BAL Chile SA is currently farming algae on Chiloé Island eventually to produce biofuels for industrial use.

BAL Chile SA CEO Benjamin González said, “Within the next five years we expect to be producing at commercial scale. At present, BAL is developing algae farming on the island of Chiloé and we are (more…)

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon began last week with an impressive display of energy saving homes on the National Mall in Washington D.C. This unique, biennial program – which runs through October 2, 2011 – challenges collegiate teams from around the world to design, build and operate solar- (more…)

There are some highly respected thinkers who completely and vocally reject the idea of electric vehicles. I spoke recently with John Petersen of SeekingAlpha.com fame, whose recent article: “It’s Time To Kill The Electric Car, Drive A Stake Through Its Heart And Burn The Corpse” has stirred a great (more…)

The jury is still out on cellulosic ethanol, which is made out of grass, wood and non-edible parts of plants, as to how green and even viable it is.

One of the main challenges is to find the right enzyme that breaks down the cellulosic wall that (more…)

A U.S. startup says it has developed a process to convert plastic waste into synthetic crude oil, a system that company officials say will provide a new fuel alternative while also removing massive amounts of industrial and municipal waste from landfills each year. (more…)

South Africa’s Eskom has secured a $100 million credit facility from French development finance group Agence Française de Développement for financing a wind power project.

The loan will be used to finance Eskom’s 100-megawatt Sere Wind Project in Vredendal in South (more…)

In many cities air pollution is reaching levels that threaten people’s health according to an unprecedented compilation of air quality data released yesterday by the World Health Organization (WHO). The information includes data from nearly 1100 cities across 91 countries, including capital cities and cities with more (more…)

A family trip recently brought me back to China for a few weeks. I was in a small provincial capital — quieter than Beijing or Shanghai and the kind of place that has seen explosive population growth in the past ten years.

I spent some time this trip trying to understand the (more…)

LED lights, or light emitting diodes, are increasingly more common in newly manufactured devices. A beneficial addition to solid-state lighting, LEDs provide long-life lighting technology in applications such as safety street lighting, vehicles, medical devices and (more…)

I hesitate to start this blog with the words “combined heat and power.” You might stop reading.

Okay, so it’s not the Brad and Jen of energy. (That would be solar and wind.) But what it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in constancy and results. It’s an old guy, been around for about a century. And while its name might not sound green, it (more…)