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Is There a Wind Bubble Coming?

September 12, 2008 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wind power is booming, with capacity last year growing by 45 percent and wind power companies being bought and sold. The Atlantic displays an interesting map showing where the wind and the windmills are, but worries that the current optimism in the wind market may turn sour. It cites two problems: the poor capacity of transmission lines to carry the electricity from the sparsely inhabited, windy areas where it's generated to the big cities that need it, and the variability in supply caused by changes in the weather.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: electricity, The Atlantic, wind

Tax Breaks Proposed for Hybrids, Wind and Solar Energy, Biofuels

September 12, 2008 2:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Richard Rubin, CQ Staff

The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee are trying yet again to extend tax breaks for renewable energy, revealing on Thursday another attempt to break a continued logjam.

Chairman Max Baucus and ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley released a new tax package that will top $40 billion once revenue estimates are finalized.

"Here we are again," said Baucus, D-Mont. "I'm starting to feel like Don Quixote, except I'm not jousting at windmills. I'm jousting for windmills."

Tags: biofuels, nuclear energy, Richard Rubin, solar power, tax incentives, wind

Continue reading Tax Breaks Proposed for Hybrids, Wind and Solar Energy, Biofuels.

Wind Power Promoted at Convention

August 28, 2008 4:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With one of the themes of the Democratic convention focusing on the need to go green, it's just natural that the world's largest maker of wind turbines would be in Denver to promote its product. Danish company Vestas brought a 131-foot turbine blade manufactured at a Colorado factory, Earth2Tech says. The company is already operating a plant in Colorado, and has plans for two more, including the largest in the world for building turbine towers.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Colorado, Democratic Convention, Earth2Tech, wind

Bloomberg Proposes Wind Plan for New York

August 20, 2008 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Windmills could top New York City skyscrapers and bridges, or supply power from the waters off Manhattan, if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way. Speaking at the National Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Bloomberg cited studies predicting that wind energy could provide 10 percent of the city's electricity needs within 10 years, says CNET News. Most of the installations would likely be small turbines on tops of buildings. Well, after all, old New York was once New Amsterdam.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Bloomberg, CNET News, New York City, wind

Wind Power to Soar by 2020

August 15, 2008 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Expect to be getting a lot of your electricity out of thin air by the year 2020. A report from the research firm Emerging Energy Research projects that wind will produce 150 gigawatts of power by then. Earth2Tech points out that, to meet the goal of 20 percent of all electricity from wind power that's been proposed by oil magnate T. Boone Pickens, wind power would need to produce double that amount, 300 gigawatts.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, xconomy.com

Tags: wind

Defense Department Marches U.S. Toward Green Living

August 11, 2008 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Department of Defense, which accounts for 1.5 percent of U.S. energy consumption, wants to get greener, and hopes its efforts will translate into benefits for civilian society as well, Reuters says. The military wants 25 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2025. Among their goals are the development of portable solar and wind power stations.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Department of Defense, Reuters, solar power, wind

Wind Power May be Too Much for Northwest

July 22, 2008 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Utilities are getting ready to more than quadruple the amount of power they produce from wind in the Northwest part of the country, according to the Oregonian. The paper warns that the power transmission network in the area isn't ready for that much input. Right now, it says, the grid can handle only about a third of the 4,716 megawatts expected to be produced by wind turbines.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: electricity, Oregonian, wind

Texas Harnessing Wind Power

July 21, 2008 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The wind-power industry in Texas received a big boost when state regulators approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project. The head of the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium told the New York Times that the project will put Texas close to Germany in the amount of installed wind power. The project entails installing transmission lines to carry electricity from turbines in West Texas to large cities such as Dallas and Houston.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: New York Times, Texas, wind

NASA Maps Offshore Wind Energy

July 11, 2008 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Red and white colors indicate high wind energy is available while blue color reflects lower energy (credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Lab).
CNET News reports that 10 years of satellite data led to a map showing the sites where wind is steady and strong for most of the year.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, wind

A Wind Corridor?

July 9, 2008 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oil mogul T. Boone Pickens is proposing a plan to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity by building wind turbines in a corridor from the Canadian border to West Texas. The Business Journal reports that Pickens' plan calls for taking the natural gas now used to fuel electrical plants and using it instead for transportation fuel, reducing dependence on the Middle East for oil. Pickens believes his goals could be accomplished within a decade.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Business Journal, T. Boone Pickens, wind

Web Pick: Power Lines Are Bottleneck to Renewable Energy

June 24, 2008 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wind and solar power are all well and good, but unless there's a way to transmit their electricity from, say, the middle of the Mojave Desert to a home in the Dallas suburbs, they won't make much difference.

Speakers at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum said there's a real need to fund and build high-power transmission lines in the parts of the country where wind farms and solar installations would work best, which tend to be less inhabited, according to the Environmental News Network.

posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Tags: Environmental News Network, solar, wind

Web Pick: Data Centers Look to Energy Storage

June 19, 2008 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As data centers face growing demands for power to run their servers, many of them are looking to build new facilities near sources of renewable energy. But as Ars Technica points out, sources like sun and wind fluctuate in availability, so finding ways to store that energy becomes an issue. The blog looks at various ways in which electricity generate by solar cells or wind turbines might be held for later use.

Web Picks posted by Neil Savage in partnership with xconomy.com.

Tags: Ars Technica, electricity, solar, wind

Countries set high targets for renewable energy

June 10, 2008 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Salon links to a report in the Guardian newspaper that lists the European Union countries with the highest and lowest targets for using wind, hydro, and solar power. Leading the list is Sweden, which got 40 percent of its power from renewables in 2005 and is aiming for 49 percent by 2020. Salon helpfully adds that the U.S. gets about 7 percent from renewables.

Tags: hydro, renewable energy, solar power, Sweden, wind

Innovations

Results tagged “wind” from Innovations

Is There a Wind Bubble Coming?

Tax Breaks Proposed for Hybrids, Wind and Solar Energy, Biofuels

Wind Power Promoted at Convention

Bloomberg Proposes Wind Plan for New York

Wind Power to Soar by 2020

Defense Department Marches U.S. Toward Green Living

Wind Power May be Too Much for Northwest

Texas Harnessing Wind Power

NASA Maps Offshore Wind Energy

A Wind Corridor?

Web Pick: Power Lines Are Bottleneck to Renewable Energy

Web Pick: Data Centers Look to Energy Storage

Countries set high targets for renewable energy

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