Renewable Energy News

Graphene is the thinnest and strongest material known to man. The pure carbon substance is 100 times stronger than steel and thin enough that an ounce could cover twenty-eight football fields. It's also transparent, electrically conductive, flexible and cheap to produce – all properties that could allow it to revolutionize a number of industries, including green technology.

Net metering is a common distributed renewable energy policy in the United States, allowing individuals to “turn back” their meter (and reduce their electric bill) by generating on-site electricity.  But utility accounting systems typically prevent people from sharing the output from a single, common "community" solar or wind project. Virtual (or g

MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., the power provider owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is targeting renewable energy deals amid high utility valuations, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Goodman said.

Innovative engineering and design is turning a 30-year-old flood storage dam into a hydroelectric power producer at Jordan Dam.

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After being bombarded with political ads for the past few months, most of us are relieved we no longer encounter them everywhere we turn. But imagine if you heard one like this:

With the expiration of the wind energy Production Tax Credit looming and the clock ticking rapidly away to the end of 2012, a bipartisan group of U.S. governors is urging Congress to act now to save jobs. In a joint press conference held today, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) stressed that uncertainty over the extension of the wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) is already beginning to have an impact on renewable energy jobs.

Soft costs can be pretty tough. The cost of solar installations can be generally separated into "hard" costs — representing primary components such as modules, racking, inverters — and soft costs including legal, permitting, and financing. While the former group — particularly modules — have dropped dramatically over the last several years, the latter have not. According to a recent NREL analysis, these costs represent roughly 30% of both residential and utility installations (slightly less for commercial-host systems). See Figure 1 below.

China's $20 billion solar industry is avoiding loan defaults and mergers by taking aid from local governments, preserving jobs at money-losing companies such as LDK Solar Co., the world's second-biggest maker of solar cells.

Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released the findings of an economic analysis indicating as much as 18 percent of the country's coal-fired energy generating capacity should be considered for closure. The study found as many as 353 generators in 31 states, totaling 59 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity, likely will be more expensive to operate after installing modern pollution control equipment than switching to cleaner energy alternatives such as natural gas, renewable energy, or using greater energy efficiency measures. These potential closures are in addition to 41 GW of already announced coal retirements.

Overcapacity is the biggest issue facing the global solar manufacturing industry, and nowhere is the issue more apparent — and the losses deeper — than in China and Taiwan. Together these countries account for over 70 percent of solar cell manufacturing. GTM Research estimates that China alone has the capacity to manufacture 59 GW of solar modules — dwarfing even rosiest demand forecasts for 2012, which is around 30 GW. Taiwanese makers add another 8 GW of manufacturing capacity to this equation. The U.S. Department of Commerce antidumping tariffs intend to impact this condition by pricing Chinese solar cells out of the market, and sideline a significant chunk of the global solar cell supply to create a more competitive and sustainable industry.

Struggling electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594) got a major boost last week when Beijing announced an innovative new plan to stimulate an anemic industry whose sales have failed to take off despite generous government support. The plan this time around looks much smarter than previous ones by focusing on big customers. Unl

When the International Trade Commission voted unanimously that imports of Chinese solar cells have harmed U.S. solar manufacturers, which will result in tariffs added to solar modules manufactured in China, a new era in the solar industry began. Sadly, this era is seemingly based on American whining and foot stomping instead of focusing on innovation and market development.

EON AG plunged the most in a year after Germany's largest utility scrapped profit forecasts and said the shift to renewable energy presents "huge challenges."

A consortium led by French nuclear group Areva has ditched a A$1.2 billion ($1.2 billion) concentrated solar thermal project after the federal government pulled critical funding.

When the Canadian province of Ontario introduced its Green Energy Act in 2009, its local content restrictions, which now dictate that new solar power plants have at least 60% of their equipment sourced in Ontario and new wind power plants require at least 50%, were seen as a way to build a new industry in the province which had been hit hard with f

Brent Crude trades this past week at a transorbital $109 per barrel (West Texas Intermediate at a suborbital, if high, $85). It puts the conventional wisdom that biofuels are too infrastructure incompatible and too costly to the test. Are they?

Renewable energy is set to rival coal as the main generator of the world's electricity by 2035 as the costs of technology fall and subsidies rise, the International Energy Agency said.

Memo to: President Barack Obama Re: The Promised Solar Panels on the White House. Please advise. Dear Mr President: Now that the election is over, I’d like to follow up on a significant announcement Energy Secretary Chu made in October 2010. He announced that the Department of Energy would put solar hot water and solar PV systems on the roof of The

Four years after the U.S. credit market crashed, energy efficiency projects continue to struggle to secure financing. What’s the problem? A slow economy, of course. But when it comes to energy efficiency — and on-site renewable energy — the problem runs deeper. It’s not lack of interest in green energy. To the contrary, says Angela Ferrante, direct