Renewable Energy News

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Power Engineering's Lindsay Morris hosted this year's Renewable Energy Executive Roundtable with five executives in the clean energy sector: Matt Burkhart, vice president of electric and fuel procurement, San Diego Gas & Electric; Rhone Resch, president and CEO, Solar Energy Industries Association; Karl Gawell, executive director, Geothermal Energy Association; Jim Ivany, president of Bechtel's Renewable Power business group; and Rob Gramlich, Senior Vice President of Public Policy, American Wind Energy Association.

I was saddened to hear the news that Larry Hagman, the former star of the hit TV show “Dallas” had died over the weekend.  Hagman, whom I interviewed in 2010 at Intersolar North America, was a great solar advocate. He told me that his decision to install solar on his ranch in California came shortly after the great blackout of 2003. Originating in

Relying on the sun to produce energy always leads to the question: what happens when's the sun's not shining? Can the energy produced be stored? The good news is, companies like California-based SolarReserve know the answer to those questions, and they're busily implementing energy storage technology in innovative ways. Even better, local governments are getting behind those efforts in growing numbers.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S is in talks with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to build the biggest offshore turbine for the $81 billion wind energy industry, bolstered by securing financing yesterday through 2015.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) combined different microscopic imaging methods to gain a greater understanding of the relationships between biomass cell wall structure and enzyme digestibility, a breakthrough that could lead to optimizing sugar yields and lowering the costs of making biofuels.

On-bill repayment has received a great deal of attention during the last few years as a potential approach to expanding the reach of energy efficiency financing in the residential and commercial sectors. With on-bill repayment, utilities or third-party lenders cover the upfront cost of energy efficiency retrofits and customers pay back the loans through their utility bills.

Does a Riverside County, CA, residential energy financing program put thousands of homeowners on a collision course with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)? In a proposed rule-making, the FHFA has suggested that Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) policies represent a threat to the safety and soundness of mortgages held by government-backe

The installation of small wind turbines is growing rapidly in Italy since the introduction of feed-in tariffs, according to a report by the Department of Engineering at Milan's Polytechnical University (Politecnico di Milano Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale).

Grid companies in the U.K. and Denmark are completing studies for the first subsea cable linking the countries, in a bid to boost electricity trading and help integrate a growing share of wind power output.

Growing Industry The growth of the solar industry may soon face the reality of not having enough skilled workers to satisfy demand, suggests a recent report by The Solar Foundation and the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). Despite a dragging economy overall, installed solar capacity has increased dramatically in the p

Wind-turbine installations in India will plummet this year as lenders shun projects amid a policy vacuum in the third-biggest market for the machines, according to BlackRock Inc.-backed Mytrah Energy Ltd.

The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight's energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a "solar energy funnel" that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.

Britain's electricity customers will be paying higher bills by 2020 to cover the costs of expanding renewable energy supplies such as solar and wind, government officials said.

China started a probe to determine if suppliers from the U.S., South Korea and the European Union are dumping polysilicon in the world's biggest maker of solar panels and if retroactive duties should be imposed.

An expanding world population, coupled with increasing concerns about resource scarcity, land availability, biodiversity conservation and global warming is fostering interest in sustainable agriculture technologies. Large companies and clean technology investors are focused on energy, and some are following water. Yet very few are tracking breakthr

There are about 10,000 old municipal landfills in the United States that have reached capacity, and now their waste is sealed underground.  These landfills are taking up space across the country, and are often in areas close to dense populations were land is valuable.  A developing trend has been to utilize this land and construct a solar photovolt

China dominated the global wind market in 2011, installing three times as many wind rotor blades on its wind farms than the U.S., its closest rival.

Sweden will not respond to calls from wind-power developers to boost targets for alternative energy output, for fear of undermining investor confidence.

While the United States is busy charging headlong towards a fiscal cliff and the likely expiration of the wind energy Production Tax Credit, the country of Scotland is busy showing everyone how things really ought to be done.