It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that wind power is growing fast in the United States (and worldwide). Under the Bush administration, a goal of getting 20% of our electricity from wind by 2030 was set and we are currently ahead of schedule on that. However, a lot of people wonder, where are these wind turbines being made? Is this creating jobs in the U.S. or in China?
I had been worried about two or three states pulling out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie”), the nation’s first cap and trade program for greenhouse gases, for awhile. It seemed 99.9% sure that New Hampshire would pull out after its House of Representatives voted to pull out of the initiative and its Senate had a clear Republican majority likely to do the same. Even if the Governor tried to veto such a decision, he could be overridden.
A startup company received a loan guarantee from the U.S government to construct the first large scale solar power plant with energy storage that provides electricity even at night.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory came out with its Top Ten list for renewable energy programs by utilities last week, and it indicates some strong points of growth in the green energy sector. The report looked at 850 utilities that offer voluntary green power programs, which offer customers a chance to earmark their energy consumption for wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy.
“Denmark earns the biggest share of its national revenue from producing windmills and other clean technologies, the United States is rapidly expanding its clean-tech sector, but no country can match China’s pace of growth, according to a new report….”
Last Thursday the departments of Agriculture and Energy jointly unveiled a new $47 million grant program to develop more energy from renewable biomass. The announcement came within a swirl of policy confrontations over the future of the domestic oil industry, including President Obama’s renewed calls for ending
The state of Washington has announced a plan in cooperation with the global power company TransAlta to shut down all of the coal boilers in the state – all two of them. Eliminating the use of coal power sounds easy enough for Washington, but even with only two boilers to deal with the transition out of coal will be
The recently released data reporting a substantial increase in overall Venture Capital Investment and, in particular, a near record increase for the cleantech sector, should come as encouraging news on the employment front. What is more significant than overall invested capital ($2.57 billion for Cleantech, up 52% from the previous quarter) is that the number of deals remained nearly flat, which means of course that the deal-size is up significantly. A closer look reveals that the majority of the dollars committed went to later-stage deals, many to fund scale up and commercialization phase activities, therefore driving job creation across a number of functions.
Of late there has been much talk about moving towards a solar energy future. This is a positive development (albeit one that is almost too late) and has been driven, no doubt, by recent studies that have shown that solar and wind power are now amongst the cheapest forms of power generation, several critical breakthroughs in related fields, and big moves by some major players. However, it seems that a lot of money is being thrown at a particular type of solar power plant; massive centralized solar plants. It is my opinion that this is a massive mistake.
The U.S. Department of Energy has just announced its approval of a construction plan for the nation’s first commercial offshore wind power project, Cape Wind. It’s the beginning of a network of wind power projects envisioned by the Obama administration through the Atlantic Offshore Wind Consortium, which has united ten
