Recently in Renewable power Category

The gold business card -- that's gold, not gold-colored paper -- said it all about where the money is coming from for a new kind of gasification industry. The small but growing area is a fairly low-emission process that turns carbon feedstocks, mainly coal, into synthetic gas for multiple uses -- including turning power turbines -- without burning them. It is especially expected to take off in China, with that country's abundance of cash, coal and carbon dioxide emissions.

The card came out of the wallet of gasification entrepreneur Robert Walker, who said it came from a Chinese business contact.

In the power industry, of course, it's always all about the weather, and the price of natural gas. And in the Pacific Northwest, it's always all about the rain, and the snow, and the snowmelt. The amount of hydropower available there determines what all the other power resources do, and what the wholesale price of power is.

This year and next year are no different ... except that more and more, it's also all about the wind, which adds a management challenge that's tough to meet.

In the UK, our London colleagues report, E.ON said today that its 750-kW wave energy converter in Orkney, Scotland, has delivered its first power.

That is a milestone for wave power, which hasn't gotten impressively far yet in either the US or Europe, though energy authorities see enormous potential for it. In the US, meanwhile, California media reports that Pacific Gas and Electric has just suspended its own wave energy project off the coast of Humboldt County. According to The Times-Standard, PG&E said rising costs, size constraints that would have prevented expansion, and lagging technological development prompted the decision.

In some recent orders the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has continued to make good on its promise to find ways to promote the Obama administration's commitment to renewable resources.

Friday, FERC determined that although Southern California Edison had not proven that two transmission projects are needed to reduce congestion or ensure grid reliability, they still qualify for some form of incentive rate treatment because they further the public policy goal of getting more renewable power online.

Looking for some inspiration to renew flagging enthusiasm for huge federal subsidies for renewable energy projects? There's a video for you.

When BrightSource Energy and friends broke ground Wednesday for the 392-MW Ivanpah concentrating solar power project, people spared no rhetoric to make the event momentous. Putting it to a stirring musical score makes the occasion almost a tear-jerker, in that tears-of-happiness way.

National Grid believes it can help meet energy demand in the Northeast -- and reduce carbon emissions -- if it can deliver a lot more biogas to customers in its four-state service territory in the US Northeast. But the utility giant knows it has a lot of hurdles to overcome -- including getting the government to pay attention.

"From a policy perspective, the biggest challenge for renewable gas is that it is not currently on the radar screen of US policymakers," Chris Mostyn, head of corporate media relations for National Grid, said in an e-mail Friday, following up on the company's white paper: "Renewable Gas -- Vision for a Sustainable Gas Network."

Jon Stewart took time on June 16 to skewer the United States' energy policy -- or, rather, the lack thereof -- over the last 40 years. "The Daily Show" pieced together clips of every president dating back to Nixon promising variations on a "clean energy future" and "breaking the addiction to foreign oil" in a fairly devastating eight-minute segment.

He showed the "Groundhog Day" experience triggered by President Obama's speech Tuesday night: presidents saying the same thing over and over and over ...

Bored with naming projects after towns, dams or rivers, one hydropower developer has named about a dozen proposed projects after movies, songs and a Saturday Night Live play-dough character.

A relative newcomer to the hydro industry, Hydro Green Energy, started out in 2002 as a developer of hydrokinetic devices, which derive power from underwater river currents or ocean waves.

Google just got a little more specific about its plans for using the authority it has from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell power.

At the GreenNet conference in San Francisco Thursday, IDG News Service reports at PCWorld, Google's "green energy czar," Bill Weihl, was asked about speculation that the Google Energy subsidiary was planning to enter the energy business.