Energy Business Wire

New hope for tapping vast domestic reserves of oil shale

New study concludes that oil trapped in the world's oil shale deposits exceeds the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia; an estimated one trillion barrels of oil, for instance, are in the so-called Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; new recovery process holds promise of economically tapping these vast resources of crude oil

Analysis // Ben Frankel
Spill over? The ramifications of the financial crisis for the energy sector

Richard Stuebi offers useful, and sobering, insights into the likely ramifications of the crisis in the U.S. financial markets for the energy sector; he admits that he is a bit gloomy, and writes that "Maybe some stronger causes for optimism will emerge"; we believe the stronger causes for optimism are already here

Follow the money
Investments in algae biofuel explode

Investors --Bill Gates among them -- have turned 2008 into a record-breaking year for algae-based biofuel companies raising venture capital; in 2007 these companies raised $15 million; in the first nine months of 2008 they have already raised $180 million

Trend: Brewing food-based biofuel conflict
EU faces pressure from overseas biofuel-makers

There is a growing worry that increasing production of food-based biofuels is driving up the price of food; the EU has tilted its policy toward non food-based biofuels, and countries with large food-based biofuels sectors are angry

Blowing in the wind

Analyst: Wind power can solve the U.S. oil addiction

In the next five years, the governments of the United States, China, and the European nations will plow at least $150 billion into wind power; the reason: Wind can be used to generate electricity for 6 to 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour; the cost of nuclear power runs about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour; coal now costs north of 10 cents (without factoring in carbon capture and storage; gas-fired power costs approximately 12 cents

Wind power to bring jobs, economic benefits to Colorado

In 2005 wind energy created 25 jobs in Colorado; by 2010 that will be more than 2,600; one analyst says that "We're looking at billions of dollars of investment in '09, '10.... We're seeing not just jobs, but really strong economic growth and private investment coming into the state"

Birds, bats cause end of wind-turbine project in Pennsylvania

One problem wind power faces is the welfare of birds: if the turbines are built in the migration path of birds, the birds fly into the turbines' blades and get killed by the thousands; a Pennsylvania wind farm project is canceled because of worries about birds and bats

New process derives green gasoline from plant sugars

Sugars are an attractive basis for fuel because they are abundant; trouble is, plant sugars contain equal numbers of carbon and oxygen atoms, making it difficult to create high-octane or cetane fuels; Badgers scientist develops method to remove almost all the oxygen atoms, leaving only a few to keep the molecules reactive -- and the reactive molecules can then be "upgraded" into different forms of fuel

Deactivating radioactive waste in hundreds, not millions, of years

There is a growing interest in nuclear power generation as an answer to the rising cost of oil and environmental concerns; nuclear power means nuclear waste, and handling nuclear waste means isolating that waste from the environment for millions of years; scientists now say deactivation can be done in hundreds of years

New U.K. investment in wind and wave power

U.K. energy companies now have to source 9.1 percent of their energy from renewable sources -- a big task, since currently the United Kingdom only produces 2 percent of energy from renewable sources

Alstom in big hydropower projects in Portugal, Brazil

Hydroelectric-installed capacity in Latin America, including Brazil and Paraguay, is 143.8 GW, of which Alstom currently holds a 25 percent share

Briefly noted

Brazil's biofuel leadership... Welsh Power in £140 million biomass project... Hydraficient announces availability of water fuel cell kit... Renewable energy resources on contaminated lands... India approves biofuel rise...

Smart meters would save consumer money

Organizations which switched to using modern metering achieved 12 percent carbon savings and 5 percent savings through reduced utility consumption; consumers would enjoy similar benefits

Pakistan considers buying nuclear power plants
Pakistan is considering purchasing nuclear power plants to meet its growing energy shortages, the government said today. The country is suffering from acute power shortages, and officials say there is a power deficit of up to 4,000 megawatt

Tuning up data centers
Despite dramatically increasing global interest in IT energy efficiency, data center uptime still comes first -- with energy savings an important but distant second. Consider the impact on your business if your data center went down: 25 to 50 years of energy savings would be wiped out by a single downtime event

Algae biofuel investments explode
Algae-based biofuel companies have been raking in the venture capital this year, raising a record-breaking $179.5 million to date, according to numbers from the Cleantech Group

Germany says it has “critical” lack of nuclear power scientists
Germany, which plans to end its use of nuclear power by 2021, has a “critical”' lack of qualified nuclear scientists to inspect the 17 German atomic energy plants and maintain its expertise, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said

Aussie PM wants more for his money on clean coal
Kevin Rudd has warned miners and power generators to do more to tackle climate change, while handing them $100 million a year for a new research institute to rescue international efforts to develop carbon capture and storage technology

Oklahoman inventor harnesses wave power
Inveterate innovator Tom Windle on his idea to produce hydrogen is through utilizing existing offshore oil and gas platforms: "It's safe, it's clean, it's renewable and can really be a leading solution to energy alternatives"

U.S. cites big gains against al-Qaeda
Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA director Michael Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border

Cyber-Spying for Dummies
Congressional experts fear that Defense intelligence agencies are not making wide enough—and smart enough—use of the vast pool of "open source" information now available in cyberspace

Energy landscape

Introducing Energy Business Wire // Ben Frankel
Serious concern germinating
Three factors -- the rising cost of oil, the political ramifications of the fact that most of the world's oil reserves happen to be in the territories of some of the world's most unsavory regimes, and the environ-
mental consequences of reliance on fossil fuels -- have combined to create an energy crisis; some say the crisis is already here; others argue it is imminent; other yet say it is merely incipient more

The coal conundrum
Last March, James Hansen, arguably the world's leading climate scientist, and eight colleagues, claimed earth's climate system was about twice as sensitive to carbon dioxide pollution as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had found. This implies that there is already enough greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere to cause 2 degrees of warming, bringing about conditions not seen on earth for 2 to 3 million years and constituting, according to the authors, "a degree of warming that would surely yield dangerous climate impacts" more

Canada: Changes and opportunities — federal climate change legislation
The federal government recently announced details of a federal regulatory scheme involving a carbon cap and trade system, and carbon trading framework, as part of its "Turning the Corner" plan aimed at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more

EU faces pressure from overseas biofuel-makers
A decision by a key European Parliament committee last week to beef up sustainability criteria for agrofuels and tilt the Union's biofuel policy towards non food-based biofuels due to concerns over rising commodity prices has irritated top biofuel-exporting nations Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil more