Renewable Energy News

Improving the availability of capital to renewable energy projects represents a critical component to lowering the overall cost and scaling the adoption of renewable energy technologies. Public capital — investment raised in the financial markets through securitized instruments and pooled investment vehicles — is a potential means of achieving these goals. Public capital mechanisms offer renewable energy projects — which are regarded as mid-high risk investments in the marketplace — numerous attributes that could be attractive to investors, including:

When President Obama unveils his climate policy proposal in the coming days, he should focus on the one key element of successful climate and energy policy.  It’s not about utilities or incentives or numbers, it’s about ownership. Climate-protecting energy policy succeeds when communities can keep their energy dollars local by directly owning and p

As Europe slaps duties on $15 billion of solar panels, their Chinese producers are preparing to counterattack with devices assembled from South Africa to Istanbul that will avoid the import taxes.

It’s a new turn on concentrating photovoltaics (CPV). Cool Earth Solar’s inflated, tubular CPV system encases PV cells in a lightweight tube of thin plastic films, which concentrate the sun on the cells. Cool Earth Solar partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to test and deploy 100 kilowatts of the unique CPV modules at the Livermore

Two investment themes in the changing alternative energy landscape have emerged as potential profit centers for investors. To take advantage of these trends, the Roen Financial Report has added in four new companies to the list of about 250 alternative energy companies that we track for our readers.

Efforts currently underway at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are contributing to rapid progress in the research, development and testing of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

Pakistan encapsulates the renewable energy challenge faced by many developing and emerging countries. Despite abundant renewable resources – including solar, wind, hydropower and biomass – very little of this potential has been utilized. At the same time, about a third of the country’s people do not have access to electricity.

In France, Amyris and Total announced a successful demonstration flight at the Paris Air Show its renewable jet fuel made from Amyris Biofene and, ultimately, from plant sugars.

Thirteen student teams are preparing to race their solar cars, powered only by the Texas sun, in this year’s Formula Sun Grand Prix. The annual track race will be held over three days—June 27 to 29—where teams will be judged on the total number of laps they complete on the closed course. Held this year in Austin, Tex., the endurance race challenges

Geothermal Power Tanzania Ltd. plans to invest as much as $350 million to drill steam fields in the country’s south and build its first geothermal plants with the capacity to generate up to 140 megawatts by 2018.

With over 5 GW of global installed capacity, representing about 2 percent of total installed wind power capacity according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC)'s latest market report, and with a whopping 80 GW projected to be installed by 2020, the offshore wind market is picking up speed.

Ukraine’s traditional energy sector has been facing a major crisis due to a shortage of current assets. This is the result of the state’s socially oriented tariff policy as cash-strapped utilities are unable to settle mounting bills with Russian gas supplier Gazprom.

Alternative energy stocks climbed higher on Monday as strong moves in both crude oil and natural gas drove prices for energy stocks higher. With natural gas prices climbing, investors will be looking for alternatives during the height of the summer cooling season. The Nation Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported above normal temperatures throughout the U.S., which caused natural gas prices to rally 3 percent on Monday.

Granny was thrown out of her wheelchair and off a cliff in one of the most controversial ads of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Whether you love or hate the clip, which went after Republicans on Medicare, it shows the emotional tenor we bring to the debate over health care costs. Energy costs affect Granny at least as much — and everyone else,

What could be the first, and long-awaited, U.S. offshore wind energy project is one step closer to a reality with an additional investor. PensionDanmark, the largest labor market pension fund in Denmark, has pledged to invest $200 million (roughly 1.1 billion Danish krone), conditional upon the project obtaining its full financing needs and beginning construction by year's end.

Indonesia started a fund to finance the exploration of geothermal energy resources as the nation seeks to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for electricity.

After a disastrous round of talks last month that broke down almost as soon as they began, China and Europe look set to try again with a new round of negotiations to resolve their dispute over the EU’s claims of unfair state-support for Chinese solar panel makers. Much has changed since the failed round of talks in late May, including a growing num

In 2011, the National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones VentureSource released their study of the diversity makeup of the venture capital industry. Not surprisingly, the majority of people working in the VC industry were white and. . . wait for it. . . male. While women represented 21 percent of employment in the VC industry, only 11 percen

How relevant is the term cleantech today? Has it had its day in the sun? It's a heretical question for someone who's spent much of the last 10 years of his career furthering the cleantech meme globally. A former managing director of an organization that gets much of the credit for coining the phrase to begin with, I've been a big proponent of the t

Interest is building in the potential to issue asset-backed securities (ABS) collateralized by the receivables of solar energy companies. Solar ABS, along with real estate investment trusts (REIT) and master limited partnerships (MLP), are among the ideas emerging for expanding the capital available to renewable energy projects. The advantage of solar ABS over the solar REIT and MLP ideas is that solar securitizations could be issued now under existing tax law.