Kicking the oil habit
Don't imagine that pumping more oil will get us out of our current mess, argues Matthew R Simmons - dealing with the addiction is the only option.
Don't imagine that pumping more oil will get us out of our current mess, argues Matthew R Simmons - dealing with the addiction is the only option.
Price is just the start of it. We need to kick the petroleum habit or we'll soon be in real trouble, says Ian Sample.
Recently, biodiesel has been receiving increasing attention due to its less polluting nature and also because it is a renewable energy resource. Mostly, biodiesel is prepared from edible oils like soybean, rapeseed and sunflower through out the world. Attempts have been made for producing biodiesel with non edible oils like karanja and jatropha especially in India.
Manufacturers in the solar-energy industry are downsizing and scaling back their once-ambitious plans. Katharine Sanderson reports.
After spurning wind power, China has swung around and embraced this clean energy. But the nation's love affair with wind may be spinning out of control, finds David Cyranoski.
The promotion of renewable energy is in line with India
A new revolutionary, renewable and clean energy product is showing the light, quite literally in many rural homes. The Kisan Torches and Lanterns manufactured by the Freeplay Energy Group and distributed by IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd) need no batteries, no kerosene, no electricity and come with a very long shelf life including one year warranty.
Tanzania has one of the lowest rates of electrifi cation in the world. Zara Solar and its sister company Mona-Mwanza Electrical & Electronics both based in Mwanza provide high-quality, aff ordable PV systems in Northern Tanzania. Zara Solar is a rapidly growing business that uses a network of self-employed technicians to reach out to the remote rural areas.
India has significant advantages it can leverage in promoting solar energy as an alternative and renewable energy source. Firstly, the intensity and duration of sunlight available on its landmass is relatively greater than in many other heavily populated regions of the world. Just 1 per cent of India
A recent editorial in Science issued a call for a mission-oriented project, similar to the Manhattan project, for processing lignocellulose (plant biomass)
Significant surface radioactive anomalies, with values up to 0.177% eU3O8 (n = 9), located during 1992 along the non-conformity contact of basement granitoid with the Srisailam Formation, around Chitrial village, Nalgonda District, Andhra Pradesh, led to the establishment of a sizeable uranium deposit by recent exploration.
While exporting and importing governments are often at loggerheads over the legitimacy of sustainability criteria for biofuels, private companies have agreed on a certification scheme that allows verifiably sustainable ethanol to be imported from Brazil to Sweden.
The US electricity grid needs to evolve and requires fresh standards of communication. (Editorial)
Power lines stretching across continents would allow us to ditch fossil fuels for good
Thermoelectric materials are solid-state energy converters whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconducting properties allows them to be used to convert waste heat into electricity or electrical power directly into cooling and heating.
Biomass based power generation is one of the promising renewable options. This article reviews the status and potential of biomass based power for India.
The ability to know today how much wind power will be produced over the next few days provides a decisive advantage over the energy market. Thanks to a new system developed by German University spin-off energy & meteo systems, it's now possible to obtain an accurate forecast of the energy output from wind parks for up to ten days in advance.
Globally, the wind energy sector saw phenomenal growth in the year 2007. However, in India, the industry failed to keep pace. Worldwide wind energy installation were 19,696 in 2007 MW up from 15,120 MW in 2006. In contrast in India the installations in 2007 were 1580 MW down from 1730 MW in 2006.
Wind resource availability and hence the power generation from wind power projects is variable in nature. Since the share of wind power generation is growing in India, the grid generation issues resulting due to this variable nature of wind power will have to be addressed if the growth is to be sustained.