News Roundup
News Roundup for August 30
FUTURE FUELS
Walter Kohn
A Nobel Prize-winning U.S. scientist says the world could soon enter an era where renewable wind and solar power will be the globe’s main sources of energy. Speaking at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, Walter Kohn said solar and wind could become the Earth’s dominant energy sources. Kohn was the 1998 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He predicts that total oil and gas production worldwide will peak within 10 to 30 years even as wind and solar energy production increase.
CONSTELLATION ENERGY
Constellation Energy is making a play for the residential energy market in New Jersey. “We are heading to New Jersey with a significant splash,” said Kenny Matula, a senior vice president at Constellation. The Baltimore-based company has launched an advertising blitz in markets served by Public Service Electric and Gas and Jersey Central Power and Light. The nation’s largest privately owned power supplier hopes to take on the investor-owned utilities under New Jersey’s power supply rules, which encourage residents to shop for service.
BIOFUEL GRASSES
More than 100 energy executives and potential investors received an update on energy grass research developments at a research facility in Texas Aug. 26. Ceres Inc. hosted a bioenergy field day to spotlight some of the work being done to increase yields and produce grasses for biofuels on marginal cropland. According to a 2009 Sandia National Laboratories study, compounds made from plant fibers could produce 75 billion gallons of biofuels per year in the United States.
ENERGY PARK
A Florida energy developer is hoping to build what could be one of the largest alternative energy parks in the nation on the 3,000 acre site of an old phosphate mine. Imperium Companies is working with officials in Hillsborough County on a plan that could bring $1 billion in new development to the site. A gasification plant fueled by agricultural and household waste could be completed by 2013. Solar panel fields and fish ponds and hydroponic gardens for carbon capture are also planned.
―Based on news and wire reports
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