Renewable Energy

At first glance, you might mistake the potential future of wind energy as a blimp—the type of added effect perfect for flying over a carnival or football game. Instead, the BAT—Buoyant Airborne Turbine—is a wind turbine inside of an inflatable, helium shell capable rising 1,000 feet above ground. Altaeros Energies, a firm housed at small business […]

This entry is the first of a two-part follow up to the blog Long wrote last fall. This first entry focuses on the national story, the next entry will focus on coal in the west. Across the U.S., economics are increasingly favoring investment in renewable energy at the expense of dirty coal energy. As the price of solar […]

There are 80,000 people in the U.S. who are employed in the wind energy industry—an industry that has secured $105 billion in investments since 2005. At the same time, the cost to deploy the energy has dropped by 43 percent in four years and wind has risen to become the fifth-largest power source in the U.S. […]

It’s no secret that multiple countries within the European Union have a strong track record in onshore and offshore wind energy. However, the latest report from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) frames the advances of wind energy around an issue that won’t disappear anytime soon—water security. EWEA’s Saving Water With Wind Energy begins with statistics […]

Here in the Midwest we are seeing the perennial first signs of Spring: a few early buds are appearing on the magnolia trees, rivers and lakes are starting to thaw, and of course, ALEC and the Koch brothers are pushing yet another pointless and harmful attack on Kansas’s wildly successful Renewable Energy Standard. This year’s bill, Senate Bill 433, is sponsored by the Kansas Senate’s Committee […]

By Sierra Martinez California took another major and symbolic step this month with its decision to rely significantly on energy efficiency and other clean energy resources to help replace electricity once generated by the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) serving San Diego and the greater Los Angeles area. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) made official […]

With wind energy rising to the fifth-largest electricity source in the U.S., the desire for more information and help deploying it won’t be dying down any time soon. Recognizing this, the the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have announced the development of six Wind Energy Regional Resource Centers around the country. The […]

Solar energy wasn’t the only renewable that had details of a milestone-setting 2013 revealed this week. Wind power checked in this week, too, as the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released data regarding the nation’s wind generation last year. Wind energy is now the fifth-largest electricity source in the U.S., providing 4.13 percent of the nation’s […]