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.

People speak reverentially about the electricity grid, and rightly so. The U.S.’ electricity grid is an awesome technical, operational, and public policy accomplishment. Who can deny the matchless service it delivers, occasional weather-related breakdowns notwithstanding? In fact, acts of Mother Nature — Hurricane Sandy, say — only highlight its otherwise stellar reliability. And rural electrification, like rural telephony, is a triumph of public policy with foresight.

Buyers of Volkswagen or Audi hybrids will find themselves getting yet another sales pitch as they leave a U.S. dealership next year -- to buy a home power network that allows them to charge their new cars using only solar power.

July was a hard month for the stock market and clean energy stocks in particular. My broad market benchmark of small cap stocks, IWM, fell 7 percent and is down 2.7 percent for the year, while my clean energy benchmark PBW fell 9% and has slid into the red for the first time. It is down 0.1 percent for the year to date.

It's the environmentalist's third rail question: "Should we promote nuclear power as an expedient way to reduce CO2 emissions?" On the one hand, nuclear power generates electricity with almost negligible CO2 emissions — potentially a good way for our society to reverse the current global warming trends. On the other hand, nuclear power is...well...nuclear. Problems related to waste disposal, proliferation and high costs have not been solved, and we still have the occasional disaster.

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.

“The times they are a' changin'.” So goes Bob Dylan's classic song from the '60s, and that's certainly the case when it comes to how we generate, distribute, use and store electricity. Having made great strides in enhancing performance and reliability and reducing costs, growing government support and incentives for intelligent energy storage solutions adds significant impetus to the growing wave of change sweeping across the U.S. power sector.

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.

Abengoa SA, a Spanish energy and environment company, plans to issue its first green bond to raise 500 million euros ($642 million) to finance projects.

Four energy companies are proposing an $8 billion renewable energy project that would supply Los Angeles with more than twice the power generated by the Hoover Dam.

Renewables became Germany’s most important power source for the first time this year, according to Agora Energiewende.

Worries including the conflict with ISIL, Ebola, and economic slow-down in Europe, sent the stock market down in the month to October 3rd, with small cap stocks and clean energy stocks falling even farther than the large cap S&P 500.

The renewable energy market is fast-paced and growing with each passing day. It’s hard to keep up with every industry announcement and insight, so we decided to highlight interesting developments that took place during the past few weeks, and some valuable insights that are worth revisiting.

Last month, NRDC engaged a nationally recognized opinion research firm to conduct polling in New York State to evaluate public attitudes about fracking and clean energy. Importantly, this is the first statewide poll in at least two years — and perhaps ever — to directly ask residents their views of the now six-year-old de facto moratorium on fracking.

European Union leaders backed the most-ambitious carbon emissions goals of any major economy, in a bid to crank up pressure on the U.S. and China ahead of climate talks in December.

U.S. electricity markets face years of higher prices as clean-air regulations shut more coal-fired power plants than earlier forecast, cutting supply and forcing producers to rely more on natural gas.

Humans are causing irreversible damage to the planet from burning fossil fuels, the biggest ever study of the available science concluded in a report designed to spur the fight against climate change.

As more intermittent renewable capacity is added to grid networks around the world, the need for greater system flexibility in order to cope with the variable supply is growing. In parts of the Europe, grid operators complain that balancing the system is becoming more and more difficult as new renewable sources are added, requiring ever more complex management techniques, as well as repeated use of polluting and inefficient standby capacity. Surges of solar and wind power are often not fully utilised, causing some to question the wisdom of adding further variable renewable capacity.

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.

President Barack Obama will pledge $3 billion to a United Nations climate-change fund that’s intended to help poor nations boost renewable energy and counter the ill effects of global warming.

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.

Technology and equipment giant Siemens AG has decided to sell its tidal energy company, Marine Current Turbines Ltd., citing slow development in the marine and hydrokinetics sector.

The news about the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to limit carbon pollution from existing power plants just got even better: the proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP) can save the power industry and its customers — us — as much as $2 to $4 billion in 2020 and $6 to 9 billion in 2030, while cleaning our air and modernizing the electricity sector.

The power sector crisis in Japan has entered a new stage. The recent refusal of Japanese utilities to grant grid access to new renewable energy projects should not be seen as a failure of Japan’s renewable energy policy, but as a consequential and necessary phase to extend Japan’s technological leadership into the power sector.

The Brazilian government is seeking to award contracts in an auction tomorrow for natural gas- and coal-fueled power plants, reversing a drive that previously favored renewable-energy projects. It would lead to the first new thermal plants in three years, after the government scaled back such projects and awarded wind contracts starting in 2009 and solar energy earlier this year.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) and U.S. Navy (USN) are teaming up to spur deployment of grid-integrated local renewable energy resources and advanced energy storage solutions. On December 1, Imergy Power Systems announced that its ESP30 series vanadium-flow batteries will be used in a CEC-sponsored Smart Microgrid project hosted by the Navy at its Mobile Utilities Support Equipment (MUSE) Facility in Port Hueneme, California.

While OPEC is helping drive down global prices for crude, it’s having less success squeezing the $250 billion clean power industry.

The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) — whose members include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP, and others — was caught red-handed late last month when a leaked internal presentation revealed a coordinated campaign to stomp out climate and clean energy progress in California, Oregon and Washington by propping up over 15 front groups that purport to represent the views of concerned citizens and the broader business community.

India, the world’s third-largest polluter, will spend at least $100 billion on climate-related projects but isn’t ready to follow China and the U.S., the top two emitters, in promising to limit its fossil-fuel emissions.

We here at RenewableEnergyWorld.com would like to send a big "thank you" to our blogging community. Year after year, bloggers contribute content that is filled with valuable insights, up-to-date news, innovative project highlights and cool new technology updates. RenewableEnergyWorld.com bloggers are truly a crucial part of our website.

The online community of readers who visit RenewableEnergyWorld.com is an important aspect of the news and information that we offer renewable energy stakeholders. We often post news that we feel will get people to view important topics from new angles, offering insights and opinions about technology, policy and more. Often that leads to engaging and informative discussions that add even more value to the article that we have posted.

In May of 2014, Speaker of the House John Boehner responded to a climate change question with, “listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change. I am astute to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs. That can’t be the prescription for dealing with changes to our climate.” Speaker Boehner is not the only one reluctant to enter into the debate on climate change. In a March interview Mitch McConnell responded to a climate change remark with, “For everybody who thinks it's warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn't…”

Although the U.S. made it through a quiet 2014 Atlantic hurricane season this year, it doesn’t mean we’re out of the waters. Natural disasters are an ongoing threat to our infrastructure, and utilities need to be conscious of the present state and future of our power grid. Fortunately, in recent years many utilities across the country have recognized the importance of being prepared for major storms, and have been actively researching and implementing solutions to prepare for the next big one.

2015 marks my seventh annual list of ten clean energy stocks. An equal weighted portfolio of the ten stocks in each year's list has outperformed my industry benchmark every year except 2013. 2014 was no exception, but it was a bittersweet victory in that the model portfolio was slightly down while the benchmark lost considerably more in a very challenging year for clean energy stocks.

Clean energy investments in India increased to $7.9 billion last year and are expected to surpass $10 billion in 2015.

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.

Oil prices have fallen by more than half since July. Just five years ago, such a plunge in fossil fuels would have put the renewable-energy industry on bankruptcy watch. Today: Meh.

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.

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

The renewable energy industry has come a long way in relatively little time. The costs of renewable technologies continue to go down, while renewable capacities at many utilities continue to go up. Although, in many cases, renewable technology is mature and ready for utility-scale deployment, state and federal production and investment tax policies appear less evolved.

Iberdrola SA, Spain’s largest electricity company, agreed to buy UIL Holdings Corp. in a deal valued at about $3 billion in cash and shares to create a U.S. utility with about 3.1 million customers.

In recent months, a veritable open patent war has erupted between Tesla Motors and Toyota. Both companies have been widely cited in the industry and financial press for their respective announcements opening up their electric vehicle (Tesla) and fuel cell (Toyota) patents. Tesla CEO Elon Musk opened the first salvo with a blog post last June in which he announced that Tesla would “not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

Global emissions were unchanged last year, the first time that’s happened amid economic growth in four decades, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has amended Russia’s federal law on the electric power industry. Ordinance No47 lays out a number of measures aiming to stimulate renewable energy sales in the national retail market.

We love electric vehicles (EVs) in California and we want that love to spread. Why? It isn’t because of the cool factor — though, believe me, EVs like the Tesla are undoubtedly cool. Instead, it’s because these cars can offer significant benefits to the environment, electric grid, and economy.

Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) has filed a bill that would eliminate Texas’ Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – a policy that has catapulted Texas to world leadership in wind energy and strengthened Texas’ energy diversity. In addition to terminating the RPS at the end of the year, SB 931would make it more difficult to build renewable energy infrastructure. The argument behind the bill is that because Texas has achieved its RPS goals it’s time to move on. Sounds reasonable, right? Well…

President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 2008 levels over the next 10 years by shifting to renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Ormat is a successful developer of geothermal energy projects. Two former employees have brought a lawsuit alleging that Ormat made inaccurate 1603 Cash Grant submissions to obtain grants for projects that should not have qualified for such grants.

Beijing, where pollution averaged more than twice China’s national standard last year, will close the last of its four major coal-fired power plants next year.

Next-generation hybrid cars combining electric and gas power in new ways are emerging as a low-cost alternative for consumers as batteries get cheaper and more efficient.