Clean-energy visionaries have long argued that the world needs a better battery capable of selling skeptical consumers on electric cars and running the grid on renewable power. And yet the battery of the future—at least for the coming decade—will almost certainly be the battery of the past.

Through its exclusive distributor in China, Puxing Energy, NEC developed two 9-MW battery facilities providing frequency regulation for the Hang-Jin and Feng-Run power plants located in Ordos City, Neimongol Province and Tanshan City.

This week in Seattle, Washington, Senate Bill 5116 was signed into law in by Governor Jay Inslee after passing the state legislature earlier this month. This bill cuts out coal power by 2025 and requires an equitable transition to 100 percent clean electricity for the entire state by 2045.

The rest of the world is handing out subsidies and incentives to speed up adoption of electric cars. But in nearly half of U.S. states, driving a battery-powered car requires paying additional fees.

Hydrogen, which has been touted as the fuel of the future much of the past five decades, may finally be on the verge of converting its potential to reality.

Eos Energy Storage is manufacturer and supplier of the zinc-based Aurora 2.0 battery system for Duke Energy's McAlpine substation and as a behind-the-meter solution at the University of California, San Diego. 

Vermont joined the ranks of other New England states that provide incentives for electric vehicles with Gov. Phil Scott’s signature on June 14 on a yearly transportation bill.

According to data recently released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Association, the number of public charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) owned and operated by its members totaled 401,000 units as of May 2019, of which 229,000 were AC charging stations, 171,000 were DC and 500 AC/DC were integrated, representing a year on year increase of 50.5 percent and 9,658 units from the previous month. Between June 2018 and May 2019, the number of public charging stations for EVs showed an average monthly increase of some 11,205 units.

Worldwide investments in clean energy projects have hit a six-year low.

Global demand for air-conditioning is projected to triple over the next 30 years, as the planet warms and urban populations grow, particularly in emerging markets. Meeting that demand will call for significant investments in new cooling infrastructure and the electrical generating capacity necessary to power it. Although traditional cooling technologies are expected to become more efficient in coming years, countries will need to plan for these additional loads, which will be expensive. Emerging markets can also make use of district cooling, an approach that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which consists of six Middle Eastern countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman — have successfully adopted.

Last week at the HydroVision International plenary session, a panel of three CEOs — Darrel T. Anderson, President and CEO IDACORP and Idaho Power, Mitch Davidson, CEO and Managing Partner, Brookfield Renewable Power, and Paul Jacob, President and CEO, Rye Development — along with moderator Elizabeth Ingram, Content Director, Clarion Energy, discussed both the merits and the challenges of hydropower development in the United States and Canada.

Consumers Energy says it’s happy with the launch of its electric vehicle charging station program and open to expanding the three-year, $10 million pilot.

The electric utility industry has been buffeted by two recent trends that threaten to upend the profitability, and in some cases the future viability of, those companies that are slow to adapt to a new, rapidly changing landscape. Specifically, in the past decade, the industry has had to grapple with both waning demand and the growth of distributed energy generation.

The Chinese government recently issued a whitepaper on the status and prospects of the hydrogen fuel and fuel cell sectors, indicating that energy derived from hydrogen will become an important part of the Chinese energy network.

Presentation by Paco Solis of Foresite, Inc.

Presentation by Don Ball of Chemcut Corporation

Presentation by George Milad of Uyemura International Corporation

Presentation by Glenn Oliver of DuPont Electronic Technologies.

Presentation by Michael Freda of Oracle’s Semiconductor Packaging & Technology Group.

IPC China President Phil Carmichael shares his insights, as well as those of some of his colleagues, into the current state of the general economy in China.

Presentation by Polina Snugovsky, Ph.D., Sc.D. of Celestica.

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?

China, the world’s biggest investor in renewable energy, reiterated plans to boost construction of solar and wind power plants along with projects to transmit electricity from the clean sources.

New York State is pushing its utility industry to shift away from a century-old business model into a system that can accommodate more power from solar and wind.

Ohio is debating the sharpest break from a three-decade campaign by 29 U.S. states to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by promoting power from renewable sources.

The U.S. National Climate Assessment report states bluntly that streets in coastal cities are flooding more readily, that hotter and drier weather in the West means earlier starts to wildfire seasons, and that every region of the nation already is seeing real effects of climate change.

China is mandating that electric cars make up at least 30 percent of government vehicle purchases by 2016, the latest measure to fight pollution and cut energy use after exempting the autos from a purchase tax.

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.

China is considering providing as much as 100 billion yuan ($16 billion) in government funding to build more charging facilities and spur demand for electric vehicles, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Tesla Motors Inc.’s Elon Musk said the electric-car maker may form another partnership with Toyota Motor Corp., as the companies conclude an initial vehicle project that met with mixed results.

The threat of climate change is driving China and the U.S. — frequent rivals and the world’s two largest greenhouse-gas emitters — to collaborate on dozens of potential clean-energy breakthroughs.

As a businessman exploring investments, I need simple answers, however complicated the problem. I wish to know: Are microgrids economical? How much investment is needed and for what? What are the factors that principally affect profitability, within the system and in the environment? If microgrids are not profitable at the present, when will they be? I recognize that understanding microgrids as a system requires complicated mathematics and modeling. I’m sympathetic to and respect those who do that.

President Barack Obama pledged deeper U.S. cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions and China will for the first time set a target for capping carbon emissions under an agreement between the world’s two biggest economies.

In early 2013, a group of women, dubbed the Women in Power committee, assembled in Orlando, Florida to figure out how to honor women who have dedicated their careers to the power industry. The industry is male-dominated with men making up more than 75 percent of the workforce, according to estimates.

According to the latest "Energy Infrastructure Update" report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, wind power provided over two-thirds (68.41 percent) of new U.S. electrical generating capacity in October 2014. Specifically, five wind farms in Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas came on line last month, accounting for 574 MW of new capacity.

The advice that Pennwell’s 2014 Woman of the Year, Mary Powell, gave to women in the power industry during Tuesday’s Women in Power Luncheon might come as a surprise to some. It was this: Stop undercutting each other. Powell said the most difficult obstacles she has encountered in her various leadership roles have not come from men, but rather from other women. Small comments like “I don’t know how you do it [being a mom and holding a high-level job]”, serve to bring doubt and uncertainty to high achieving women in any industry, and ultimately can lead to women exiting their careers in order to fit what they perceive is the societal norm.

China is mulling a policy to provide a subsidy for lithium batteries deployed in electric vehicles. This new favorable policy is expected to propel the development of the country’s electric vehicle sector. China has existing subsidy policies for the sector, but higher prices for the parts used in electric vehicles, in particular lithium batteries, prevent many consumers from purchasing the vehicles.

Germany’s utilities, battered by the country’s shift to wind turbines and solar panels, would be glad to sell you a power plant on the cheap. They’ll even pack it up and ship it to another country.

In a previous article, I had a conversation with former-CIA chief Jim Woolsey to discuss one of America’s greatest national security vulnerabilities, its power grid. The issues that Woolsey has been concerned with for over a decade has been the ease in which a terrorist group or other actor (think North Korea for example) could attack the grid and plunge the country into darkness for months, if not years. And if that seems far-fetched, just recall how a tree limb fell in Ohio in 2003 and blacked out the entire Northeast and part of Canada for several days.

Apple Inc. may already be positioned to evolve into a global automaker in many ways that other Silicon Valley companies aren’t.

Policies favoring clean energy and increased competition would normally dim prospects for existing producers. Not in Chile, where foreign investors are driving a renewable boom at a time of surging returns by local utilities.

My Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2015 model portfolio added a second month to its winning streak, with a 6.1 percent gain for the month and a 5.7 percent gain for the year, despite a continued drag by the strong dollar. If measured in terms of the companies' local currencies, the portfolio would have been up 7.5 percent for the month and 10.5 percent for the quarter or year to date. For comparison, the broad universe of US small cap stocks rose 1.5 percent for the month and 4.0 percent for quarter, as measured by IWM, the Russell 2000 index ETF.

Researchers at Yale have unveiled a new interactive map that estimates public opinion on global warming right down to the county level.

China’s efforts to combat pollution are gaining momentum after President Xi Jinping pledged in March at the annual session of the National People’s Congress to punish violators of the nation’s environmental laws with an “iron hand.” Here’s what’s happening and what to expect.

The World Bank indicated in its new report "Building Competitive Green Industries: The Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries" that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are set to undergo significant growth and create more jobs in the field of clean technology. Anabel Gonzalez, senior director for the World Bank's Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, said developing home-grown clean-tech industries will help developing countries more effectively increase the adoption of low-cost clean energy and drive sustainable economic development.

The process of sowing the seeds of electric vehicle infrastructure — and thereby creating a backbone of charging stations that can support these vehicles — is still in its infancy. A new report outlines the technologies and business models necessary to ramp up growth in the electric vehicle (EV) market in the United States. It also explores the relationship between charging stations and consumer purchases of EVs.

By Kelly Scanlon, director, environment, health and safety policy and research, IPC The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released “scoping documents” for its upcoming reviews of certain high-priority chemical substances under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 6(b). Your review of these documents is important because scoping is the foundation of the risk evaluation […]

A partnership between Austrade and Hort Innovation Australia is supporting horticulture growers and exporters to build reputation and market share in China.

Australian fresh fruit producers can take advantage of newly approved local cold treatment facilities and increased flights to boost exports to the Philippines.

Austrade has partnered with the NSW Government to deliver one of the largest business missions from Guangdong Province ever to visit Australia.