Energy Industry Archive

Bill Gross might just be the quintessential inventor / entrepreneur. Born in the late 1950s, Gross began inventing gadgets in high school, and had founded a company by college. After graduating he started making software; among his various innovations, Gross could be called responsible for the advertising concept that has made Google so rich. In 1996, he founded Idealab, an incubator for new...

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Business, computer science, economics, finance — every field of study tends to have its heyday with the student population at one point or another. Hard science and engineering haven’t really had a turn in several decades, so it’s encouraging that the Los Angeles Times is reporting anecdotal evidence of those fields getting a flood of student interest, specifically in energy....

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FutureGen might just have a future – Energy Secretary Steven Chu met with FutureGen Alliance officials today and said the project has merit, a move that suggests the troubled near-zero emission coal-fueled plant might have a new life under the Obama administration. FutureGen, a project aimed at generating electricity while permanently storing carbon dioxide deep beneath the earth, was...

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A new, green-tinted energy initiative hatched in an unlikely locale — Tulsa, once the self-styled “Oil Capital of the World” — seeks to create the basis for a comprehensive national energy policy. That’s a tall order. From President Nixon’s 55-mph speed limit through President Carter’s “moral equivalent of war” to today’s rancorous, ideologically tinged debate, the...

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There has been plenty of worry about small, vulnerable startups since the recession began. But some of the biggest companies involved in renewable energy are feeling the pinch now, as well. In Newark, Delaware, a General Electric unit focused on solar energy has just laid off 86 workers, according to Gunther Portfolio , a number that comes out to 43 percent of the workforce. GE confirmed the...

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Utility scale solar power plants generally follow one maxim: Bigger is better. Many of the plants being planned — but not yet built — range from hundreds of megawatts in size up to multiple gigawatts, covering massive swathes of land to equal the output of coal plants. This is causing some predictable problems, like riling environmentalists and requiring a fast build-out of...

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GE captures market share from lead wind turbine maker – A report from Danish research firm BTM Consult says GE is capitalizing on the growth of wind power in the U.S. and is set to wrest away considerable market share from top turbine wind supplier Vestas. The world’s top 10 wind turbine suppliers, including Siemens of Germany and Suzlon Energy of India, hold about 85 percent of...

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Optisolar, a company that likely scored in the top five list of most promising thin-film startups for many solar industry watchers, appears to be out for the count. Having sold its project portfolio to First Solar, it has now closed its factories and settled back in hopes of attracting a stray investment. In all likelihood, that investment won’t come. It certainly could, given a few...

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Neglected and often actively hampered for eight years under President Bush, the United States Environmental Protection Agency is on a warpath that could make it one of the most powerful government bodies in the country. The latest big news from the agency is its endangerment finding against carbon dioxide. In essence, the agency says CO2 is dangerous and must be regulated alongside far less...

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While from its title this post might sound like a review of the next big indie band, it’s actually a distillation of the next big issue for solar energy: where it is and isn’t acceptable to install. A group led by California senator Dianne Feinstein and groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council have boggled some of their environmental allies by saying they want to rope off a...

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