Malaysia urged to force big oil to produce biofuel

Malaysia must force major oil firms to produce biofuel if the once-vaunted biodiesel industry is to have any future, industry experts told a conference Thursday. When crude oil prices rocketed last year, Malaysia and Indonesia, which produce most of the world’s palm oil, heavily promoted their version of biofuel — a mixture of diesel with […]

Thomas Friedman: The Next Really Cool Thing

If you hang around the renewable-energy business for long, you But what if this time is different? What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the […]

Why Biofuels Are the Rainforest’s Worst Enemy

Forget petroleum. The next planet-destroying fuel is already here. With governments and consumers scrambling for alternatives to fossil fuel, worldwide demand for biofuels has gone through the roof; in Europe, where more than half of all automobiles run on diesel, consumption of biodiesel is set to triple by 2010. US subsidies for biofuels, mostly ethanol, […]

Lasers to create mini sun in hunt for clean energy

SCIENTISTS are to use the world Times Online

As Oil and Gas Prices Plunge, a Frenzy of Drilling Ends

FORT WORTH Lower prices are bringing to an end an ambitious effort to squeeze more oil from aging fields and to tap new sources of natural gas. For the last four years, companies here drilled below airports, golf courses, churches and playgrounds in a frantic search for energy. They scoured the Rocky Mountains, the Great […]

Europe

Solar cells adorn the roofs of many homes and warehouses across Germany, while the bright white blades of wind turbines are a frequent sight against the sky in Spain. If one day these machines become as common on the plains and rooftops of the United States as they are abroad, it may be because the […]

Five Beginners

A RECENT Amazon.com search for What

Low demand for oil affects Arab capacity expansion plans

Arab oil producers are likely to slash crude supplies by nearly 2.62 million barrels per day in the first quarter of 2009 as a result of low global demand and this would stifle their capacity expansion plans, according to an official report. Lower production will also ally with a sharp fall in crude prices to […]

Venezuela offers bases for bombers: Russian general

A Russian general said on Saturday Venezuela has offered the use of its La Orchila island airfield for Russian strategic bombers on long-range flights. Russia has been keen to build relations with a rival to the United States in the Western hemisphere in an effort to counter U.S. influence in formerly Communist countries in eastern […]

Kurdish oil min expects to export crude soon

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region should begin to export oil via Iraq’s pipeline network in the coming months, the region’s minister of natural resources said on Friday. Norway’s DNO International is in the final stages of connecting its Tawke field to the network but investors fear that a dispute between Baghdad and the Kurdish region on […]

Crisis threat for Russia’s leaders

Putin’s soaring popularity as president was partly based on the fact he distributed a share of Russia’s oil wealth among his allies. But with oil prices down more than 70 per cent that popularity may fall. “As soon there is no huge flow of money into reserves it is absolutely clear that the so-called power […]

Australia spill ‘10 times worse’

An oil spill along the coast of Queensland in north-east Australia is 10 times worse than originally thought, state authorities said. A Hong Kong-registered ship damaged by a tropical storm on Wednesday leaked 230 tonnes of oil, not 20-30 tonnes as initially reported, officials said. …The crisis was sparked when high seas whipped up by […]

Hubbert

This article is offered in celebration on the 53rd anniversary anniversary of M. King Hubbert Based on his classic paper Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels

Utah company cites milestone in green energy production

Within the next week, Raser Technologies Inc. expects to begin transmitting around 7 megawatts of electricity generated at its new geothermal plant outside of Beaver to the city of Anaheim in Southern California. Raser is touting the Millard County plant as a breakthrough in geothermal energy production — one capable of generating electricity from low-temperature […]

IEA Sees Massive Fall at Mexico’s Cantarell Oil Field in 2009

Mexico’s state oil company has an overly optimistic outlook for the giant Cantarell oil field this year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said on Friday. Cantarell, one of the largest oil fields ever discovered and which provided 60% of Mexican production at its peak, has declined faster than expected in recent years. This has eroded […]

OPEC curbs may drive up oil price

VIENNA // Oil prices could rise sharply within three months if OPEC sticks to its supply curbs, the International Energy Agency said yesterday. The forecast by the IEA, which represents 28 industrialised nations, lent weight to those in OPEC pushing for a freeze in the official output ceiling at a conference tomorrow. Some members have […]

EU project to develop nanomaterials for more efficient solar cells

A new EU-funded project is turning to nanotechnology in a bid to dramatically ramp up the efficiency of solar cells. Called ROD-SOL (‘All-inorganic nano-rod based thin-film solar cells on glass’), the three-year project has a budget of EUR 4 million, EUR 2.9 million of which will come from the ‘Nanosciences, nanotechnologies, materials and new production […]

China: Renewable energy sector gets a big push

China will construct two hydropower stations and two wind farms with a total capacity of 2,001 megawatts in a bid to increase the share of renewable energy in the national energy matrix. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on its website yesterday that it has approved for construction the Luding Hydropower Station (four […]

Chu: Nuclear must be part of energy mix

Energy Secretary Steven Chu sought Wednesday to assure skeptical senators that the Obama administration supports continued development of nuclear energy, even as it backs away from building a nuclear waste dump in Nevada. “Nuclear is going to be part of our energy future. It has to be,” Chu told members of the Senate Budget Committee […]

Depopulate or perish

Most of us would agree that there is a limit to the number of people this planet can sustain. It may be 10 billion or 100 billion but there is a limit. The only debate is about the size of the limit and how we prevent the human population from reaching the limit and destroying […]

Iran oil minister: Too much oil on the market

Iran’s oil minister suggested Saturday that a weekend OPEC meeting should decide to cut back on crude output, adding his voice to those in the organization who think supply has outstripped demand. “There is too much oil on the market,” Gholam Hossein Nozari told reporters on the eve of a ministerial meeting of the 11-nation […]

How We Can Save Our Roads

Last March, a bridge inspector discovered a crack six feet long in a concrete pillar supporting Interstate 95 on its elevated course through Philadelphia. Mindful of the Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people in August 2007, alarmed state engineers promptly shut down two miles of the nation Similar situations are occurring all over America. […]

Climate change effects seen in Antarctic winds

Changing wind patterns linked to global warming are altering the food chain in Antarctica and may lead to further increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The most basic food, plankton, is declining in the northern portions of the Antarctic peninsula reaching toward South America, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.At the […]

Norway Electric Car Maker Think Plans U.S. Plant

Norwegian electric car maker Think aims to open a manufacturing plant in the United States to produce 16,000 cars per year in the first phase and more later, the company said on Thursday. “U.S. production is expected to start in 2010,” Think said in a statement, estimating first-year volume at 2,500 units.“Plans ultimately call for […]

Italy’s Solar Power Flourishes With State Help

While economic gloom engulfs much of the world’s solar energy industry, government incentives in sunny Italy are encouraging start-ups such as February’s launch of photovoltaic panel maker V-energy. Investors, ranging from families to Italy’s biggest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, have piled into the photovoltaic market due to some of Europe’s most generous incentives.Privately-owned V-energy is betting […]

EU Imposes Duties On U.S. Biodiesel Imports

The European Union has imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports of biodiesel from the United States, the latest in a series of trade frictions between the two trading giants. From Friday, U.S. firms exporting biodiesel into the EU will have to pay additional anti-dumping tariffs of up to 29 percent, and anti-subsidy duties of […]

Companies Seek Early Returns On ”Green” Technology

U.S. companies are increasingly demanding early returns on “green” IT investments, even as they show a growing interest in energy-saving technologies as a way of cutting costs. Companies like Cisco Systems Inc, IBM and Juniper Networks Inc sell equipment and services to help corporate clients manage their swelling data centers with technologies like server virtualization, […]

Biofuel Gone Bad: Burma’s Atrophying Jatropha

My friend in Rangoon is a busy man. He manages a couple of companies in Burma’s commercial capital, helps raise his children and regularly makes merit at a Buddhist temple. He also spends time tending to a plant that he knows is only grown to die. In Dec. 2005, Burma’s economically inept junta — one […]

Action needed to avoid world water crisis, UN says

The world needs to act urgently to avoid a global water crisis due to increased population, rising living standards, dietary changes and more biofuels production, the United Nations warned on Thursday. By 2030, nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage, said a report jointly produced by more […]

Growing pollution leads to ”global dimming”

Visibility on clear days has declined in much of the world since the 1970s thanks to a rise in airborne pollutants, scientists said on Thursday. They described a “global dimming” in particular over south and east Asia, South America, Australia and Africa, while visibility remained relatively stable over North America and improved over Europe, the […]

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