While some Conservative politicians have claimed switching to renewables would be too expensive, the majority of Brits continue to want more Government support for clean energy. Even the Confederation of British Industry says environmental regulation doesn’t have to be a burden.

Imagine if nuclear power was safe, terror-proof, and fueled by a plentiful, ubiquitous element. Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe it is. Maybe not.

A couple nights ago, I dropped by the Vice magazine offices in Brooklyn to check out a new documentary on thorium put together by Motherboard.tv. (Full disclosure: the video was produced by Alex Pasternack, a former contributor here at TH.) The film, The Thorium Dream, examines the history of an alternative kind of nuclear power, one tested decades ago but never embraced.

Going from sixty-to-zero on nuclear will require significant new fossil generation in the German state. Bavaria is expected to trade out their significant nuclear electricity portfolio for fossil generation in the coming decade, according to new analysis from Der Spiegel. While the contribution of non-hydro renewables is anticipated to increase from 10 to 36 percent of generating capacity, the largest increase comes from natural gas, which will increase its portfolio share from 10 to 46 percent, far more than any other single fuel. Spurred by recent fears following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Bavaria is just the latest to abandon its nuclear investments in favor of fossil fuels, trading unlikely radiation risks for certain emissions and pollution increases from natural gas combustion.

When we talk about the Middle East Asia, we imagine harsh terrain, blazing sun and sand dunes. Abu Dhabi is a part of the United Arab Emirates. Its currently hostile area is being developed as the world’s first carbon neutral city in the coming 5 to 10 years. This city will be a green example that will not be constructed using polluting technologies and fossil fuels. The greatest irony is this city would be located in a country that is a leading producer of fossil fuels. Its architects and designers claim that the city will be powered up by various forms of renewable energy, including solar and wind power.

Even as Congressional leaders continue to drag their feet on clean energy and many states keep renewables-related legislation on the back burner because of the still-sluggish economy, the U.S. military continues to invest money and research into green energy.

The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate said in a report released on Wednesday that U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spending on alternative energy skyrocketed 300% between 2006 and 2009, from $400 million to $1.2 billion, and that figure is expected to top $10 billion annually by the year 2030.

Nature has unfathomable loads of passive energy, lying dormant in unknown territories. If prudently explored, these potential energy hubs can reduce our dependence on fossil fuel energy which is depleting at a rapid pace. At one point eventually “Time” will not give us a choice to rely on oil for energy, it will command us to switch over to renewable sources of energy or even other alternate sources of energy. A brief about a few of the alternate sources of energy is given below.

The Philadelphia Eagles will add solar panels and wind turbines at their home stadium, saying Thursday it will be the world’s first stadium with self-generating renewable energy.

The American football club’s joint venture with Solar Blue, a Florida firm that will invest 30 million dollars in the project over the next year, will also include a duel-fuel co-generation plant at Lincoln Financial Field.

“The Philadelphia Eagles are proud to take this vital step towards energy independence from fossil fuels,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said.

It is where energy, climate change and bare-knuckle street politics collide: soaring household electricity and gas bills. And so it’s no surprise that prime minister David Cameron has been taking a keen interest and received a briefing from his new, ex-BP, adviser Ben Moxham.

It was leaked today, allowing the Daily Telegraph to strike the latest blow in the right-wing press’s campaign against green energy policies: “Environment policy reforms to add £300 to energy bills”.

In the latest stage of the historic battle between renewable energy and fossil fuels, the U.S. Army has taken the gloves off:  Army Secretary John McHugh announced the launch of the Army’s new Energy Initiatives Office Task Force at the GovEnergy Conference in Ohio last week. The new task force is charged with developing large-scale renewable energy projects for Army bases and other facilities. Though the task force is focused on military needs – in this case, the ability of bases to keep functioning despite widespread fuel supply  and power disruptions – this could mark the beginning of the end for those who fight on the side of continued reliance on fossil fuel in the civilian world, too.

Fuels like gasoline, based on hydrocarbon, create pollution and carbon footprint. Hydrogen has been claimed to be a good alternative to replace fossil fuel since the 1970s. But hydrogen’s potential has not been realized even partially mainly because of storage and commercial production difficulties. There have been research being done on renewable energy sources like hydrogen for quite some years. Recently, breakthrough research has been successful in creating a new method for storing hydrogen.

Energy firms have put in planning applications to build gas fired pwer stations that could lock Britain into high carbon future. Photograph Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Dozens of new fossil-fuelled power stations are being planned by energy companies, triggering concerns among green campaigners of a new “dash for gas” that could crowd out wind and other cleaner energy projects, the Guardian can reveal.

A biofuel is tricky to define because the usual fossil fuel we use, is in a way biofuel too. But we can safely say that most of the biofuels don’t add up their quota of carbon dioxide to the environment. The biofuels are therefore considered to be “CO2 neutral.” Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco leaves. So that oil in tobacco leaves can be utilized as biofuels in future. Their paper was published in Plant Biotechnology Journal which is an online journal.

Vyacheslav Andrianov is a Ph.D. and assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. According to him tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops. But there is a hitch. When we try to extract oil, most of it is available in tobacco seeds. Statistics say that tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight. Another snag is tobacco plants don’t produce seeds in copious amounts. It is about 600 kg of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues aim to find ways so that the tobacco leaves produce more oil.

A usual tobacco plant leave has 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil per dry weight. The researchers modified two genes of the plant. They are the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The plants were engineered to over express one of the two genes. The alteration of DGAT gene resulted in about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves. It is around twice the amount of oil produced by and large. When the researcher went for the LEC2 gene modification it yielded around 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.

According to Dr. Andrianov, “Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production. We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves.”

Dr. Andrianov opines, “Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising ‘energy plant’ platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.”

Source: alternative-energy