Free Republic

LM Wind Power, one of Grand Forks’ largest manufacturers, announced Tuesday that it would lay off more than 300 employees, including 200 full-time production workers, 15 administrative workers and approximately 130 temporary workers and contractors. The company’s announcement cited declining demand and uncertainty over whether Congress would renew the Production Tax Credit, a key wind power subsidy set to expire at the end of the year.

President Barack Obama assailed rival Mitt Romney's opposition to tax supports for wind power, delivering an Iowa-specific critique Tuesday on the Republican challenger in that crucial Midwestern state. Obama's deputy criticized GOP budget plans to overhaul Medicare, cut trillions of dollars from social programs and lower taxes on high-income taxpayers. Iowa is a center of wind energy production in the United States and the Obama administration credits tax breaks for helping build that industry. Obama has called on Congress to extend the breaks. Romney opposes it. Obama, on the second of a three-day Iowa bus tour, noted that Romney once...

Cold Fusion Is Hot Again - Tuesday, July 17th 9p | 12a ET "A report on cold fusion - nuclear energy like that which powers the sun, but made at room temperatures on a tabletop, which in 1989, was presented as a revolutionary new source of energy that promised to be cheap, limitless and clean but was quickly dismissed as junk science. Today, scientists believe that cold fusion, now most often called low temperature fusion or a nuclear effect, could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production."

Journal of Petroleum Technology — July 2012 Guest Editorial • On the Precipice Of a New Energy Source? Steve Jacobs, COO, and Patrick Leach, CEO, Decision Strategies, and David J. Nagel, CEO, NUCAT Energy Steve Jacobs is chief operating officer of Decision Strategies and has more than 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. His specialty is evaluating market opportunities for new and existing technologies and companies. He earned BS degrees in psychology and education from Oklahoma State University. Jacobs is an energy information ambassador for SPE. He moderates and lectures at numerous events around the world....

It takes several lifetimes to put a new energy system into place, and wishful thinking can’t speed things along In June 2004 the editor of an energy journal called to ask me to comment on a just-announced plan to build the world’s largest photovoltaic electric generating plant. Where would it be, I asked—Arizona? Spain? North Africa? No, it was to be spread among three locations in rural Bavaria, southeast of Nuremberg. I said there must be some mistake. I grew up not far from that place, just across the border with the Czech Republic, and I will never forget those...

<p>GRAZ, Austria – A devastating fire which gutted a crematorium in southern Austria was caused by an obese woman's excessive body fat blocking an air filter, Austrian public broadcaster ORF reported.</p> <p>The fire occurred at the facility in the city of Graz in mid-April. Firefighters had trouble extinguishing the blaze due to a thick layer of insulation lining the crematorium's walls.</p>

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

Despite history – and current events involving alternative energy companies – many Americans buy into the notion that for good things to happen, the government needs to be involved, even in charge. How many Solyndras is too many?

Electric car enthusiasts – those who want someone else to subsidize their extravagances and then pretend that the electricity they use isn’t created with fossil fuel anyway – may at first find something to cheer about in this news from England. There are now more charging stations than electric vehicles on the road, reports the MailOnline. . . . But we need to read a bit more in that Mail story. The reason there are more electric charging stations than electric cars isn’t because there are so many stations. It’s because there are so few electric cars.

It’s another day, and another round of layoffs by a recipient of millions of dollars under the Obama Administration’s renewable energy initiatives, administered by the mismanaged Department of Energy. This time the Recovery Act largesse – taken out of the hide of taxpayers – went to A123 Systems, Inc. The Massachusetts-based energy storage company was given $249.1 million to help launch two battery-manufacturing plants in Michigan. A123 also received grants and tax credits from the state that could total more than $135 million. In a separate federal grant as a subcontractor for another grantee, A123 received nearly $30 million...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Livestock farmers are demanding a change in the nation's ethanol policy, claiming current rules could lead to spikes in meat prices and even shortages at supermarkets if corn growers have a bad year. The amount of corn consumed by the ethanol industry combined with continued demand from overseas has cattle and hog farmers worried that if corn production drops due to drought or another natural disaster, the cost of feed could skyrocket, leaving them little choice but to reduce the size of their herds. A smaller supply could, in turn, mean higher meat prices and...

* China eyeing "vastly superior" scale, Immelt warns * "I worry a little bit about us," Immelt says of U.S.* GE "all-in" on solar, sees potential $20 bln business By Scott MaloneNov 3 (Reuters) - General Electric Co's Jeff Immelt worries the United States may lose ground to China in the renewable energy sector because it is not prepared to invest in solar, wind and other technologies on the same scale.But the chief executive of the largest U.S. conglomerate said his company remains undaunted and will continue to work in the sector despite the recent bankruptcy of solar panel maker...

“Energy independence.”Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? Unfortunately, in the era of Barack Obama the goal of enabling the United States to meet its own energy needs has been subverted by some very destructive politics. First, the term “energy independence” has been confused with the term “green energy.” While some people use the two expressions synonymously, the Obama Administration has gradually phased-out references to “energy independence” and moved towards “green energy” references exclusively. This language shift from the Obama Administration raises some important questions: are we no longer seeking to become “energy independent?” And if we are still seeking...

A recent study, released on 11 October, “Biofuel Markets and Technologies” released by Pike Research states that the global biofuel market will double within the next decade to $183.3 billion from its current level of $82.7 billion, with ethanol production accounting for $78 billion of future worldwide biofuel production, while predicting that biodiesel production will reach $25.5 billion. Perhaps not surprisingly, Pike Research predicts that the US will become the world’s leading biofuel producer, accounting for 71 percent of alternative fuel by 2021. Colorado-based Pike Research on its website defines itself as “a market research and consulting firm that provides...

For those looking for world changing technology in cold fusion or its more ambiguous moniker, LENR, I invite them to return to 2008 to examine a cutting edge company with a grand plan. The had a test plant on the Texas coast, foreign partnerships and agreements, land cleared for a new plant, scientific minds at work and the figures to prove it. The company (a few founder/investors in LaJolla, Ca.) sold stock and the price went to about $1.50 a share. An office was opened in Scottsdale, Arizona (if you've been to LaJolla Scottsdale looks shabby by comparison). The company...

Forty-one years ago on Sesame Street, Kermit the frog sang a plaintive song, “It’s not easy being green.” In a gesture of solidarity, perhaps he should fax the lyrics to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government is suddenly discovering the costs of weaning itself off nuclear energy. In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would become the first industrialized nation to shut down all of its 17 nuclear power plants (NPPs) between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that Germany’s 17 NPPS Germany produce...

Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way."

China, arguably the world’s most influential and dynamic economy, is beginning to eye renewable as a partial solution to its voracious and growing energy needs. If Beijing determines that biofuels represent the future, expect to see the current modest western investment field to change dramatically. As yet, China’s involvement is modest. According to a PetroChina company official, the firm intends to increase its production of biofuels by 2015 to 1.1 million tons and import and additional 470,000 tons. PetroChina, a traditional hydrocarbon company, is clearly thinking outside the box to increase its alternative energy portfolio. According to PetroChina's Petrochemical Research...

The domestic alternative energy policy in the US seems to rotate on semantics and adding words to other words to make it look like something is going on. However, the truth of the matter is, energy policy is as defunct as ever and on most fronts the US is lagging far behind. Mostly it is a disregard of what the economist Herman Daly has pointed out about the macro-view of the macro-economic system. His idea is that the ecological system is closed and finite, not infinite created by God for our own personal use, which needs to be included into...

Tripling America's Fuel ProductionMost alternatives to oil are pipe dreams. This one is not. The United States currently produces 8 percent of the world’s liquid fuel but uses 25 percent, making up the difference by importing 5 billion barrels of oil annually. With prices currently near $100 per barrel, this dependency will cost us $500 billion this year, an amount equal to the nation’s entire trade deficit. Furthermore, at a time when Congress is seeking to keep taxes light in order to boost job creation, our dependency will impose a tax on our economy equal to 20 percent of what...