Gaining new insight into how efficiently the microbes in large bioreactors produce methane from brewery waste, Cornell scientists hope to use their new knowledge to shape these microbial communities to produce liquid biofuels and other useful products.

The global market for LED light fixtures, which already stood at $3.8bn in 2010, is expected to grow to $8.3bn within the next three years, according to new research. The heightened awareness of energy efficiency together and global fiscal stimulus has created suitable conditions for the adoption of white light application of LED technology, which would otherwise have faced high costs.

Will electric car charging networks have the type of roaming commonly found between cell phone providers? If Nokia Siemens Networks– a joint venture between the European networking giants — has anything to say about it, in Europe they will. This week at Mobile World Congress (MWC), an annual telecom conference in Barcelona, Nokia Siemens and a German public utility group called Smartlab announced they are developing an authentication and authorization service to enable electric vehicle drivers to “roam” when charging up via various service providers.

A researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has invented a method of making high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables that are thinner and more flexible than demonstration HTS cables now installed in the electric power grid while carrying the same or more current. The compact cables could be used in the electric grid as well as scientific and medical equipment and may enable HTS power transmission for military applications.

Sản phẩm đèn Led (viết tắt của Light emitting diode tức đi-ốt phát quang) ngày càng được tiêu thụ mạnh tại Mỹ, Nhật, Trung Quốc, Hàn Quốc nhờ ưu điểm tiết kiệm năng lượng, ánh sáng mạnh và tuổi thọ cao, lại có nhiều ứng dụng như làm đèn xe, đèn đường, màn hình điện thoại di động.Nếu sử dụng đèn Led để chiếu sáng thay các bóng đèn compact, huỳnh quang... Việt Nam có thể tiết kiệm được ít nhất 40% điện tiêu thụ cho toàn hệ thống đèn chiếu sáng.

Panasonic đã thông báo, ngày 18/3/2011 họ sẽ phát hành 2 model bóng đèn LED EVERLEDS loại tiêu chuẩn có góc phân phối ánh sáng rộng (khoảng 300 độ) tại Nhật Bản. Góc phân bố cường độ sáng của đèn LED mới từ Panasonic khoảng 300 độ, gần như tương đương với các đèn sợi đốt sẽ cho phép chiếu sáng rõ ràng theo những hướng rộng.

Researchers at the University of Leeds are developing a roasting process that would transform raw biomass from a bulky , water-saturated material into an energy-rich powder that is perfect for burning in coal-fired power plants. Called torrefaction, it is a relatively low-temperature process similar to that used in roasting coffee beans. If the researchers can overcome a few stumbling blocks, the process could lead to a new burst of coal-to-biomass power plant conversions, and consequently to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Both the private sector and government in Korea have increased spending on clean energy and green technology development in the past few years. Korea’s Ministry of Knowledge Economy has worked with private firms to find new improvements in battery technology, photovoltaics, geothermal power generation, and biofuels. And this year, the Korea government expects to inject 1 trillion won (US$900 million) into current and next generation clean energy sources.

This is the finding of a recent US study that was compiled by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Department of Energy, the University of Maryland and NASA, which introduced a new assessment method to analyze interactions between solar thermal and electrical systems. The aim is to overcome one of the greatest difficulties of economic models that were used up to now for the energy evaluation of solar power, which practically did not take into account the source’s natural variability compared to network loads.

In conventional photoelectrochemical cells, sunlight is converted into electricity and an electrolyte is used to move electrons which creates a current. The problem is that these cells have chromophores, which are light-absorbing dyes that degrade after being exposed to sunlight. But with self-repairing solar cells, this would no longer be an issue. To create these new solar cells, the Purdue research team utilized two crucial elements needed to make this technology imitate nature, which was molecular recognition and thermodynamic metastability. This allows the system to be dissolved and reassembled on a regular basis, replacing photo-damaged dyes continuously.

Biofuel crops can potentially meet half of the current global demand for fuel without affecting food crop production, according to researchers at the University of Illinois. Ximing Cai, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university, led a team of researchers in isolating land areas across the globe suitable for producing biofuel grass crops with minimal agricultural or environmental impact.

Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have found that barley grain can be used to produce ethanol, and the leftover byproducts-barley straw, hulls , and dried distillers grains (DDGS)-can be used to produce an energy-rich oil called bio-oil. The bio-oil could then be used either for transportation fuels or for producing heat and power needed for the grain-to-ethanol conversion. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and these results support the USDA priority of developing new sources of bioenergy.

Gasoline prices are forecasted to increase from $2.35 per gallon in 2009 to $3.69 by 2035. The number is lower than what was forecasted by the EIA last year. By 2022, the retail price of gas is predicted to be $3.43 per gallon, compared to $2.68 for E85. Because gas has a higher energy content, the prices are actually similar per mile traveled, the report said.

The Indian government recently provided subsidies worth $10 million for projects aimed at promoting the use of solar energy in rural areas. The subsidies went to projects which distributed solar lanterns and installed solar home-lighting systems in villages across the country.

According to a recently released report, Scotland is on track to meet its ambitious renewable energy goal of generating 80 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. In the report, Energy Trends, it was revealed that 27 percent of the electricity in 2009 was generated using renewable energy sources.

A sprawling international collaboration between scientists at government and university laboratories has resulted in a breakthrough discovery that could lead to more efficient ways of generating electricity from waste heat. The phenomenon, called the thermoelectric effect, can be applied to car exhaust, factory emissions, and other operations to capture the large amount of human-manufactured energy that is currently lost to the atmosphere.

Unit 1 with the capacity of 400MW of Son La Hydropower Plant has been successfully connected to the National Electricity System at 12h45’on December 17th, 2010. Son La hydropower plant, with the installed capacity of 2400 MW, including six units, each unit with the capacity of 400MW, is the second ladder on Da River, after Lai Chau hydropower plant started on December 22th and above Hoa Binh hydropower plant.

Các nhà nghiên cứu Trường đại học California (Mỹ) đã chế tạo thành công các bóng đèn hybrid giá rẻ với thời gian sử dụng lâu hơn, tiết kiệm năng lượng hơn so với đèn LED thông thường.

The Tesla Roadster uses a battery called “18650,” originally designed for laptop computers. The car doesn’t use 10, or a hundred, but 6,831 of them, enough to dispatch a 56 kWh power onto the Roadster’s electric motors and wheels. This power is enough to take you from 0 to 60 mph in about 3.5 seconds (depending on the car’s version).

This will be enabled by an agreement, which was signed Monday in Skopje by the governments of Macedonia and Germany, envisaging financial assistance for the second stage of the energy efficiency program and a loan contract signed by the Macedonian government, ELEM company and KfW bank for realisation of the project rehabilitating six hydro power plants.