Crude oil futures contracts allow crude to be bought and sold for delivery at specific dates in the future, meaning market participants can lock in a price today for the future delivery […]
Europe’s utilities ‘face dwindling role’
The era of the European power market being dominated by large utilities is steadily drawing to a close, admits RWE’s chief economist, presenting both opportunities and challenges for renewables. via http://www.rechargenews.com http://www.rechargenews.com/news/europe_africa/article1338077.ece
Virtual Audits Uncover Surprising Trends in Building Energy Efficiency
Over the last few years, the handful of startups developing virtual energy auditing services have analyzed over a billion square feet of commercial buildings. Virtual audits, called ‘no-touch audits’ or ‘rapid energy […]
Why Utility Downgrades are a Big Deal
Electric utilities are facing a very challenging environment. Technologies like solar could undermine growth, risking that capital demands for maintaining infrastructure will increase the cost of borrowing, which, with declining demand, lead […]
Streamlining Solar Securitization
Various products have hit the market that attempt to overcome a major hurdle to solar financing and securitization: the lack of standardized metrics that can provide a measuring stick against which financial […]
California’s Strategic Plan for Renewables and Efficiency
The new three-year strategic plan from California’s grid operator has a big takeaway. “Things were coming at us fast,” explained California ISO Senior Public Information Officer Steven Greenlee. “We reduced the new […]
Energy-Hungry China Sees Rise in Labor Costs
With wages increasing and strikes engulfing the country, the massive cheap labor force that has helped fuel China’s economic boom by underselling its competitors may be coming to an end, reports suggest. […]
The Problems with a Growing Population
Albert Bartlett might have been another obscure physics professor had he not put together a now famous lecture entitled "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" in 1969. The lecture, available broadly on the internet, […]
The Era of Cheap Gasoline is Over
Motor group AAA reports the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline for Wednesday was $3.50, down more than 30 cents from the same time last year. Refiners are starting […]
Discontinuity Ahead – Oil Limits will Adversely Affect the Economy
What will the world economy be like ten years from now? Or fifty years from now? Is it something that we can forecast by looking at the past, assuming that past tends […]
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