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A crucial energy base
AS THE DEBATE GOES FORWARD REGARDING the types of energy the United States uses to produce electricity, it is important that those of us in the hydrocarbon extraction business continue to provide factual information to the public with regard to the vital role these forms of energy – coal and natural gas – play in the generation of electricity. The most recent public data shows that coal is...
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Institutional investors embrace alternative energy
WHEN MAJOR INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS and venture capitalists start investing in alternative and low-carbon energy companies, it is noteworthy.Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres, a Bostonbased coalition of 80 investors who support climate change and manage over $8 trillion of assets, said 85 percent of funding for alternative energy companies will stem from large institutional investors, pension...
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Business and government must work together
THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD ARE facing some tough challenges: rebuilding their economies after recession, dealing with the pressures of growing populations and demands for services, increasing urbanization, degradation of natural resources, and climate change. The difficulties involved in finding solutions to these complex issues are enormous.What government representatives decide to do about...
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Is the industry ready?
THE RECESSION REDUCED DEMAND FOR almost all products, including electricity. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's recent figures, total electricity consumption declined by 3.6 percent in 2009. This is much steeper than the 1.7 percent decline predicted by EIA in March.The Electric Power Research Institute analyzed how previous U.S. economic recessions affected electricity...
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Regional utility ambitious
IT'S CONTAGIOUS. IT SEEMS JUST ABOUT everyone is building wind power generation, and more of it than ever before. In the past two years, slightly more than 15,000 megawatts of new U.S. wind power generation was under construction or put in service, according to the American Wind Power Association. By at least one measure, that's a lot of wind power. New wind power facilities in those years...
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An emerging nuclear power
FIRST IT WAS APPLIANCES, THEN CARS. NOW, IT IS NUCLEAR REACTORS.South Korea, which built its first nuclear plant in 1978 using U.S. technology, successfully outbid American-Japanese and French consortia to land a $20 billion order for four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates.The deal, announced in the waning days of 2009, calls for the reactors to come on stream between 2017 and 2020....
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Year one of a four-year game plan
President Obama rode to Washington on I a frigid wintry day one year ago promising a brighter and more comforting future. A cornerstone of the president's agenda nas been making investments in the latest energy technologies — money that underscores the transformation to the green economy and the creation of jobs and cleaner air. Toward that end, the administration shepherded through the Congress...
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Pipelines to tap new resources
UNLOCKING THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE UNCONVENTIONAL natural gas — natural gas from shale, coal bed methane and tight formations — on a cost-competitive basis has caused a dramatic reversal of trends in domestic natural gas production.This game-changing potential of these developments has caught the attention of other influential opinion leaders. In an August memorandum published by the Center for...
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Giants Gear Up
WITH CONSUMER DEMAND FOR HOME energy monitoring devices anticipated to grow – and regulators expected to require utilities to provide consumers with access to the devices and the data needed to make them useful – the race is on to see which providers place their products in consumers’ homes.In that race, some providers are joining with utilities in order to obtain consumers’ energy usage data....
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Utilities Get Ready
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TEAMS ARE hard at work as smart grids get deployed.“We have so much going on with smart grid that it's hard to prioritize work,” says the chief information officer of a large cooperative utility that serves the near-suburbs of a large city that has grown to encompass the co-ops’ service territory. The co-op is installing a mesh-type advanced metering infrastructure network...
