The clearing of tropical forests for the production of biofuels is bad news for the climate and reduces plant and animal diversity, a study revealed yesterday. The study was released in Poland during a UN meeting on climate change with representatives from 187 countries. It said that it would take 75 years for carbon emissions [...]

Norway says, “No!” And I think I have to agree with them. No matter what, using a car to move you around does not make that much sense. If it is just you, driving to work, wouldn’t a bus with a bunch of other people be cleaner? If it is just you, shopping, [...]

Solar LA will combat climate change and jumpstart green economy with 1.3 gigawatts of solar power by 2020, enough to meet 10% of LA’s energy needs

According to Ecorazzi, president-elect Barack Obama spoke on TV about his plans to green up the White House. Part of the plan is to evaluate its energy efficiency and set an example to the American people by doing so. That’s the way to go. Change has to be inspired from the top and considering Obama’s [...]

I just read the following in an old book. “The Great Western, which startled the world in 1838 by steaming from Bristol to New York in fifteen days and ten hours, was a ship of 1378 tons, 212 feet long, and had an indicated horsepower of 1260, with a daily consumption of 36 tons of [...]

New ways of achieving greater efficiency from solar photo voltaic cells are emerging from computer simulations and lab tests conducted by a team of physicists and engineers at MIT, the institution announced on Monday.

Between tomorrow and Wednesday, experts from the biomass sector will be gathered in Grieskirchen, Austria for the 14th Austrian Biomass Conference. The slogan for this year’s event is “Biomass in the Turning Point for Energy”. Speakers will provide deep insights into technical, economic and legal aspects related to electricity, heat and fuel from biomass, and [...]

This is not a letter from ExxonMobil, BP, or any other large corporation. This is a letter from the small businesses that drill America’s oil and natural gas. They want to be part of the Obama’s energy plan. They want the facts as they know them to be out there and included in the [...]

Two contrasting news pieces regarding Brazilian biofuel production add further confusion as to how sustainable it really is. On one hand, the adjunct secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), Laksmi Puri, said on Thursday in São Paulo that the country’s development strategy is a model. “We analyzed the Brazilian [...]

We’ve been writing about algae fuel for over a year here at Energy Refuge, so we were pleased to read this report saying that this fledgling industry has been expanding at a steady pace. The claim is based on the number of participants at the recent Algae Biomass Summit in Seattle (October 23-24), which doubled [...]