| Energy Sections |
Energy Home |
| Commentary & Forums |
|
Editor's Blog |
| Articles & Issues |
| Join EcoWorld |
|
Be an EcoWorld| E-Cards |
Electronic Postcard |
| Make EcoWorld Your Homepage |
| Recommend EcoWorld! |
Learn Much More! Click & Buy Books (Amazon Affiliate) |
|
|
The Easy Guide to Solar Electricity |
|
|
Practical Photovoltaics: Electricity from Solar Cells |
|
Support EcoWorld!
Click & Buy Books (Amazon Affiliate) |
 |
|
|
|
|
Hybrid CarToyota Prius Cheap Gas Prices Hybrid Cars |
GreenBuzz Newsletter |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
China's Eco-Challenge
- Gordon Feller China and India are now able to turn energy into wealth more efficiently than the USA. While the USA has logged a commendable achievement in the last decade, improving its energy intensity by 44%, China has improved its energy intensity by 86%, and India's has improved by 85%. The numbers are almost unbelievable: China's BTU's per US$ of GNP have plummeted from 46,666 to 6,608, and India's have dropped from 30,759 to 4,541. This incredible achievement should encourage anyone who hopes global energy production can level off quickly enough to allow clean energy technologies to catch up. Yet challenges are remain daunting as these massive nations transform themselves at breathtaking speed. With a real growth rate of over 11% per year, China, whose GNP has increased nearly 14x in the last ten years, is poised to have a larger economy than the USA by 2009... |
India's Hydro Power
- Avilash Roul For India to produce half as much energy per capita as members of the European Community, its overall energy production will need to quadruple. India needs more energy now in order for its energy infrastructure to keep pace with its burgeoning and world class scientific and technology community, and to give those communities the raw materials they need to lift India to the higher standard of living their innovations promise. This is the challenge India faces - to balance democratic dialogue, which require delays and compromise, with the need to fulfill urgent economic imperatives. To lose too much democracy or to forfeit too many innovations are both unacceptable outcomes... |
 The Biofuel Bonanza- Louis Strydom Biofuel entrepreneur Louis Strydom reports from the Biofuels Finance & Investment World conference which was held in late 2006 in London, U.K. He brings some sobering macroscopic updates to our ongoing coverage of the biofuel phenomenon. One message coming from the Terrapinn conference was that the global biofuel industry is utterly dependent on government subsidies. Another was mention of the need for criteria for biofuel certification - criteria that must reach beyond the consumer and the refinery to the actual source of the feedstock... |
 Solar Power in Egypt- Gordon Feller One of the world's sunniest nations, Egypt, has now declared a commitment to building commercial scale solar power stations using a hybrid design. Since the 1980's solar thermal technology has developed significantly, for example, the pressurized tubes that carry the super-heated water across the solar focal point of the mirrored parabolic troughs are now able to withstand much higher pressure and tolerate daily extremes in temperature variation much better than the same components built 25 years ago. There is no reason solar thermal power plants can't significantly increase the efficiency of fossil fuel power plants... |
 Factory Farmed Biofuel- Ramesh Suri Planted in the wrong places, biofuel crops crowd out food production and drive up food prices, and encourage new rounds of deforestation in regions where deforestation is already out of control. But now we have a new concept - factory produced biofuel. In the following assessment of biofuel produced in a "bioreactor" from algae, the pitfalls of producing biofuel from algae ponds is recognized, and then the author explains the potential to produce biofuel within illuminated, enclosed containers, infused with carbon dioxide. It is possible this process will become economically viable, and result in a far higher contribution from biofuel to the ever increasing fuel requirements of civilization ... |
 India's Nuclear Power- Avilash Roul As a huge, technologically advanced country, soon to be the most populous nation on Earth, it should be no surprise that India has a long-standing nuclear power industry. In 1954, India's First Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said "It is perfectly clear that atomic energy can be used for peaceful purposes," as India even then was developing nuclear technology. In 1969 after years of effort, India's first atomic power station went critical, in Tarapur, Maharashtra. Five years later, India tested an atomic bomb. There are 440 land-based nuclear power reactors today in the world. They produce 16% of the world's electricity... |
 Bioethanol vs. Biodiesel- Louis Strydom In this cautionary, comprehensive assessment of biofuels, it is clear that in proper conditions they are economically viable today, and that worldwide biofuel production is poised to make a quantum leap. But when comparing the principal biodiesel crops, bioethanol versus biodiesel, the result is inconclusive. Complicating any attempt to assess the potential of biofuels are claims that "secondary treatment of cellulosic waste" can yield quantities of bioethanol equal or greater than the initial extraction of ethanol or diesel. But in most cases, this secondary extraction of ethanol from cellulose is not yet a cost-effective process... |
 China's Wind Power- Gordon Feller With 20% of the world's population, China now consumes 10% of the world's energy. This means that just to come up to the international average, China will need to double its energy consumption. Wind power, like solar power, is an alternative energy resource of virtually unlimited potential. After years of heavy subsidies, especially in Europe where the will to become energy independent has been unwavering, wind power is now economically competitive with conventional energy sources. This fact, combined with the energy security of windfarms as a renewable domestic energy supply, suggest the Chinese committment to develop wind power is just beginning... |
 Ethanol in Africa- Marianne Osterkorn World biofuel production in 2004, which is the last year for which figures are readily available, totalled about 130 million barrels, with 95% of this total coming from bio-ethanol. Despite the fact that world biofuel production today is equivalent to only 4/10ths of one percent of the total petroleum-based fuel production, there are regions throughout the world where biofuel is an economically viable enterprise. Both on a subsistence level, allowing farmers or villages to achieve energy independence, and on a vast commercial scale, biofuel crops are being rapidly developed all over the world. Using sugar cane and cassava, the bio-ethanol industry developed so successfully by Brazil is now being emulated by the Nigerians... |
 Growing Biofuel- Louis Strydom Growing biofuel, whether it's biodiesel or bioethanol, whether it's jatropha or sugar cane, is not easy. Like many clean technologies, biofuel production is a undeveloped, knowledge-intensive enterprise in an emerging industry. There are no guarantees of success. This article by biodiesel entrepreneur Louis Strydom, who is endeavoring to establish a biodiesel plantation and refinery on a massive scale in Kenya, serves as a sobering reminder of how many factors have to be aligned before commercial production of biodiesel fuel moves from dream to reality. Ultimately, biodiesel plantations have to be profitable, and the requirements for success are myriad... |
 India's Biodiesel Scene- Satish Lele Biofuel crops are usually grown either to make bio-diesel, a fuel for high-compression diesel engines, that is refined from the vegetable fats in a crop, or ethanol, a fuel for engines with spark-plugs, which is distilled from a crop that is fermented. It is amazing how many companies have gotten involved and how quickly a global biofuel economy is developing. Undoubtedly more people learning how to profitably grow these exciting crops will do much to alleviate fuel shortages and spread prosperity throughout the world... |
 Clean Coal Technology- Gordon Feller Coal provides nearly 50% of the electrical generating fuel in the United States and similar percentages apply around the world. Coal is more abundant than oil, in fact, there is enough coal on the earth to supply all the current energy requirements of the entire planet for hundreds of years. Coal is many times more abundant than the reserves of all other fossil fuels combined. Already coal burning is creating serious air pollution around the world, and with coal production rising with no end in sight, not just carbon dioxide but more immediate and deadly pollutants should be cleaned out of the burning process. Coal is here to stay. This is why we need clean coal technology... |
 The Nuclear Option?- Edward Wheeler There isn't enough electricity being produced in the world at a time when world demand for electricity is skyrocketing, with no end in sight. Shall we remove entire mountain ranges so we can burn abundant coal - or risk another Three Mile Island? Shall we melt the icecaps and inundate the world as we burn another 10,000 quadrillion BTUs of fossil fuel - or risk another Chernobyl? Shall we destroy the last great rivers behind hydro-electric dams - or hope the nuclear waste is safe enough under Yucca Mountain? Nuclear power is emissions-free, and safer than ever. But is it safe enough to be a better transitional fuel than the alternatives, as we wait for non-hydro renewables to develop? Pick your poison... |
Jatropha in Africa- EcoWorld The African continent, which at 29 million square kilometers in size is nearly as large as Asia, is relatively sparsely populated by comparison. It is also a continent of spectacular natural wealth, having vast reserves of land with climates ideal for growing Jatropha. Over half of the land in Africa is considered suitable for Jatropha cultivation. If only 2% of that land was used to cultivate Jatropha, it would yield as much oil per year as U.S. oil companies expect - best case - to remove per year from Alaska's north slope over the next 20 years. And after 20 years, these fields of Jatropha would still be producing oil, whereas the Alaskan oil fields would be dry... |
Photovoltaics- EcoWorld The ultimate renewable? The problem with photovoltaics remains the costs. But two things mitigate this factor: First of all, photovoltaics are being bought as fast as they can be made. They may not be competitive with electricity derived from natural gas or other conventional sources, but this fact seems to have no impact on world demand for photovoltaics. The market worldwide is growing at 30% per year with no end in sight. Current world output of photovoltaics stands at about 1 gigawatt per year, and the installed base of photovoltaics in the world is probably just under 10 gigawatts. A second factor which mitigates the cost of photovoltaics is the cost to operate and replace them is far more competitive than the cost to install them... |
The World Rankings- EcoWorld You've heard the claims, now see how the nations really size up in terms of CO2 emissions and BTU energy consumption, both total and per capita, plus EcoWorld crunched the numbers to produce a fascinating table showing their relation to national GNP... |
 Energy Insider: Make Our Day!By John Joss & John Hulls EcoWorld's intrepid editors-at-large John Joss and John Hulls are at it again with this provocative expose on a technology that can increase transmission efficiency on the U.S. electric power grid by 30%! And that's not all: The writers envision the federal government funding a hydrogen �backbone� pipeline, fueled by energy from windmills, photovoltaic arrays and other renewable sources... |
 First Solar: Production Line PVs at Last - EcoWorld - Upward Trend In our continuing search for the company that will provide breakthrough price reductions in photovoltaic cells, EcoWorld has discovered First Solar. If they live up to the rumors about them, First Solar Inc. may become the Ford Motor Company of photovoltaics... |
 World Energy Consumption: The Good, The Bad, and the BTUs- EcoWorld To speak exclusively of conservation," said U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, "is to duck tough issues." The tough issue is that energy production must increase, and conservation will only slow that increase but can't stop it. Energy production is a global issue, and in a world where populations are increasing and economies are industrializing, the idea that global energy usage can remain flat through conservation is ridiculous..." |
 The FACTS about Power Line CapacityBy John Joss - Pt. Reyes Light EcoWorld's intrepid editors-at-large John Joss and John Hulls are at it again with this provocative expose on a technology that can increase transmission efficiency on the U.S. electric power grid by 30%!... |
 Part I - Politics, Power & PhotovoltaicsBy John Joss - Pt. Reyes Light Why do municipal utilities trying to provide lowest-cost power to users fund homeowner photovoltaics so they can avoid paying scalpers' rates during peak air-conditioning loads while PG&E and other IOUs don't?... |
 Atlantis Energy Makes Solar Beautiful - EcoWorld - Upward Trend When we think of home power, we think of roofs covered with black rectangular water heating or pv modules, propped up with struts at awkward angles. We think of windmills erupting off someone's front lawn, or diesel generators droning unmuffled through the night. In short, we think, "ugly!"... |
