Ethanol Research Breakthrough: Wood Feedstock
As oppossed to an annual crop like corn, wood could offer a year-round source of ethanol, and still supply a feedstock for biomass thermal energy, or co-fired plants.
Renewable Energy
Japan and Brazil Sign Biofuel Deal
Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation have signed the first phase of a term of reference for the future implementation of a bilateral biofuel program aimed at exporting ethanol and biodiesel fuel to the Japanese market.
Peak Oil – Peak Technology
It would seem that – in addition to Peak Oil – we are at a time of Peak Technology… there are no new technologies we can look to for solutions to the end of fossil fuels.
N.Z. Grid boss warns of blackouts
National grid boss Ralph Craven is predicting blackouts if the $500 million upgrading of transmission lines into Auckland is thwarted.
An Open Letter to BusinessWeek on Hydrogen
A recent Business Week article obscures hydrogen’s primary disadvantage: hydrogen is an energy intensive alternative to motor fuels derived from oil, argues Ronald Cooke, author of Oil, Jihad and Destiny.
Bush, Iraq and the hydrogen economy
The hydrogen economy is really a nuclear economy. Investors and the rest of corporate America may not realise how close the country is to making a gigantic bet on a nuclear future.
Islanders look to coconuts as oil prices rise
Struggling with rising oil prices, Pacific island nations are increasingly looking to coconut oil, long a basic foodstuff and massage lubricant, as an economically and ecologically sound petroleum alternative.
Estonia: Wind farm takes off at former nuke base
On the site where border guards used to keep watch on the western outpost of the Soviet Union, Baltic European Union newcomer Estonia is erecting a wind farm to generate clean electricity.
Hungry for hemp
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration recently abandoned, without comment, its three-year effort to ban commercial foods made from or containing nonpsychoactive industrial hemp seed and hemp oil.
Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel cycle
Journal paper quantifying the degree of
non-renewability of a major biofuel: ethanol produced from industrially-grown corn. Extensive work seriously challenging the right of this process to renewable status, on net energy, soil depletion, and government subidy-dependence grounds.
Worldwide capacity of solar thermal energy greatly underestimated
The International Energy Agency’s Solar Heating and Cooling Programme and major solar thermal trade associations have published new statistics on the use of solar thermal energy. The new data – expressed for the first time in GWth, rather than in square meters of installed collector area – shows the global installed capacity to be 70 GWth (70.000 MWth).
Sustainable Energy From Vegetable Oil
An excellent practical guide to the techniques of using vegetable oil as a transportation fuel which acknowledges also some of this approach’s large scale limitations.
