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Catastrophic floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia, hurricanes in Mexico: 2010 has so far been an "exceptional" year for weather disasters, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said Thursday."This year really has been a year of weather records," Peter Hoeppe, an expert from Munich Re's Geo Risks Research department, told journalists. "The first nine months of the year have seen the highest number of weather-related events since Munich Re started keeping records," he added.
Hoeppe added that a clear pattern of continuing global warming was contributing to the natural disasters. 2010 has so far been the warmest since measurements began 130 years ago. New temperature records were set in Russia (37.8 degrees centigrade) and in Asia (53.5 degrees in Pakistan).

Lighting Electricity Macys greennumbers led led lighting

On 21st September 2010 the price of electricity in Ireland turned negative for the first time since the market opened in 2007.

greennumbers electricity negative pricing demand stimulation

With renewable power, Tocco da Casauria, in central Italy, produces more electricity than it uses, making money off the surplus.

Tocco da Casauria wind power profit italy electricity

GE wants to spark a revolution in the way we create and distribute electricity, and seizing on a critical underfunding of grid investments by the U.S. government (a paltry $3.4 billion) the 2nd largest company in the world (as ranked by Forbes) wants to do something about it.

GE is partnering with four major venture capital firms, including Al Gore-advised Kleiner Perkins, to issue the $200 million challenge to "...businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators, and students to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world’s toughest challenges – building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century."

ge greennumbers electricity $200 million challenge smart grid

Germany could derive all of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050 and become the world's first major industrial nation to kick the fossil-fuel habit, the country's Federal Environment Agency said today.

The country already gets 16% of its electricity from wind, solar and other renewable sources – three times' higher than the level it had achieved 15 years ago.

"A complete conversion to renewable energy by 2050 is possible from a technical and ecological point of view," said Jochen Flasbarth, president of the Federal Environment Agency.

"It's a very realistic target based on technology that already exists – it's not a pie-in-the-sky prediction," he said.

germany electricity renewable energy greennumbers fossil fuel

Generating 20 per cent of America's electricity with wind, as recent studies proposed, would require building up to 22,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. But the huge towers and unsightly tree-cutting that these projects require have provoked intense public opposition.

Recently, though, some companies are finding a remarkably simple answer to that political problem. They are putting power lines under water, in a string of projects that has so far provoked only token opposition from environmentalists and virtually no reaction from the larger public.

electricity transmission underwater transmission line high-voltage transmission line

Dip an ordinary piece of paper into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, and it turns into a battery or supercapacitor. Crumple the piece of paper, and it still works. Stanford researcher Yi Cui sees many uses for this new way of storing electricity.

electricity electricity storage energy storage silver nanowires battery batteries paper battery

A small company called IST Energy has developed a shipping container-size contraption that turns your building's trash into electricity and heat.

The idea behind the Green Energy Machine is to offset a building's energy use while dramatically cutting trash disposal fees. The cost of trash removal can vary greatly, but a university or office park with a number of buildings could pay about $200,000 a year, according to IST Energy executives

waste waste-to-energy electricity heat trash

Engineers and entrepreneurs are rushing to explore alternative sources of efficient and renewable energy in New Jersey and elsewhere in the country. A Rutgers School of Business—Camden professor has strong words of caution as projects involving wind farms and photovoltaic cells proliferate.

grid electranet electricity renewable energy renewables

Tom Raftery no es un nombre demasiado conocido, aunque no para de dar conferencias por diversas partes del mundo, desde Berlín hasta Nueva York.

Su última parada ha sido Sevilla para debatir en el EBE (Evento Blog España) de un concepto relativamente nuevo, el GRID 2.0 (red de segunda generación), una idea nada fácil de definir, pero que podría traducirse como la redistribución de la energía eléctrica gracias a la tecnología, de un modo similar al que utiliza Internet para distribuir el conocimiento. Una especie de Electranet.

electricity 2.0 grid electranet ebe 08 tom raftery

Around 18,000 buildings in the UK, including town halls, museums, schools and job centres, are being tested to discover their energy efficiency on a sliding scale where A is the best and G is the worst. Parliament and the Bank both scored a G. Together, they consume enough electricity and gas to pump out 21,356 tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent of more than 14,000 people flying from London to New York.

energy efficiency electricity co2 buildings

Someday, the electricity grid will operate with the equivalent of a giant hard drive. But in the short term, grid storage will look more like a PC's cache or RAM, able to serve up small bursts of power to keep things from crashing.

electricity energy storage