Slowly but surely, an extraordinarily important new industry is slowly taking shape, with the potential to transform the global economy. After years of existing largely as an environmentalist's fantasy, commercial production of biofuels for the world civil aviation industry is slowly becoming a fact, with production starting up across three continents. The leading contenders for biofuel feedstocks are jatropha and camelina, both of which have their fervent supporters. While currently neither is capable of production at a price approaching that of Je .....

As debates and negotiations over the debt ceiling have been consuming congressional leaders, policymakers’ minds are probably far from Smart Grid and the future of our energy systems -- at least right now. But, for the electricity industry, the ways in which the economics of Smart Grid contribute to our long-term energy security and independence — well, that should be at the top of their collective consciousness. As national energy policy is slow to move, how will future economic, environmental, and local policy drivers impact how Smart Grid evolves? .....

On Friday, July 29, 2011, Matt Wald of the New York Times published an article titled N.R.C. Lowers Estimate of How Many Would Die in Meltdown that describes a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission project whose results to be widely understood and repeated. The project was a multi-year modeling effort at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission titled the “State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) Project.” The main report (DRAFT) is accession number ML11168A034. Here is the BLUF (bottom line up front) from the Conclusions section of the mai .....

Louisiana shrimp buyer Dean Blanchard has seen plenty of crazy things during his life in the bayou. But his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets the day he watched a mother dolphin pushing her dead baby calf  towards him as he stood on the commercial dock of his once thriving seafood business on Grand Isle.   The memory of the dolphin pushing her lifeless calf toward him is still seared in his brain a month later. “I’ve seen a lot things after this oil spill, but this was the worst,” he says .....

Due to its location on the periphery of Europe, biofuel developments by Finnish companies often receive less media attention than they deserve. However, the country has been developing a range of technologies to convert its indigenous organic wastes, wood and biomass resources into high quality biofuels. St1 Group A key player in this market is the transport fuel and energy company, St1 Group [www.st1.fi]. It is developing a range of energy activities in both Finland and the surrounding Scandinavian ad Baltic countries .....

The Pew Center is teaming up with Scientific American to explain the link between climate change and extreme weather. In a new three-part series featured on Scientific American.com , award-winning science journalist John Carey dissects the science, impacts, and actions to take regarding the record-breaking floods, heat waves, droughts, storms, and wildfires experienced across the United States and the world in the past year. The first installment appears today. ( Part two . Part three coming Thursday.) The Pew Center commissioned the article, and the author and Scie .....

Electrified Rural and Remote Areas in Southeast Asia 160.3 million people in Southeast Asia were unelectrified and almost 80% of them live in rural and remote areas. Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas facing labor shortages, this allows for greater productivity at reduced cost. Energy al .....

It has been an interesting week for climate change news, with the IPCC releasing its full report on renewable energy, the European Commission moving ahead with energy efficiency legislation, very little happening at the UNFCCC talks in Bonn and of course the battle over carbon pricing continuing in Australia. In scanning the Australian media I spotted an insightful interview with the United States Ambassador to Australia . In the interview, Ambassador Bleich argues that the USA is on track to meet its 2020 greenhouse gas target (17% below 2005 levels) because of the br .....

Recently, we shared the great news that most utility customers across the Southeastern states that we focus on have or will very soon have access to meaningful energy efficiency programs. By 2015, these efficiency .....

How Do Renewables and Oil Sands Affect Energy Security? Despite its frequent use in policy and other discussions, "energy security" lacks a single, fixed meaning, and the consensus on its definition seems to be in flux. As an outgrowth of the oil crises of the 1970s, it has usually been associated with the economic, defense and geopolitical implications of imported oil and petroleum products, focused mainly on security of supply. It was often seen as a more nuanced term than energy independence. Over time, it has taken on other connotatio .....