Energy Industry Archive

Google has expanded its PowerMeter home-energy management software into Europe in its new partnership with German utility Yello Strom. The announcement made this morning on the official Google.org blog marks the ninth utility — and the first European one — to partner with the giant search engine company. In its blog post about the partnership, Google describes the meeting with...

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BP, CNPC scores only contract in Iraq oil auction – Foreign companies bidding on Iraq oil contracts have shied away from the narrow terms and low price the government is willing to pay for their services. Only one of the eight contracts has been secured. BP and China’s CNPC beat out ExxonMobil and its partner Petronas to win a contract to help develop the Rumaila field....

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The United States government has finally decided to help lift some of the bureaucratic hassles involved with renewable energy, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced yesterday. The Bureau of Land Management, historically a somewhat obscure regulator, will work to expedite approval for over a dozen major solar projects on public land in six Western states. The effort is just a start;...

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An unprecedented increase in liquefied natural gas capacity, lower prices and the first drop in global demand in 50 years spells trouble for unconventional gas production here in the United States. The International Energy Agency, which released Monday its natural gas review in conjunction with its Medium-Term Oil Market report, outlines a gloomy picture for natural gas.  In the first half...

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Craig Venter, already famous as the first person to completely map his own DNA, now claims to be working with British oil giant BP on bacteria that can break down coal into methane, making it cleaner and removing the need for mining. Using modified bacteria, coal miners could presumably just “infect” a coal seam, harvesting the resulting natural gas as it seeped upward through the...

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Maybe it was Al Gore’s effort via telephone or Nancy Pelosi’s chocolate-covered Dove bars. Heck, maybe it was all of those last minute concessions to please lawmakers in farm states. After weeks of negotiations and compromises and nearly seven hours of debate on the House floor, the American Clean Energy Act, also known as ACEs or the Waxman-Markey bill, passed in the House on...

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Lobbying intensifies as climate bill vote approaches – House Democrats say they have the votes to pass a major climate change bill Friday, thanks to some intense lobbying and President Obama’s intervention. A number of undecided Democrats included several from Midwestern states such as Ron Kind and Steve Kagen of Wisconsin and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Securing the necessary...

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Microsoft leapt into the increasingly-crowded home-energy management market this week with its release of Hohm, a free Web application designed to help customers monitor and ultimately conserve energy use. The software giant has been working on the Web tool for two years now and its unveiling follows on the heels of rival Google’s PowerMeter.  PowerMeter and Hohm are both free and have...

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“It’s not a warm fuzzy thing they’re doing,” says a Sierra Club spokesman of union labor tactics against renewable energy companies. “It’s a very self-interested thing.” But the question, never quite asked by Todd Woody in an article about unions in the New York Times, is whether it’s acceptable for labor groups to hold up green energy projects in...

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Is China is attempting to “steal” technology from the United States, or is it just asking for what it deserves? Politicians are clashing over whether developing countries should get free access to renewable energy and efficiency technology, or whether standard intellectual property laws should stand. For several years, poor countries have been arguing that they can do little about...

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