Stories tagged with "regulation"

2007: record year for US wind industry

Posted by Jerome a Paris on January 20, 2008 - 12:55pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: regulation, wind [list all tags]

This is impressive news:


Shattering all its previous records, the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) in 2007, expanding the nation's total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced [Thursday].

Disclosure: I am working for the wind industry - I finance wind projects in Europe. update: A first estimate of global numbers puts total new capacity built in 2007 at 20 GW

There's more… (1509 words) | Comments (130) | | Permalink | Without comments

The Round-Up: March 28th 2007

Posted by Stoneleigh on March 28, 2007 - 8:15am in The Oil Drum: Canada
Topic: Site news
Tags: biofuel, carbon tax, energy storage, housing market, integration, nafta, oil sands, property taxes, regulation, renewable energy, subprime loans, tilma, wind power [list all tags]

Canadian rebirth for wind power

Inside an unremarkable office building on the outskirts of Vancouver, a small team of engineers and marketers is building a technology that will tame the wind.

It is a high-tech battery that looks like a pair of hot-water tanks linked by a twisting network of plastic piping. Each tank is filled with vanadium, an element named after a Norse fertility goddess that could give birth to new possibilities in alternative energy by making wind turbines nearly as reliable as coal-fired electric plants.

First designed by NASA and developed by Vancouver-based VRB Power Systems Inc., the vanadium battery took a major step toward commercial success yesterday after the Irish government released a study showing it could substantially boost profitability at wind farms when the Emerald Isle is looking to inject some of its famous green into its power supply.

There's more… (5101 words) | Comments (7) | | Permalink | Without comments

Anaerobic Digestion (AD) in Ontario – A Regulatory Obstacle Course

Posted by Stoneleigh on February 15, 2007 - 10:59am in The Oil Drum: Canada
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: alternative energy, biogas, electricity, grid connection, net metering, regulation, taxation, zoning [list all tags]


Anaerobic Digester

The Ontario government has recently been emphasizing its green credentials, particularly in relation to small-scale renewable generation, in the run up to a provincial election this fall. The Standard Offer Program (SOP - previously discussed here) is claimed to provide a framework for bringing a substantial array of new embedded generation on to the grid - generation based on different energy sources and varying widely in size. This is exactly what needs to happen if Ontario is to avoid a painful energy squeeze in the future, due in part to the approaching decline of natural gas supplies in North America. However, achieving it is proving to be far more difficult than one might reasonably expect.

There's more… (1982 words) | Comments (25) | | Permalink | Without comments