Renewable Energy News

The past year has been an exciting one for the hydropower community as hydroelectricity continues to become an increasingly more popular consideration in renewable energy strategies.

The U.S. biomass industry suffered a frustrating year in 2012, with EPA regulatory uncertainty the dominant theme. The Presidential Election heavily influenced the pace of EPA regulation and the time of writing the long-awaited Boiler MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) Rule and its companion the Non-Hazardous Secondary Material (NHSM) Rule, which are still incomplete, while the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule may not be completed until 2014.

Developers, manufacturers, investors and other renewable energy industry stakeholders need to know where the next big market is going to be so that they can adjust their business decisions accordingly.

Solar developers in Spain are trying to build Europe's first large-scale plants to sell electricity at market prices, taking advantage of a crash in equipment costs and some of the continent's highest levels of sunlight.

The merger between two of Taiwan's leading solar cell makers NSP and DelSolar is not just a good move for the two firms but also a positive sign that consolidation is finally happening in Taiwan's solar industry. This according to M.J. Wang, an analyst for the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center, a branch of Taiwan's leading research center, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

The past year has brought about a boom of wind energy project completions in the U.S. as developers have rushed to take advantage of the Production Tax Credit (PTC). Meanwhile, Latin American and Canada have also seen tremendous growth, signs that wind energy in other parts of the Americas is healthy and growing, despite what may happen near-term in the U.S.

Worldwide, agriculture contributes between 14 and 30 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of its heavy land, water, and energy use—that's more than every car, train, and plane in the global transportation sector. Livestock production alone contributes around 18 percent of global emissions, including 9 percent of carbon dioxide, 35 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide.

Chancellor Merkel's government has occupied the term Energiewende (clean energy transition) and made it its own, as if it had coined the moniker in the first place. In fact, its origins go back deep into West Germany’s mass movements and ultimately have their source in the United States, during the short-lived alternative energy boom of the 1970s.

When we launched the first Ontario Feed-in Tariff Forum in October 2010, the focus was on how to build an industry that could support the massive amount of project activity expected while meeting domestic content rules. Today, while some of the players have changed, the market is in place and the new question is: Can the program sustain the industr

Ontario's subsidies for clean-energy producers that use local technology were ruled in breach of World Trade Organization regulations, supporting complaints by the European Union and Japan against Canada.

A new report in today's China Daily is providing the clearest indication yet that Beijing is delivering some tough medicine to many of the nation's smaller solar panel and polysilicon makers by letting them go backrupt to return the struggling sector to health. Up until now, much of the talk in China has focused on rescuing the money-bleeding secto

Fossil fuel power plants generate ample waste heat that can be used to make more electricity. Here is a novel idea to do just that: creating a huge vortex of warm air to cause a change in pressure at the bottom in order to drive a turbine-generator.

Welcome to Solar Fred's annual solar marketing wish list, 2013 edition. If you missed my previous years' wishes and still want to make them come true, bless your solar marketing heart. See 2010 here, 2011 here, and 2012 here. This year’s theme, “Stand out and educate,” is familiar to anyone who’s received an email from me, since it’s a quote in my

After several painfully slow years for geothermal developments, industry advocates will be glad to hear that 2012 turned out to be one of those most successful years in the past decade, according to Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA). With more than 100 megawatts (MW) of capacity brought online and plenty of burgeoning international markets, the geothermal industry has reason to celebrate – despite some nagging ongoing barriers to development.

Ratcheting up trade tensions with China, the U.S. increased import duties on wind turbine towers produced by Chengxi Shipyard Co. and CS Wind Corp. as economic talks between the two nations opened in Washington.

 SolarEdge 2012 Happy Holidays Clip One thing I can say about the music for this year’s video: the decision to go with Gangnam Style was easy and almost unanimous.  So we had a song and we had a concept – we wanted to do the solar dance, something fun and happy that everyone can relate to.  We also knew we want it to include SolarEdge employees onl

It is no secret that the last couple years have been rough for PV manufacturers globally. Panel makers have had to contend with compressed profit margins and an oversaturated market, both of which have driven many firms to shutter operations and enter into bankruptcy protection. Facing the difficult task of betting on which companies will be around in the future to honor product warranties, PV project developers, owners, and financiers approached the insurance industry to see if it could devise a solution for their concerns. The response came in the form of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) warranty insurance.

The federal government provides several valuable incentives to promote alternative energy investments. Many of these incentives take the form of favorable federal income tax benefits.

2012 was a big year for solar, both domestically and globally, with some unlikely players throwing their hats into the ring and upping the ante on achievable power generating capacity. Here's a wrap-up of some of the year's most impactful events in the solar industry, with a little added perspective from some experts in the field.

The European Union granted 1.2 billion euros ($1.58 billion) in subsidies to 23 renewable- energy projects under a program to promote low-carbon technology as a part of the fight against global warming.