New Energy World Network: Connecting Investors, Innovators & Deal-Makers worldwide
New Energy World Network: Connecting Investors, Innovators & Deal-Makers worldwide
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Earlier this month, a remote monitoring system in Hawaii recorded the first time in human history that the daily average for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere hit over 400 parts per million (ppm). Crossing the 400ppm line is not inherently meaningful, other than reminding us that we are on a path to a place we don’t want to go, writes Daniel Vermeer, executive director of the Center for Energy, Development and the Global Environment at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. 
Anders Jansson, CEO of Minesto, shares his views on why marine energy is ‘the best of the best’ and says new technology that can harvest energy from low velocity ocean and tidal currents can multiply the sector’s potential. 
World smart grid sales climbed to $36.5bn in 2012 a growth of 30 per cent on 2011 and M&A activity reached $19.5bn almost doubling the value of deals in the previous year, according to memoori’s latest report. This confirms that solid progress has been made in the last three years but other findings show that all is not well. 
The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) is at the nexus of a changing landscape, where the mountains meet the plains. It's also where changes in the wind industry are being previewed, writes the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s David Glickson. 
World smart grid sales at installed prices climbed to $36.5bn in 2012 a growth of 30 per cent on 2011 and M&A activity reached $19.5bn almost doubling the value of deals in the previous year, according to the latest report from sector specialist Memoori. 
As the roll-out of smart meters takes place across Europe, governments have to make a decision on the primary communication technologies that will be used to connect the meters to utility companies. The choice of infrastructure will have significant short and long-term effects on the cost, efficiency and carbon footprint of the smart grid and its ability to deliver enhanced customer value. Nick Kamen, head of energy and utilities sector, with Vodafone, discusses the options being considered to facilitate smart meter connectivity. 
Researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have long understood that using energy more efficiently can be just as beneficial as finding new ways to produce energy more efficiently. 
Silicon wafers destined to become photovoltaic cells can take a bruising through assembly lines, as they are oxidised, annealed, purified, diffused, etched, and layered to reach their destinies as efficient converters of the sun's rays into useful electricity, writes Bill Scanlon from US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 
2012 was a seminal year for three industries that share some fast moving technologies and vertical markets, Electronic Security, Energy Management and the emerging Smart Grid, writes Allan McHale, author of smart grid blog Memoori. 
It takes outside-the-box thinking to outsmart the solar spectrum and set a world record for solar cell efficiency. The solar spectrum has boundaries and immutable rules. No matter how much solar cell manufacturers want to bend those rules, they can't. Bill Scanlon from US National Renewable Energy Laboratory asks, how can we make a solar cell that has a higher efficiency than the rules allow? 
Development needs data: water security, oceans governance and food security need data, information, knowledge, networks and imagination to shift power in the public interest, according to James Cameron, chairman of Climate Change Capital, who shares his perspective on climate change. 
While high-profile bankruptcies in cleantech companies such as Solyndra are denting investor confidence in green markets, Tesla Motors tells NewNet how since its initial public offering (IPO) it has gone from strength to strength and is now able to pay back its $465m US loan early as it moves towards profitability. 
Despite numerous setbacks and the expected expiration of the Production Tax Credit, US offshore wind pioneers are feeling positive about the fledging industry. 
Investing in agriculture is about funding the innovation required to meet soaring demand for food, says Jürgen Siemer, senior analyst at SAM Group. 
Back in 1998, when gasoline prices were $1.03 per gallon, John Turner of the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) dropped jaws all over the energy world by demonstrating that he could use sunlight to extract hydrogen from water at a remarkable 12.4 per cent efficiency, writes Bill Scanlon from US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 
From a distance, a wind farm can seem almost placid, turbines turning slowly, steadily, churning out electricity. But there's more to it than meets the eye, writes David Glickson from US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 
‘Greed’, said Gordon Gekko, the villainous investment banker played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film Wall Street, ‘is good’. He went on: ‘it clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.’ With companies that actively work to reduce their environmental impact making more money, it seems sustainability and greed go hand-in-hand, writes Andrew Ure, managing director of OgilvyEarth. 
In order to tackle climate change, governments will need to leverage a share of the $117tr of assets managed by private investors. However, various barriers and risks have prevented private sector capital for climate change mitigation projects to flow at the scale required, writes Steven Gray, head of UN and international policy, carbon finance, and Nicholas Tatrallyay, senior analyst at Climate Change Capital. 
Most Americans don't have to think much about energy reliability. We plug in a computer and it powers up; we flip a switch and the lights come on. But while very reliable today, the US electricity grid is old and has gone at least five decades without a significant technological upgrade. 
India could be a world leader in low-cost, renewable energy technologies if it adopts the lessons on fostering innovation put forward by the US Bell Labs or the German Fraunhofer Institutes, writes Tobias Engelmeier from local consultancy Bridge to India. 
