News flash.

United Technologies - the helicopter company - is getting into wind power.

Taiwan Semiconductor - the maker of chips of the electronic variety - is getting into making wafers that spin sunlight into electric juice.

The Wall Street Journal just reported something that should be more than self-evident. In last year's Q3, 19 percent of venture capital flows went into clean energy ventures - making it the second largest category after biotech, according to the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the WSJ said.

Another article reports that buried in the 2011 Obama administration budget there is support for building five to 10 cature capture and storage projects by 2016 - not too far off. These efforts are important to securing the future of coal-fired generation.

TheEnergyBiz Leadership Forum, convening in Washington March 1-2, will look at the future of coal - and the entire portfolio of new technologies coming along the pike, and what policies can help spur needed innovations.

 A new energy reality is coming and with it entirely new pathways to investing and doing business. Energized?

Micronesia has put the Czech Republic on notice. The nation is up in arms about Czech plans to extend the life of a coal-fired generation plant near the German border. That path, Micronesia contends,...
[Read More]

The carbon legislation introduced by Sens. Boxer and Kerry "doesn't have the votes to move forward." That is what Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, told the Annual State...
[Read More]

Conflicting signals. Nuclear power must be part of any solution to the global warming problem. A  growing number of those who agree that global warming is a problem - I write with an arctic blas...
[Read More]

Jacques Felberof Anderson Springs, Calif. got rolled recently. And it was not a pleasant experience. "I'm afraid one of these days it's going to kock my house off the hill," she told the Ne...
[Read More]

The origin of the state name "Oregon" is a bit of a mystery. One theory is that it stems from the French word for "hurricane." I know something about Oregon winds, having had to b...
[Read More]

Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont set the tone for the gathering this week of our nation's state utility regulators in a posh hotel astride Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Welch represents the home state of Dav...
[Read More]

The lights went out in Brazil this week. Big time. Am I the only one to notice it happened just days after 60 Minutes aired a report on how terrorists and rogue foreign nations have been infiltratin...
[Read More]

There he was the cerebral, owlish power guy from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Larry Makovich. Power demand is off but it is a cyclical thing, he said. Resist the temptation to see a paradigm...
[Read More]