Today a long-standing electronic dream has become a reality thanks to research done by a team of scientists from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, supported by U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Producing superconducting nano-scale wires to facilitate faster and more powerful electronic devices has been the long-time ambition which had eluded achievement until now.

As much as we all want coal as an energy source to go away completely, we also know it will take the government and private sector sometime (too long in our opinion) to fully move to clean energy sources. In the meanwhile, methods need to be developed which can minimize the impact of fossil fuel usage on the environment.

Germany already leads the world on renewable energy and could become first G20 country to kick the fossil-fuel habit. Germany could derive all of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050 and become the world's first major industrial nation to kick the fossil-fuel habit, the country's Federal Environment Agency said today.

Spain's industry ministry has reached agreements with two key renewable energy lobbies, the Spanish Wind Energy Association and Protermosolar, aimed at reducing special tariff premiums for wind farms and solar thermal plants.

This could very well be the magic formula for future power generation. Yes, scientists are busy crafting what is now called as “solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes.” These are absolutely eco-friendly batteries – based on the hidden powers of potatoes – which will be an economical answer to the growing power needs of developing and developed countries.

The federal government has just finished construction on a zero-energy office building, the nation’s largest, and is hoping that commercial developers will follow its lead. The 222,000-square-foot Research Support Facility is on the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colo. Just over 800 employees will occupy the building once it officially opens in late August.

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a process for building an organic molecular-scale framework that could be used to collect solar energy. They did it using phthalocyanines, which are common dyes used in blue jeans and numerous other products.

American Electric Power CEO Michael Morris is all too familiar with the challenges of incorporating renewable energy into the existing industrial framework. But he believes that the largest of these hurdles can be overcome with sound planning for the future. Here’s what he has to say.

Japan's Toshiba said Friday it was working with Mitsubishi Motors to develop batteries for electric vehicles, as the race intensifies among automakers and technology giants to make emission-free cars. Toshiba, which spans electronic components, appliances and nuclear power plants has developed a fast-charging long life lithium-ion battery called SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery), which it plans to adapt for cars.

According to executives of Pacific West Energy LLC, one of the last players standing, securing the acreage needed to start production has been the high hurdle to overcome. Signing a preliminary accord on a biomass plant -- which could broaden its revenue stream -- is a promising step, but success still hinges on land acquisition and other complications being cleared.

One early adopter was the Kyocera Corporation of Japan, which tasked Envision Solar with the construction of its first large-scale “solar grove” in 2006 at its United StatesSan Diego, where a 235-kilowatt carport harnesses 1,400 of Kyocera’s own solar photovoltaic modules. Other major installations soon followed at Dell Computer’s headquarters in Round Rock, Tex

Many passionately believe that clean coal is not the answer to decreasing carbon emissions or increasing the supply of energy. In fact, since Obama's decision to set aside $2.4 billion dollars "to lead the world in CCS technologies," disagreements (and for that matter, debates) have surfaced about its legitimacy as a true carbon-fighting, energy-producing solution.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report on June 23 detailing regional strategies to increase biofuels production to meet the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) mandate for U.S. consumers to use 36 billion gallons of biofuel per year by 2022.

A fresh-water wind farm is taking shape at Lake Erie and when completed will provide 20 megawatts and get on to about one gigawatt power by 2020. Huge individual turbines 300 feet tall, to be built by GE will be erected off Ohio, Cleveland. Better designs: These are special gearless super-efficient turbines, with three 176-foot long blades, which run with the help of a giant ring of magnets. The blades are longer due to strategically placed carbon fibre, and lighter too. Many moving parts like gearbox, coils and starter brushes are eliminated with resultant reduced maintenance. The giant magnetic ring array helps the turbine generate power even at very low speed.

The Eindhoven University of Technology from The Netherlands, with a EUR 1.2 million help from the Dutch government wants to develop ultra-efficient solar cells that are also cheap. They envision their cells having a 65% efficiency, something even the satellites would envy.

"Also we need to have some kind of social mechanism to watch whether the nuclear community is doing the correct thing or not... mass media for instance," Suzuki said on the sidelines of an international conference on technology and safety in nuclear power plants.

Really amazing are the innovative ways solar power is put into use. Now a team of scientists working in Sandia National Laboratories is focusing on exploring basic steps to make synthetic liquid fuel with the help of solar panels. The goal is that this will help considerably reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

There’s a lot of talk about making power meters and the electric grid “smart” enough to handle additional energy from solar panels. National Semiconductor wants to make the solar panels themselves smarter. They’ve developed a chip that integrates into the junction boxes of solar panels, optimizing power production.

A global aluminum company called Norsk Hydro is supporting green jobs in the U.S.U.S. Two of the company’s southeastern U.S. facilities will supply aluminum frames and other parts for a new hybrid concentrating solar facility for Florida Power & Light.

In H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, tiny organisms found in nature save the world from powerful high tech invaders that have overwhelmed mankind’s powerful high tech weapons, and in a classic case of life imitating art, there they go again.

The temperature at which they superconduct is pretty low and hard to get for the moment – only 30 °K (-243°C). Magnetic fields have proved themselves to change the material’s electrical resistance in an unexpected manner.

A solar-powered plane is getting ready to hit the skies once again - this time, at night. It will be the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by solar energy. Solar Impulse will lift off from an airfield in Switzerland, on a sunny day sometime at the end of June.

U.S. policymakers can't count on that kind of dedication as they map out the electric-car future. President Barack Obama aims to get a million electric cars and plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads by 2015 to ease U.S. reliance on imported oil and cut carbon emissions. The first two mass-market electrics, Nissan's Leaf and the Chevy Volt, are set to hit the streets this fall.

A research team at the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) has developed a powerful new tool that promises to unlock the secrets of biomass degradation, a critical step in the development of cost-effective cellulosic biofuels. The details of this method were published online on June 11 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Yes, the day is not far off when reaching for sky is the new motto for generating cost-effective renewable energy. Initially it was considered to be technically non-viable to tap high-altitude winds.

But now Sanyo’s lithium-ion battery technology has made it possible for Mira EV to travel 1003.184 km without a recharge. Traveling for 27.5 hours, at 40 km/h average speed, from May 22 to May 23, 2010, the trail run by Mira EV was powered by putting together 8320 cylindrical lithium-ion 18650-type batteries.