Clean Energy Digest

This is sure to stir up some controversy about the reliability of renewable energy. The following video shows a news report from Minnesota about 12 wind turbines that won’t operate in cold weather due to an issue with the hydraulic fluid. The Minnesota State Municipal Power Association paid $300,000 for each of the turbines. What [...]

Bill Gates has a new website called Gates Notes where you can find out more about Mr. Gates, his charitable foundation and his thoughts on a variety of topics. One of the posts on his site is a podcast series on energy. There are four audio files in the series in both Windows Media and [...]

Google has done a good job throwing mainstream media reporters off of the scent when it comes to their recent filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The New York Times Bits Blog (which is a tech focused blog) seemed to take the following quote from a Google rep at face value.
“We want to [...]

About a year ago we mentioned that Google was investing in an enhanced geothermal energy company called AltaRock Energy. In fact, both Google and the U.S. Department of Energy made significant investments in AltaRock’s plan to drill deep into dry but hot caverns in Northern California in a bid to, “…create an EGS reservoir that [...]

An operating wind turbine collapsed at the Noble Altona Wind Park in upstate New York this past Friday. The Press Republican, a local upstate New York newspaper reported on the story.
Neighbors around the Altona wind park reported hearing loud explosions before the turbine apparently snapped in half around 10 a.m. and then caught fire.
Helen Morales, [...]

The credit market freeze, stock market devaluations and commodities markets collapse are having a chilling effect on clean energy projects around the globe.
Pickens delays world’s biggest wind farm project
T Boone Pickens, a renowned Texan oilman who is raising the capital for the wind farm, told a US television station today that the twofold problem [...]

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in California has rejected a contract between PG&E and Finavera Renewables.
The chief reason given for the rejection was related to viability of the project. According to the story, “The commission noted that a prototype buoy deployed by Finavera off the Oregon coast [...]

The outlook for clean energy projects has started to change as a result of the current economic situation in the U.S. and around the world. A pair of news items underscore the wider issues that are likely to develop.
Wind-farm Workers Laid Off
Noble Environmental Power has stopped work at its Bellmont and Chateaugay wind-energy projects [...]

Here are some notable clean energy news items for the week of August 17, 2008.
GM set to bring Volt electric car to Europe “General Motors is planning to rebadge its Chevrolet Volt electric car as an Opel and bring it to Europe as part of the US carmaker’s plans to expand the model range of [...]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has offered up an ambitious plan for wind power development in and around New York City. A story in the New York Times today reports on the mayor speaking at a clean energy conference in Las Vegas yesterday.
“Mr. Bloomberg said he would ask private companies and investors to study how windmills can [...]