Talk of an east-west power grid for Ontario to import surplus power from Newfoundland and Quebec has a North Bay wind power consultant shaking his head at Queen’s Park. “It’s mind boggling why they don’t want to spend the money on transmission infrastructure here,” says Terry Wojick, president of Northern Wind Power. “Why are we (considering) transmitting from Labrador when we’ve got an abundance of potential in Northern Ontario?” Wojick was reacting to Ontario’s plan to open talks with authorities in Newfoundland and Quebec to examine how feasible it is to transmit hydroelectric power from Labrador into Ontario. Many of his projects in northeastern Ontario are being hampered by a restrictive provincially-imposed 50 megawatt cap on new electricity generation.

The Sierra Club on Tuesday asked the U.S. Environmental Appeals Board to leave intact City Water, Light and Power's construction permit for its new coal-fired generator, which includes the purchase of wind power and emissions reductions the environmental group negotiated. Its filing is in response to Springfield developer David Maulding's request last week that the appeals board review the permit and strip it of the Sierra Club-negotiated requirements.

Madison - With a heavy dependence on coal-fired power plants, the Midwest is often seen as vulnerable to new regulations if a national policy to address global warming is enacted. But the region is poised to "lead from the heartland" to address global warming, and could tap homegrown resources to prevent an economic blow here, said Marge Anderson, associate director of Madison-based think tank Energy Center of Wisconsin, on Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Northern Power, a subsidiary of Distributed Energy Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: DESC - News), a Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to continue development of key modular construction technologies necessary to build 5-megawatt to 8-megawatt wind turbines. In announcing the $750,000 award, Northern Power said the project builds on a Phase 1 SBIR design study recently completed by the company, which confirmed the viability of these enabling, modular construction approaches.

China's National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on June 30 a plan to raise consumer electricity rates by 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH). A tiny fraction of the additional charge, 0.1 cent per KWH, will be used to develop renewable energy (RE), a senior NDRC official told Xinhua a few weeks later. This was unprecedented, the official said. The money would be used to cover the portion of RE development costs that are higher than the average for conventional energies. The practice complies with the principle enshrined in the Renewable Energy Law (REL) that the extra costs of renewable energies should be shared by all end users of electricity across the country.

Two U.S. researchers have unveiled a strategy for meeting 20 percent of the nation's electricity demand with clean, renewable energy by the year 2020. The executive director of the Network for New Energy Choices, Chris Cooper, and Benjamin Sovacool of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory say their plan would use a federal renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, involving market-based strategies. Cooper said the plan doesn't mandate a specific amount of renewable energy. Instead, it sets the RPS goal as 20 percent of electricity demand, thereby creating incentives for utilities to pursue demand-reduction strategies.

The Australian Democrats have called on the federal government to get realistic about wind farm turbines and not give precedence to those who oppose them purely because they don't like the look of them. Democrats leader Lyn Allison said she was not surprised to hear there were angry views exchanged at a meeting of wind industry stakeholders on Monday.

A spokesman for the Coastal Guardians, Tim le Roy, says the code needs the State Government's support to make it work. "Unless the wind industry starts to conduct itself, and its members start to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner, the war that exists between rural communities and the wind industry in a number of cases, and if we don't get some standards and agreements on where these turbines can go, and the appropriate locations for them, this battle will not stop," he said.

NIEDERAUSSEM, Germany -- Last year, to help combat global warming, Europe started charging industry for the right to spew hot air. For the first time on such a scale, governments slapped limits on the carbon-dioxide emissions of power plants, steelworks and other factories. Companies exceeding the caps have to buy CO2 "allowances" that trade on a European market. Because CO2 emissions now carry a cost, Germany's largest utility, RWE AG, is spending to improve the efficiency of its aging coal-fired power plants, including its biggest power station here in the country's industrial heartland.

The long awaited answers to the questions of how the nation will cope with the rising energy costs are finally set to be answered at the 29th World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC) this Wednesday, September 13th at the Washington, DC convention center.

Just last fall, it appeared the Texas coal rush was rolling ahead like an unstoppable locomotive. Skyrocketing natural gas prices were pushing electricity prices up, and electric demand was growing. Coal, relatively cheap and relatively dirty, seemed the reasonable alternative. Gov. Rick Perry last fall ordered regulators to expedite coal plant applications, and environmentalists feared the plants would be rushed through and rubber-stamped. Companies such as TXU subsequently lined up earlier this year to file a batch of new applications, resulting in 17 proposed coal units, including 10 in Central Texas. But this summer, the coal train has hit some rough rails.

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- More than 100 candidates for federal, state and local offices in Vermont have signed onto a plan by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group to reduce dependence on foreign oil and emphasize renewable sources of electricity. VPIRG asked 329 political candidates across the state to sign their pledge and 111 signed the document while 27 candidates provided position papers, which support similar goals.

So what happened in California during the mid-July heat storm when that electric grid was put to the test, and California avoided rolling blackouts amid a Level 1 Emergency in which Californian’s were asked to raise their thermostats to 77 and many manufactures and business voluntarily shutdown? By most people’s analysis, wind’s performance was disappointing. Specifically during this period of peak demand, statewide wind often operated at only 5% of capacity, or less.

COVENTRY -- Governor Carcieri yesterday unveiled a state initiative to develop several small hydroelectric generators along major rivers. Carcieri said that harnessing the water's energy could generate up to 10 megawatts of power, or roughly 1 percent of the state's overall electricity consumption...........The wind-power initiative is on track, Carcieri said. Applied Technology & Management of Newport has been hired to complete a feasibility study that will recommend potential sites, both on- and offshore, for wind turbines, he said.

The union sees construction and upkeep of wind turbines, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells as drivers for new jobs, even though the alternative energy industry now provides a small portion of unionized electricians.

Roule said changes in the law now permit all types of commercial equine operations to qualify for the farmland preservation program, but commercial electrical production such as a wind farm does not qualify.

As the population grows, so do demands on goods, services and food production. And underlying all of these is a growing need for energy. Can our current energy infrastructure handle the load? Mark Price, the New England regional Energy Star outreach manager for Conservation Services Group, doesn't think so. "In 25 to 50 years we aren't going to be able to sustain centralized energy generation and distribution," he said. In the future, there will need to be more locally generated energy, he said, such as from wind farms or photovoltaic farms.

With wind power, about 1000MW of turbines could be installed around Canterbury, most on wind farms of between 50MW and 150MW, but would "cause some controversy", as elsewhere in the country. "Due to the population density on the Canterbury Plains and along the coast, wind farms would need to be developed in more remote places inland," the report said.

LONDON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Efforts to expand renewable energy generation will not prevent climate change, the head of one of Britain's leading scientific societies has warned. Frances Cairncross said world leaders needed to face up to the reality of climate change and focus on adaptation rather than mitigation....Cairncross said even with the best of intentions, the fact was the world simply did not yet have the technology to prevent global warming. She cited a recent study by the International Energy Agency which concluded that even rapid introduction of energy efficiency measures and substitutes for fossil fuels would not be enough to prevent the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases from continuing to rise.

"Most of the renewable energy is in rural America, and our co-ops serve 75 percent of the American geography. It is important we play a role," said Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which is having a regional conference for co-op officials from 14 states through Friday in downtown Cincinnati.