Category: News

July 17 2017

Chinese Wind Power Giant Wants to Be App Store of Energy World

Envision Energy, one of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers, has bigger ambitions. Chief Executive Officer Lei Zhang laid out a vision for a global “ecosystem” of energy in which solar and wind farms, power plants, utilities, big electricity customers and all of the application and software developers that support them are connected to each […]

July 16 2017

Saudis Seek Bids for First Utility-Scale Plant for Wind Power

Saudi Arabia,  the world’s biggest exporter of crude oil, moved a step closer toward the construction of its first utility-scale wind-power project. The energy ministry asked potential bidders and plant developers to submit their qualifications to build the 400-megawatt plant at Dumat Al Jandal in the kingdom’s northwestern Al Jouf region, it said Sunday in an emailed statement. […]

July 14 2017

Renewable Energy Not a Threat to Grid, Draft of U.S. Study Finds

Wind and solar power don’t pose a significant threat to the reliability of the U.S. power grid, Energy Department staff members said in a draft report, contradicting statements by their leader Rick Perry. “The power system is more reliable today due to better planning, market discipline, and better operating rules and standards,” according to a […]

July 14 2017

Carbon From L.A. to Paris Jumps as Lawmakers Plan Tightening

Carbon prices from California to New Zealand are soaring as lawmakers across the globe seek more stringent rules for their greenhouse-gas markets. California emission permits surged to a four-year high this week after Governor Jerry Brown published a plan to extend the biggest U.S. carbon trading program. In Europe, allowances reached their highest level since […]

July 14 2017

Big Oil Just Woke Up to Threat of Rising Electric Car Demand

The world’s biggest oil producers are starting to take electric vehicles seriously as a long-term threat. OPEC quintupled its forecast for sales of plug-in EVs, and oil producers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to BP Plc also revised up their outlooks in the past year, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance released on […]

July 14 2017

Chinese Investors Snap Up Luxury Sportscar Maker

China’s drive to dominate the electric-vehicle market has claimed another overseas target. When Japanese electric-vehicle startup GLM Co. needed more funding to put its high-end sports car into production, domestic backers couldn’t muster the financing. The search for an investor ended this week, when a Hong Kong-based investment company called O Luxe Holdings agreed to […]

July 14 2017

Climate Change May Bring Disasters and Deeper Poverty to Asia

Asia and the Pacific, home to two thirds of the world’s poor, are at the highest risk of suffering deeper poverty and disaster due to unabated climate change, reversing current development gains, according to the Asian Development Bank. The Asian landmass will see a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end […]

July 14 2017

Japan’s Renewable-Energy Revolution

Japan’s approach to stewardship of its land and water resources is distinct from that of the U.S. As an island nation with a millennia-long history, the concepts of reuse, repurposing and multiple use are intrinsic to Japanese culture. In 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster caused Japan to reassess its dependence on […]

July 14 2017

A Solar Eclipse Could Wipe Out 9,000 Megawatts of Power Supplies

The eclipse set to darken skies next month threatens to sideline solar farms and rooftop panels in a wide swath of the U.S., wiping out enough power generation to supply about 7 million homes. This rare event, during which the moon will completely obscure the sun, will cast a shadow along a 70-mile-wide (113-kilometer) corridor […]

July 14 2017

Elon Musk Exposes Deep Coal Divide in Australia

Elon Musk’s intervention in Australia’s energy crisis is widening a divide over the future of coal. The billionaire Tesla Inc. founder, who has promised to help solve an Australian state’s clean energy obstacles, sees no place for the fossil fuel. That conflicts with the national government’s push for it remaining a mainstay source of electricity generation, […]