If all energy production channels were employed, the United States has sufficient resources to eliminate all coal, gasoline and diesel combustion in all demand sectors and replace them with natural gas, wind and solar electricity firmed and shaped with both grid-scale and distributed energy storage. I believe that we can reach a zero-air-pollution, coal-free, crude-import free, all-electric low-cost energy future. We have energy rhetoric and technology to get there; do we have leadership and will?

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.

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.

More than 100 world leaders converged upon New York City today to discuss international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. The list of speakers at the UN Climate Summit included U.S. President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, French President François Hollande, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.

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.

California and Quebec, which together created the largest carbon market in North America this year, may come away empty-handed as they woo northeastern U.S. states to join their system.

Scotland’s decision to vote no to independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has elicited a collective sigh of relief from energy sector players. Those companies with significant investments in Scottish renewable energy assets had understandably been anxious over the uncertainty that an independent Scotland would engender, for example potentially changing the rules on support measures for renewable energy investment north of the border.

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.

The European Union is seeking to speed up the creation of a common energy market to help its shift to a low-carbon economy and boost security of energy supplies amid a natural-gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

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 World team is at Solar Power International 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada gathering news, networking and taking in the show, which began with a flurry of excitement.

The green revolution and, in particular, renewable energy products such as solar power, wind turbines, geothermal and algae-based fuels are not waiting for viable technology — it already exists in many forms. What they are waiting for is a massive sea change in our antiquated financial accounting systems.

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.

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.

Every time the U.S. holds midyear elections, the country almost always goes against the incumbent President’s party, which is always sobering to whomever holds The White House. And this week’s elections were no exception.

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.

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.

This year’s Project of the Year Award finalists truly represent the evolving energy landscape and exciting global efforts to transition to a cleaner, renewable future. The five projects vying for the Renewable Energy Project of the Year crown include a wide range of innovative technologies from coal-to-biomass conversion to concentrating solar power.

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.

Germany’s biggest utility E.ON — long a pillar of the country’s fossil fuel and nuclear industry — dropped a bombshell on Europe’s business world with the announcement that the multinational was exiting the conventional energy market in favor of a new business model based on renewables, intelligent grid systems, energy management and other services. Indeed, the company seems finally to have drawn the logical consequences from the Energiewende, Germany’s renewable energy transition, after years of resisting the ambitious transformation of the nation’s energy supply.

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.

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.

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.

Shinzo Abe’s re-election as prime minister risks undercutting Japan’s commitment to clean energy at a time when incentives are under review and the nation’s utilities say they can’t accommodate capacity already planned.

Renewable energy stakeholders are well aware that clean energy is slowly but steadily transforming the energy landscape and that message couldn’t have been more clear at the recently concluded Power-Gen International, the largest show for the traditional power generation industry. Since all forms of power generation are represented at the show through the four co-located conferences, PennWell calls the second week in December "Power Generation Week."

Earlier this month, when EPA proposed a new health-protective air quality standard for the pollutants that form “ozone,” some critics predictably pounced on it as another example of a long string of “job-killing EPA regulations.” Yet last week, we learned that the U.S. economy created about 320,000 new jobs in November, and average wages are starting to rise as the labor market tightens.

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…”

In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule to restrict the amount of carbon dioxide released from power plants. The rule calls for reducing carbon 30 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels. Many have praised the aggressive proposal, while others are less favorable.

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.

Hybrid car sales have taken off in recent years, with a fuel-sipping combination of electric- and gas-powered technologies that simultaneously deliver energy efficiency, low emissions, and strong performance. The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) — which played a pivotal role in putting hybrids on the road — has applied a similar strategy to its talent base and partnerships, bringing together the best minds from the worlds of research and industry.

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

The UN climate conference in Lima set the stage for Paris in 2015. Next year’s accord is to provide a working, albeit not a final, answer to the question: Is it possible to keep global warming at or below the 2 degree Celsius limit? This limit is considered the boundary beyond which the negative climatic, economic and social consequences of climate change are thought to become intolerably severe and potentially irreversible.

The Brazilian bank Itau Unibanco Holding SA raised 1.05 billion reais ($408 million) to finance renewable energy and water treatment projects.

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.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have discovered that the insulation plastic used in high-voltage cables can withstand a 26 per cent higher voltage if nanometer-sized carbon balls are added. This could result in enormous efficiency gains in the power grids of the future, which are needed to achieve a sustainable energy system.

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.

In a crammed Washington conference room last week, speaker after speaker seemed to apologize for their ‘broken record’ talking points as Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy unveiled their annual Factbook. But, of course, they were only being honest — like 2013 before it, 2014 had been an unprecedented year for clean energy.

Last year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed its aggressive Clean Power Plan (CPP), which calls to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels. States are required to submit reduction plans that can include increasing renewables, efficiency, and cap and trade programs by June 2016.

India said cheaper credit along with foreign investment will help the world’s third-largest polluter fund an ambitious renewable energy program that would build green power plants faster than China.

When I worked at the New York Attorney General's Office, we sued coal-fired power plants because their air pollution was making people sick. But in some towns, I saw that the reliance on coal really had people in a bind. The coal plant was making them sick, but it was also a major tax generator for the town. If the plant closed, the town might have to lay off teachers and cops, in addition to losing the plant jobs.

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.

The European Commission has unveiled “A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy,” which is a key plank in the development of its plans for Europe’s energy sector through 2030.

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.

The first round of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) programme — the UK scheme that is designed to support low-carbon generation and a capacity margin in the energy sector — has concluded. Contracts were offered to 27 renewable electricity projects with a total value of some £315 million (US$500 million), which include two offshore wind farms with a total planned capacity of more than 1.1 GW, 15 onshore wind projects and five solar projects. In total, more 2 GW of new low-carbon capacity (including renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage) could be built under the CfD scheme.

The annual outlook issue of Renewable Energy World magazine is our attempt to predict what will happen within the renewable energy industry over the course of the year. To do this, we went straight to the top of major renewable energy companies, asking CEOs and presidents to tell us where they are devoting their company resources in order to capitalize on some of the market growth that they expect to see in 2015.

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