News from June 2006

Efficient Hydrogen Generation to Boost Fuel Cell Output

Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) are being developed with an eye toward use in mobile phones, but they are poorly suited to applications demanding high output. The potential for fuel cells using hydrogen fuel in these applications, however, has suddenly jumped. Casio Computer Co, Ltd of Japan has developed a reformer to extract hydrogen from [...]

Let’s nuke the oil out of the ground

The need for a relatively rapidly available resource to allow us to continue being able to supply the worlds needs for oil, even as it increases into the future, will require some fairly rapid and agile production of resources, and as I noted in the first post of this series, with some 2 trillion extractable [...]

Green investors get red alert from analysts

Investors hoping to strike it rich while saving the planet risk losing everything in the rush to invest in “green” companies, analysts say. High oil prices, climate change and insecure supplies have sparked an explosion of companies seeking money to develop ways to ease the looming energy crisis. However, some fear backers of growth firms [...]

Oil-Rich Alberta Embraces Solar Power

Solar electric panels will be installed on 20 municipal buildings across the oil-producing province of Alberta, city and federal government officials announced on Thursday. Climate Change Central’s Alberta Solar Municipal Showcase has been granted up to C$350,000 (US$315,445) in funding from Canada’s Green Municipal Fund to support the two year project, officials announced from the [...]

House measure would sweeten oil shale deal

Energy companies could potentially reap millions of dollars in royalty breaks under a House bill approved Thursday that calls for the United States to model its western oil shale program after Canada’s booming tar sands industry. Companies in Canada are making fortunes turning sticky, tar-covered sand into oil. The United States hopes to do the [...]

Jellyfish-Like Creatures May Play Major Role in Fate of Carbon Dioxide in the Oc

Transparent jellyfish-like creatures known as a salps, considered by many a low member in the ocean food web, may be more important to the fate of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the ocean than previously thought. In the May issue of Deep Sea Research, scientists report that salps, about the size of a human [...]

US Air Force to test alternative jet fuel blend

Later this year, a giant U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber will take off with a new kind of jet fuel that can be derived from coal or natural gas, setting the stage for the U.S. military to eventually burn a new formula that is not derived from crude oil. In September, a B-52 Stratofortress will [...]

Great Divide oilsands project approved

Work will start soon on the Great Divide Oil Sands Project, a pioneering compact oilsands plan with components in northern Alberta and Montana. ”We’re ready to roll,” Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd. president Dick Gusella said in an interview Thursday after obtaining regulatory approval from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board for the Fort McMurray [...]

Nanotechnology Holds Promise for Energy Breakthroughs

Nanotechnology holds promise for necessary breakthroughs in a number of critical energy sectors, including solar cells, thermoelectric conversion and transport, hydrogen storage, and electrochemical conversion and storage (i.e., batteries, capacitors and fuel cells), according to scientists participating in the first Energy Nanotechnology International Conference (ENIC2006) held June 26-28 at MIT. greencarcongress

German Gasoline and Diesel Consumption to Drop Combined 25% by 2025

In its just-released annual forecast to the German petroleum industry, the MWV (the Association of the German Petroleum Industry: Mineral greencarcongress