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| World Oil Outlook 2008
OPEC’s World Oil Outlook 2008 is part of the Organization’s commitment to market stability and a means to highlight and further understand many of the possible future challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of the oil industry. The publication is also a channel to encourage dialogue, cooperation and transparency between OPEC and others within the industry. Free download of the publication. | Now or Never - IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 shows pathways to sustained economic growth based on clean and affordable energy technology
Press Release - See Related Publication or Event
06 June 2008 Tokyo --- “The world faces the daunting combination of surging energy demand, rising greenhouse gas emissions and tightening resources. A global energy technology revolution is both necessary and achievable; but it will be a tough challenge”, said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today in Tokyo, at the launch of the latest edition of Energy technology Perspectives (ETP).
The Agency’s leading biennial publication responds to the G8 call on the IEA for guidance on how to achieve a clean, clever and competitive energy future. The book is built around three sets of global energy technology scenarios. These are a Baseline (business-as-usual Scenario), a range of ACT Scenarios showing how CO2 emissions could be brought back to current levels by 2050, and a set of BLUE Scenarios outlining how they could be reduced to 50% below current levels. ETP 2008 also contains global roadmaps showing how each of 17 key advanced energy technologies would need to be developed and deployed to deliver the ACT or the BLUE outcomes.
| Solar Power at Half the Cost
A new roof-mounted system that concentrates sunlight could cut the price of photovoltaics. A new mechanism for focusing light on small areas of photovoltaic material could make solar power in residential and commercial applications cheaper than electricity from the grid in most markets in the next few years.  Initial systems, which can be made at half the cost of conventional solar panels, are set to start shipping later this year, says Brad Hines, CTO and founder of Soliant Energy, a startup based in Pasadena, CA, that has developed the new modules. | Soliant Energy, Inc. designs and manufactures concentrating photovoltaic modules for commercial and later residential applications. Our goal is to dramatically reduce the price of solar electricity for consumers and enhance the performance of photovoltaic systems. We do this not by seeking to bring high-risk technologies to market, but by effectively engineering the solar technologies that are available today into a practical solution that allows consumers to begin saving money now.
We are a talented group of engineers, including a core team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and executives who are dedicated to delivering the full promise of solar energy. | Cheaper, Cleaner Ethanol From Biotech Corn
The genetically-modified plants break down their own cellulose, making it possible to use waste biomass to produce ethanol. Researchers have genetically engineered transgenic corn plants that produce enzymes that can turn their leaves and stems into sugar by breaking down cellulose. The plants could lower the cost of creating ethanol from these sources, making such biofuel more competitive with that produced from corn kernels, the primary source of ethanol in the United States today. | MIT Community Solar Power Initiative - MIT Community Solar Power Initiative Grant Overview: ... the state of the art in manufacturing, installing and operating solar power equipment and systems. ... | From Leftovers to Energy
Scientists develop microbes that convert food scraps into energy.
Nestled in the farmland surrounding the University of California campus in Davis (UC Davis) is a set of giant vats filled with hungry microbes. The bugs are devouring cafeteria leftovers and lawn clippings and converting them into biogas--mostly methane and hydrogen--that can be burned to generate electricity or compressed into liquid to power specialized vehicles. However, scientists know little about the gas-producing microbes living within the reactors. But a new project to sequence the genomes of the microbes could change that, allowing researchers to figure out how the bugs perform their digestive tasks and suggesting new ways to make more-productive bioreactors. | | Bio-Hope, Bio-Hype (source Sierra Club) - A users' guide to biofuels
By Frances Cerra Whittelsey - September/October 2007
IN OUR BEAUTIFUL BIOFUEL FUTURE, cars and trucks are powered by wood chips, prairie grass, wheat straw, fast-food grease, garbage, and even algae--whichever material is most plentiful locally and least damaging environmentally. With cars getting 40 miles a gallon or better, greenhouse-gas emissions plummet. The biofuel revolution sparks an economic boom by keeping U.S. dollars at home instead of sending them to Middle Eastern sheikhs.
Biofuels can be made from nearly any organic material. By essentially recycling carbon from living things (as opposed to the ancient biomass in coal and petroleum), biofuels help fight global warming. But some could also add to our environmental problems: In an equally possible but less rosy future, governments and agribusiness clear rainforests and wetlands for vast plantations of biofuel crops like oil palms. With arable land increasingly devoted to fuel production, food prices push higher. The roads clog with biofuel SUVs that still get lousy mileage. Global warming slows insignificantly, if at all. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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