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Elon Musk is nothing if not audacious. In the last few years he’s launched rockets into space, made electric vehicles cool with Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA  ) , and guided SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY  ) to dominance in the residential solar market. What’s incredible is that Musk is just getting his feet wet. Over the next half decade he’s planning to

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While Germany is breaking world records for the amount of sustainable energy it uses every year, German energy customers are breaking European records for the amount they pay in monthly bills. Surprisingly, they don’t seem to mind. In the first half of 2014, Germany drew 28 percent of its power generation from renewable energy sources. Wind and solar capacity were

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Portable solar power has already taken off, but what about when the sun goes down? Could massive wind turbines be scaled down for personal use? Poznan, Poland-based 3D printer manufacturer Omni3d has developed a 3D-printed, foldable wind turbine that can generate up to 300W of clean electricity — enough to power multiple smartphones, laptops, lightbulbs and other small appliances. The

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In June, Bill Gates published an article on his site, gatesnotes, titled “We Need Energy Miracles.” Mr. Gates notes that much like breakthroughs in vaccines have helped create miracles, society needs to drastically increase the amount of spending on R&D in clean energy. Ironically, there are only a few people in the world that could actually generate a true clean

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Queensland businesses are being hit with daily service charges of more than $500 a day on their electricity bills, in a move the solar industry says is designed to kill the roll-out of commercial-scale rooftop solar across the state. The charges were quietly unveiled by the Queensland Competition Authority and the state government in July. But their implications are only

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A report issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that coal will surpass oil as the world’s most popular fuel source within 10 years, threatening to inject more greenhouse gases into the air than ever before if policy changes don’t follow the warning. The boost in coal use is due to extreme growth in emerging markets like China and

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Energy management is one of the most important parts of our changing energy landscape. It is a market made up of part energy efficiency, part Big Data solution and part Internet of Things. Energy management will be a multi-trillion dollar industry that will reverberate across industrialized economies.  The competitive advantage in virtually every economic sector will be redefined by companies’

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Over the course of the next two columns, I plan to finish up the recent look at BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. The final two columns will focus on renewable energy, and carbon dioxide emissions. Today I want to provide an update on the natural gas picture, as prices declined sharply at the end of July. I have

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Reducing the renewable energy target would cost the federal budget about $680 million more to meet Australia’s target of 5% emissions reduction by 2020, according to modelling released today by climate and conservation groups. The modelling found that cutting the RET would increase the profits of coal power stations while boosting the costs for the public through more pollution without

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2014 is predicted to be the first year in history that non-hydro renewable generation exceeds hydropower generation in the United States. This is a big change—only a decade ago hydropower produced three times as much electricity in the U.S. as the combined contributions of non-hydro sources such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released

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