Renewable Energy News

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/22/body-google-calls-for-more-renewable-energy-purchasing-options-supports-duke-energy-proposal.jpg" /pGoogle Inc., which has invested more than $1 billion in renewable energy projects and buys wind- generated electricity, said utilities should offer large customers more options for using clean power./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/22/body-a-solar-fredspinal-tap-solar-guerilla-marketing-tip-11.jpg" /pPerhaps the funniest moment of the classic mockumentary/rockumentary film This is Spinal Tap is when Nigel Tufnel, one of the band members, shows off the band’s amplifier. He explains how his amp is “special” because it goes to 11. If you don’t remember that scene, here it is again:     Let’s forget for a moment that Nigel has banged his head on on/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-saudi-arabia-looks-to-nrel-for-solar-monitoring-expertise.jpg" /pSaudi Arabia is jumping headlong into renewable energy, with plans to install more solar and wind power in the next 20 years than the rest of the world has installed to date./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-as-cities-fill-with-smog-china-embraces-stable-and-regulated-renewable-development-in-2013.jpg" /pChina's renewable energy sector is expected to adopt a more stable and regulated development pace in 2013 as many favorable policies to drive the development of the sector have been established, along with increased awareness of environmental protection and benefits of renewable energy. This comes after increased reports of cities around the country have found themselves blanketed by severe smog and haze in recent months./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/22/body-solar-apps-improving-process-customer-engagement.jpg" /pHenry David Thoreau once exclaimed, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Today, Thoreau’s pronouncement seems dead on—he was just a couple of centuries early. People have now become tools of their web and mobile applications. Recognizing a business opportunity, the solar industry has jumped right in with an influx of innovative new online te/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-nextera-chops-blythe-solar-project-proposal-amid-switch-to-solar-pv.jpg" /pNextEra has submitted a revised proposal for its massive Blythe Solar Power Project in California, aiming to shrink the project by more than half from its initial 1,000-MW goal as it shifts the project to solar PV technology./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-suntech-eyes-italy-solar-asset-sale-ldk-defaults.jpg" /pA restructuring storm continues to blow through China’s battered solar sector, with word of a potential major asset sale by Suntech (NYSE: STP) and a debt default by LDK (NYSE: LDK). Of these 2 news bits, the Suntech one is easily the most interesting as it finally helps to make sense of reports last week that billionaire investor Warren Buffett mi/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-china-set-to-approve-27-9-gw-of-wind-power-projects.jpg" /pChina's National Energy Administration recently announced the inclusion of 491 wind power projects with a combined installed capacity of 27.9 GW into its approval plan for the 12th five-year period spanning from 2011 to 2015./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-who-killed-2-18-gasoline.jpg" /pThe Bloomberg investigative team of Ben Elgin Peter Waldman yesterday published an expose on Chevron trying to undercut California's low-carbon fuel standard. "They say they're pushing back against the California rule because it demands technology that may not be available for years," the team writes, as they detail the derailing of a technology that would have been available at commercial scale as soon as next year, according to the company's own internal documentation./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-irs-confirms-that-batteries-qualify-for-the-energy-tax-credit-but-imposes-limitations.jpg" /pA recent IRS ruling confirms that batteries used to store solar electricity qualify for the 30% energy tax credit. At the same time, it imposes significant limits on the amount of the available credit if the battery also stores electricity drawn from the utility grid./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-growing-a-solar-park-in-californias-central-valley.jpg" /pAn ambitious project to build one of the world's largest solar energy complexes on contaminated farmland in California's Central Valley has finally moved from the drawing board to the review process, but unlike with some other sizable solar energy ventures, there likely will be few objections to the site./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/19/body-solar-industry-gathers-to-fight-cps-energys-suncredit-program.jpg" /pIn San Antonio, Texas, city-owned utility CPS Energy released a new program called the SunCredit, which will charge solar customers for all of the electricity they used — including what they produced from their own solar array — then credit back the solar electricity generated at 5.6 cents/kWh. What this means to existing and future solar installation customers is that a system that might otherwise pay for itself within ten years will now take fifteen or more years — economics that will not work in today's solar installation market./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-pain-in-spain-new-retroactive-changes-hinders-renewable-energy.jpg" /pIn his Poetics, the Greek philosopher Aristotle draws a distinction between Tragedies and Epics: he states that while Tragedies are confined to one revolution of the sun (i.e. one year), Epics can be of unlimited duration. In light of the seemingly unending saga of cuts and retroactive changes that have plagued Spain's renewable electricity sector since the fall of 2008, it can now be said that the situation in Spain has evolved decisively from a Tragedy into an 'Epic.'/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-germany-to-support-solar-backup-batteries-with-new-subsidy.jpg" /pGermany will subsidize consumers' purchases of battery systems to store power from solar panels through a 25 million-euro ($32.6 million) program to promote wider use of renewable energy, according to the German Solar Industry Association./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-the-greenest-organizations-in-the-us-who-makes-the-list.jpg" /pThe Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the updated list of the top 50 organizations in the US that get their electricity from "green power." The rankings are listed in order of annual green power usage in kilowatt-hours (kWh), though there's enough data to call attention to groups in different ways, for how effectively they've brought renewable-generated electricity into their usage profile, and whether they've taken further steps to generate their own renewable energy power./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-indias-pm-vows-to-double-renewable-energy-capacity.jpg" /pIndia will seek to double the amount of renewable energy it can generate to 55 GW in the next four years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his inaugural address./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-update-solar-wins-in-louisiana-net-metering-fight.jpg" /pWe did it! Thanks to an outpouring of public support from people like YOU, the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) decided NOT to dismantle net metering today! This marks the 2nd time the Commission Chair has pulled the vote due to lack of Commissioner support for changing Louisiana net metering, the simple policy that clears the way for cus/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-is-ontario-blowing-its-chance-to-be-an-offshore-wind-winner.jpg" /pWhy is Ontario intent on squandering its "first mover" advantage in the renewable energy field? Huge steps on developing offshore wind are being made globally and by our neighbours to the south and yet in Ontario we are, at best, stuck in neutral. Why are the Americans aggressively committing to new offshore projects on the east coast of the US and/p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-oil-firms-break-promise-on-biofuels-as-chevron-defies-california.jpg" /pChevron Corp. helped write the first-in-the-nation rule ordering reduced carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Its biofuels chief spoke at the ceremony where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the executive order in 2007, the same year the oil company pledged to develop a gasoline replacement from wood./p

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2013/4/18/body-the-us-solar-industry-puts-people-to-work-in-all-50-states.jpg" /pAccording to The Solar Foundation's (TSF) recently released interactive map, California has more solar workers than actors; more Texans work in solar than ranching; and the U.S. solar industry has more workers than the coal mining industry. Those findings and many more were discovered by The Solar Foundation team, led by Andrea Luecke, as they put together comprehensive solar job data about all fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia./p