This article makes the case for creating cleantech clusters in order to do for cleantech what the silicon valley for example did for IT. Clusters such as Silicon Valley, Boston or Tel Aviv not only enable the technology professionals who live and work in them to “cross-pollinate” their ideas, but they can also pick the […]
Many energy experts contend natural gas is the ideal fuel as the world makes the transition to renewable energy. But since much of that gas will come from underground shale, potentially at high environmental cost, it would be far better to skip the natural gas phase and move straight to massive deployment of solar and wind power.
The Sustainable Energy Fellowship is a unique learning experience for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students in engineering, business and the sciences who are considering a career involving energy. The program is June 2- 9, 2010 at Cornell University. Deadline for application is March 1, 2010.
As the UN conference moves through its second and decisive week, the calls for strong global action to deal with climate change do not appear to be penetrating inside Copenhagen’s Bella Center.
In this survey we are looking at the large US headquartered solar PV manufacturers with a view to examine how they are doing in this difficult economic climate. As basically anyone knows, who has not been cloistered away meditating in some cave, 2009 has been a very tough year for pretty much everyone.
Seriously folks you read it right… fracking (an actual technical term for hydraulic fracturing) hot dry rock reservoirs has the potential to open up vast hot dry rock “heat” reservoirs for use as a reliable geothermal energy source. According to a 400 page MIT study The Future of Geothermal Energy sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and published in 2007 the economically recoverable potential for “Heat Mining” in the US could grow to a cumulative installed generating capacity of 100GW in less than fifty years.
On August 11, the Financial Times reported on the promise of “synthetic biology,” including the development of algae that generates biofuels. In July, ExxonMobil entered into a $600 million venture with Synthetic Genomics, a firm founded by biotech pioneer Dr. Craig Venter. “Synthetic Genomics has already engineered strains of algae that secrete oil from their cells,” writes the FT’s Clive Cookson. Will oil companies transform themselves into algae companies? Or, a few years from now, could the makers of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” film a sequel about algae?
In a presentation before national policymakers and analysts recently, leading clean energy venture capitalists, academics and CEOs unveiled the “Gigaton Throwdown,” an assessment of the nation’s clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5-7 gigatons by 2020. The report, a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policymakers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.
The Obama administration announced $350 million in stimulus funds to help expand geothermal resources and break down technological barriers. This is a huge jump in funding, dwarfing all previous government commitments and is more than all the funding for geothermal energy put together over the last 20 years. It also represents a dramatic reversal of previous trends of diminishing funding for this often overlooked renewable energy sector.