Boulder-based Cool Energy has been invited to present at the prestigious Transatlantic Green Platform next week. This could be a great opportunity for Cool Energy, per the press release:
Hosted by Europe Plus Foundation and Avise Partners, the Transatlantic Green Platform (TGP) will feature some of the world’s most promising clean-tech companies and introduce them to European utility, energy and manufacturing leaders from BP, Total, EDF, Veolia, Siemens, Cool Energy and Renault among others.
NREL will receive $4 million per year for the next five years as part of the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Center program, Energy Director Steven Chu announced this week.
What’s this, big oil companies cozying up to the ethanol lobby? It’s happening, per the New York Times:
The erstwhile enemies, it turns out, are gradually learning to get along, as refiners increasingly see a need to get involved in ethanol production. Ethanol, made chiefly from corn, now represents about 9 percent of the country’s market for liquid fuels. And the percentage is growing year after year because of federal mandates. With the nation’s thirst for gasoline, and the ethanol that is blended into it, expected to revive when the economy does, the oil companies want to be in a position to take full advantage.
Vice President Joe Biden was in Denver this week to announce the dedication of funds from the stimulus package to create green jobs. From the Denver Post:
Biden announced plans to dedicate $500 million from the federal stimulus to train residents of housing projects to weatherize homes and perform other green jobs. Of that, $50 million will be focused on areas hit hardest by the automobile industry crisis.
Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz is planning on making a move in Wyoming’s growing wind-power industry – and it’s a very big move.
Anschutz Corp.’s affiliate, Power Company of Wyoming, wants to build a 1,000-turbine wind farm on 150 square miles of land near Rawlins, west of Laramie on Interstate 80. As for size? Very big, at an investment of $4 to $6 billion, per the Associated Press:
The Power Company says the 1,000 turbines would generate between 2,000 and 3,000 megawatts of energy. By comparison, the world’s largest existing wind farm is the 421-turbine, 736-megawatt Horse Hollow wind farm in Texas, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Currently, Wyoming has less than 800 megawatts of wind power online. Needless to say, this project would be a game-changer for the state, and take advantage of the massive efficiencies of scale necessary many experts say wind projects need to be profitable.
Anschutz Corp. hopes to pair the project with a massive transmission project, investing $3 billion in a high-voltage transmission line to run the power to the Las Vegas area.
The company hopes to begin the project in 2011 and bring it to full power by 2013.
Is it getting uglier between Tri-State Generation and Transmission and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission? Forbes is reporting that the PUC is considering increasing its oversight of Tri-State, which has been in the news lately for what some see as its middling approach to renewable and energy efficiency investment. The magazine reports that Tri-State is questioning the PUC’s authority to expand its oversight.
Tri-State has been under increasing scrutiny of late, including for its announcement earlier this month that it would participate in a large-scale coal-fired plant in Kansas, a deal that once appeared to be doomed. And Tri-State gets only 1 percent of its energy from renewable sources, compared to 10 percent from Xcel Energy.
They’re stuck in federal bureaucracy. That goes both for the loan guarantees in February’s stimulus package, and for a similar program from even before the stimulus. All of this prompted renewable energy associations from each major fuel source to send a letter this week to the Obama Administration, asking it to intercede and speed the funds along before more renewable companies wither on the vine.
In its first day of debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Waxman-Markey bill – that would create the nation’s first cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases – was bogged down by a number of amendements amid Republican concerns that the bill would cause a “permanent recession.” Significantly, an amendment that would have created an “off-ramp” to shut down the system if China and India did not agree to similar measures was defeated by House Democrats.
Get ready to have the term “Waxman-Markey” enter the economic, environmental and political lexicons. The cap-and-trade bill, unveiled last week, may be the first realistic shot at putting a price on carbon. Some on the conservative side of the aisle have come out in opposition, and some liberal groups (such as Greenpeace) say it doesn’t go far enough. The New York Times’ Nobel-winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman sides with Al Gore in support of the legislation, arguing that it makes no sense to oppose something that is good because it is not perfect.
Hyperion Power Generation of Denver is valued at $100 million, but it’s years away from getting the approval necessary to start making its nuclear reactors – which, at a cost of $25-$30 million, could drastically change the nuclear playing field (remember that a large-scale nuclear reactor hasn’t been built in this country in a generation).
Gargi Chakrabarty of the Denver Post has an interesting profile on this company, including the fact that it couldn’t get a phone call from Gov. Bill Ritter’s office, despite meeting New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson twice to discuss a manufacturing plant.
Colorado Alternative Energy