smart meters
The City of Big Shoulders will be doing some heavy smart-grid lifting in the near future, as its main utility company embarks on a 10-year, $2.6 billion upgrade to the electricity system. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) says the project will deliver something like a local economic stimulus to Chicago, generating
natural gas
Could the natural gas “boom” end up being the Darth Vader to Lando Calrissian … as in, “This deal is getting worse all the time”? It seems as though the uncertainties surrounding the safety, sustainability and wisdom of extracting as much natural gas as we can from every imaginable formation keep
Smart Grid
Democracies and automobile windshields both work a whole lot better when they’re transparent, and the same appears to be true for utility bills. One of the key arguments in favor of smart electricity meters is that they give users greater insights into how much energy they’re using, when
While smarter, more fuel-efficient and electric cars grab the headlines at auto shows, they’re not the only solution for curbing the world’s transport-related energy appetite. Better trucks — and trucking alternatives — are also key to cutting our gasoline and carbon footprints. Improvements in trucking are important because the sector
resources
Bringing electricity, more food and higher income to the world’s poor billions wouldn’t create much new stress for either the planet or the global economy. On the other hand, bringing down the vast levels of over-consumption by the world’s wealthiest and most resource-hungry could make a huge
Energy
Contrary to what all the flak it gets from political critics suggests, the US Department of Energy (DOE) does not, in fact, spend most of its money on so-called solar debacles or electric-powered luxury cars. Much of its spending — more than 40 percent in its proposed budget for 2013 — is
peak oil
There’s been a lot of crowing in certain media arenas lately about the “death” of peak oil: “For every barrel of oil produced in the world from 2007 to 2009, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added,” Businessweek recently gloated, noting that we’re “awash” in not only
clean energy
Think about Middle-Eastern OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates and what comes to mind? Is it the obvious: oil? Or is it solar energy, smart grids and green technology? For a growing number of people in the Middle East and elsewhere, and for a
energy efficiency
Just days on the job, Britain’s new Energy and Climate Change Secretary Edward Davey sent the message that he is serious about the government’s “Green Deal” by creating a new division in his department: the Energy Efficiency Deployment Office, or EEDO. “I’m hugely enthusiastic about energy efficiency,
sustainability
What’s the best way to understand developments in the energy world? A Daily Ticker story on Yahoo! Finance provides a glaring example of how not to do so. Serious energy analysts usually find lots to complain about in the mainstream media’s coverage of energy issues, and those complaints
coal
Compared to natural gas, the US is using proportionately less coal than it once did for generating electricity. “Proportional,” though, doesn’t necessarily means less overall. In fact, despite some up-and-down fluctuations, coal consumption in the US has been hovering at around 1 billion short tons per year since 1996,
Smart grids
One challenge in connecting more renewables to the grid is how to balance fairly predictable demand with the more unpredictable nature of on-and-off sources like wind and solar. Beyond that challenge, though, is another one that doesn’t always get as much public attention: how to incorporate the impact of
