BMW Offers Fast Battery Chargers to Help Electric Vehicle Sales
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s biggest maker of luxury vehicles, is offering drivers of the i3 city car speedier and smaller auto-battery chargers in an effort to make driving electric vehicles more practical.
A Grand Vision of a Potential US Energy System
If all energy production channels were employed, the United States has sufficient resources to eliminate all coal, gasoline and diesel combustion in all demand sectors and replace them with natural gas, wind and solar electricity firmed and shaped with both grid-scale and distributed energy storage. I believe that we can reach a zero-air-pollution, coal-free, crude-import free, all-electric low-cost energy future. We have energy rhetoric and technology to get there; do we have leadership and will?
A Requiem for Today’s Grid
People speak reverentially about the electricity grid, and rightly so. The U.S.’ electricity grid is an awesome technical, operational, and public policy accomplishment. Who can deny the matchless service it delivers, occasional weather-related breakdowns notwithstanding? In fact, acts of Mother Nature — Hurricane Sandy, say — only highlight its otherwise stellar reliability. And rural electrification, like rural telephony, is a triumph of public policy with foresight.
SunPower Offers Solar and Storage Packages to Hybrid Car Customers
Buyers of Volkswagen or Audi hybrids will find themselves getting yet another sales pitch as they leave a U.S. dealership next year -- to buy a home power network that allows them to charge their new cars using only solar power.
Ten Clean Energy Stocks For 2014: August Update
July was a hard month for the stock market and clean energy stocks in particular. My broad market benchmark of small cap stocks, IWM, fell 7 percent and is down 2.7 percent for the year, while my clean energy benchmark PBW fell 9% and has slid into the red for the first time. It is down 0.1 percent for the year to date.
UK Solar, Wind to Compete Head-to-Head With Solar Under Auction Plans
The U.K. plans to force onshore wind developers to compete head-to-head for the first time with solar generators when they bid for green power subsidies as the nation seeks to reduce the cost of renewable energy for consumers.
Cleantech's Investment Cycle: Don't Worry, Think Bigger
Several reports this week agree that cleantech investments fell in 2013, but that's not a bad thing. And the big question is what happens next: how much more is needed?
Update: Google On a Cleantech Investment Binge Again
Once again flexing its investment muscles in renewable energy, Google is expanding its future purchasing plans for wind energy in Finland and taking a stake in another a Texas wind farm. Oh, and it also bought some home energy automation startup called Nest Labs.
Europe Dividing Over Most Ambitious Carbon and Climate Plans
The European Union is poised to take its first formal steps to expand the world’s most ambitious limits on fossil fuel pollution. That may widen a rift in how it balances green policies with the need for cheaper power.
The Great Electric Company Growth Opportunity