get up to 50 percent of its electricity needs from renewable marine sources; marine renewable energies include harnessing the power of offshore wind, waves, tides, and ocean currents as well as exploiting salinity and temperature gradients and using algae for biofuel production

  • Day of using nuclear fusion to generate power from sea water nears

    New X-ray imaging capability developed at Sandia National Laboratory may help remove a major impediment in the worldwide, multi-decade, multibillion dollar effort to harness nuclear fusion to generate electrical power from sea water

  • Oil will run dry before substitutes roll out: study

    At the current pace of research and development, global oil will run out ninety years before replacement technologies; the authors of the new study say the findings are a warning that current renewable-fuel targets are not ambitious enough to prevent harm to society, economic development and natural ecosystems