Recently in Renewable energy Category

There is a story told to young Platts reporters that the term "mogas" has its origins in the early days of international oil trading.

The story goes thus: Amazed at the relatively cheap prices that you could buy 'gas' in the European market, US traders gleefully shelled out for cargoes only to find that in buying gas they had bought... well, gas.

They won't all make the playoffs this year, but there's one thing a growing list of big leaguers have come together on: promoting recycling and reducing the use of oil to blunt the environmental impact of pro ballparks and stadiums across the US.

From educational campaigns about alternative energy and making biodiesel from concession grease, to powering ballpark tractors and mowers with biodiesel blends and composting the clippings, going green is a rising trend in professional sports.

The Memorandum of Understanding issued by the Governments of China and the US following their meeting in Washington earlier this week certainly doesn't lack for ambition.

It also has something of the flavor of the high-minded statements made by beauty pageant contestants who when asked to discuss their goals and aspirations talk about working for world peace and ending hunger.

Japan is getting serious about diversifying into biofuels and non-hydrocarbon sources of power generation. The country's parliament, the Diet, on July 1 passed a legislation that provides for imposing fines of up to Yen 1 million or $10,500 on companies failing to meet the minimum government requirements of non-fossil fuel consumption.

The new regulation, expected to come into force within two years, leaves out smaller players, who might not have the financial capability to make the necessary changes. The government is set to kick off a series of panel discussions August 3 to fill in the details in the broad framework that has been agreed and define the legal obligations of the companies that will be covered by the regulation.

The notion of freeing ourselves in the US from foreign oil is a bumper-sticker type slogan that may as well be as old as the original automobiles. Another popular and populist refrain of late is that we can do so by boosting domestic renewable energy and making transmission systems improvements. But US power statistics put the lie to that idea, at least in the near term.

Unlike many Third World countries, oil use in US power plants is negligible. The share of power generated from petroleum liquids of the country's net generation capacity was 1.1% for 2008 through November, according to an Energy Information Administration monthly report issued earlier this month. Therefore adding renewable energy in the power sector has little to directly do with cutting oil demand.

US President Barack Obama's 6-hour trip to Ottawa on Thursday, while brief and lacking in the pomp and circumstance normally associated with presidential trips abroad, will arguably be one of the most important of the early period of his presidency.

Canada is the largest trading partner of the US, particularly in the energy and transportation industries. So how the two countries work out some particularly difficult issues running the gamut from the so-called "smart grid" technology in the power sector to carbon sequestration and cap-and-trade will have dramatic impacts in both countries for years to come.

The strongest advocates of renewable energy do seem to have one common, unstated theme in their arguments. Their tendency is to assume that the cost of extracting hydrocarbons, and the efficiency of using them, are stationary targets. By contrast, efficiency gains in wind, solar and other forms of renewables have been impressive, and are likely to continue to gain.

There's a problem with that analysis. There continues to be improvements in the old reliables of oil, natural gas and coal.

With feedstock prices at sky-high levels, alternative fuel producers had a lot to think about at the National Algae Association forum outside Houston this week.

The standing-room-only gathering that aimed to showcase the latest algae-for-fuel developments, attended by academics, algae growers, technical researchers and would-be financiers, proved that it's exhausting just to think about some of the problems that still need to be solved in this promising new niche of the alternative energy landscape. But in the curious realm of alternative fuels that insinuates biology into the purely physical sciences, there are no shortage of visionaries pursuing dreams of energy alchemy and eventual riches in a crude-strained future.

Hybrid vehicles have gone mainstream in just a few years, with soaring gasoline costs boosting demand for more energy-efficient cars and sending Priuses and Civics off the lots in droves.

Off on the "lunatic fringe" of the hybrid crowd were hobbyists and tinkerers who wanted more bang from their rechargeable buck. These folks toiled in their garages to fill their already-limited trunk spaces to the gills with batteries, which could be hooked up to the house power supply at night to recharge...the so-called "plug-in" hybrid.