Energy Report

With plenty of wind and fresh water, the Pacific Northwest holds the country’s greatest penetration of renewable energy, yet the region struggles to make those two resources work together. The challenge of integrating intermittent wind power is complicated by competing interests of power generators, salmon runs, and residents accustomed to cheap utility rates.

Protecting your site has always been a requirement to ensure the continuity of your business. Physical security is a given. Spending money and time to obtain land, build structures and protect tangible assets is expected. Physical security, just like operational safety, protects against an easily quantifiable loss. Loss is measurable and understood.

This autumn saw two projects spring into being that seek to turn the happy-future talk often bred by the Olympic Games into some tangible progress in the here and now.

On parcels known more for pecans and oranges, a Florida firm plans to raise huge crops of solar power.

The Smart Grid is a transformation in the electric industry with great potential for corporate competitiveness and regional economic development, and economic developers have a key role in making it happen.

Early this month Ford Motor Co., as part of an aggressive electrification strategy that includes the launch of five electrified vehicles in North America by 2012 and Europe by 2013, named its “20 Cool Places to Charge in the U.S.”

Google likes to use the power usage effectiveness, or PUE, metric to calculate the energy costs of housing and cooling servers on server farms such as the one located in Lenoir, N.C.

Lithium ion rules energy storage platforms for electric vehicles, while auto manufacturers play kingmaker to the companies that produce battery packs. Without major EV contracts, however, many battery companies struggle to commercialize outside of government-funded research and demonstration programs.

Sasol and Cheniere like Louisiana so much they’re coming back for more … and bringing $16 billion with them.

Property management teams tend to focus on operations when
the building is occupied and experiencing normal conditions.
After all, that’s when staff members are most likely to be on
site, and when they’re likely to be getting tenant feedback
on comfort issues. But for the majority of the year – likely
between 5,000 and 6,200 out of 8,760 hours – buildings are
unoccupied.

In addition to its multiple investments in manufacturing plants this summer, General Motors also is doing its part for renewable energy, smart grid and electric vehicle technology.

Advances in internal combustion engines will blunt the impact of rising electric-vehicle market share in the world’s major economies, and the U.S. will not be the top EV market, according to a recent report.

Founded by a man from Denmark, currently based in the UAE, and with offices in such locations as Moscow and Johannesburg, energy storage and smart grid firm Rubenius is nothing if not global.

Demand for lithium-ion batteries is growing. So why does Johnson Controls want out of its joint venture with Saft?

Fronius converts momentum into new sites in Indiana, Ontario and beyond.

Like a mega-sized game of parkour, a new project will see solar wattage leaping onto the grid from select industrial roofs somewhere among 28 states.

Energy Matters: A compendium of recent energy-related news briefs for the busy executive.

“The World Is Flat” author Tom Friedman noted in a June column that the world is also quite fat:

As all eyes are on his state’s generous energy tax credit programs, Oregon’s governor calls for a larger, long-term perspective.

Not all buildings in use today can be LEED-certified or smart or even efficient from an energy perspective. But even older buildings have a shot at being “high-performance,” maintains a leading HVAC provider.

The past year has been filled with progressively busier project location and construction activity by biomass fuel firm Enviva, which until last year was known as Intrinergy. And there’s even more on the immediate horizon.

Is a jail with no fence sustainable? It certainly aims to be in downtown Douglasville, Ga., just west of Atlanta along the I-20 corridor.

Breakthrough moments are a dime a dozen. Breakthroughs involving the world’s largest tunnel boring machine and Niagara Falls will run you about $1 billion a pop

Regions with multiple sources of electricity generation will be more attractive to site selectors than those dependent on one source.