Saturday, Nov 23rd
Last update12:05:53 AM GMT
Energy Glance
Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.
But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China.
China met a five-year target to improve energy efficiency by cutting power to industry and imposing rolling blackouts, even though a massive economic stimulus increased energy use.
Energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product was reduced by 20 percent from 2005 levels by the end of 2010, said Zhang Ping, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission. It is China's top economic planning body.
BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill was caused by poor management practices that are “systemic” in the industry and may recur absent “significant reform,” according to a presidential panel probing the spill.
Bad decisions by BP and its main contractors, Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd, coupled with lax government oversight, caused the worst U.S. offshore oil spill, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill said today. The April 20 blowout of BP’s Macondo well, which killed 11 workers, destroyed Transocean’s $365 million Deepwater Horizon rig and spewed crude for 87 days, was avoidable and not the result of “aberrational decisions,” the panel said in a report.
Home decor and furniture company Ikea is no longer stocking or selling incandescent light bulbs in its U.S. stores, instead offering longer-lasting and energy-efficient bulbs.
The retailer began phasing out the sale of the light bulbs in August. Ikea's action comes ahead of federal legislation that would mandate more efficient light bulbs starting in 2012. The pullout also applies to Ikea stores in Canada. Stores in France and Australia started phasing out the incandescent bulbs last year.
A simple reactor that mimics plants by turning sunlight into fuel has been demonstrated in the laboratory, boosting hopes for a large-scale renewable source of liquid fuel. "We have a big energy problem and we have to think big," said Prof Sossina Haile, at the California Institute of Technology, who led the research.
Haile estimates that a rooftop reactor could produce about three gallons of fuel a day. She thinks transport fuels would be the first application of the reactor, if it goes on to commercial use. But she said an equally important use for the renewable fuels would be to store solar energy so it is available at times of peak demand, and overnight.
The US is suing BP and eight other firms for allegedly violating federal safety regulations in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The lawsuit asks that they be held liable without limitation for all clean-up and damage costs.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in April killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil over several months. The oil leak became the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Six oil and gas service companies and a prominent freight-forwarding company agreed to pay about $236 million in criminal and civil penalties in one of the largest corporate bribery cases ever to focus on a single industry, federal authorities said Thursday.
Most of the bribes were paid to circumvent local rules and regulations, allowing the oil service companies to import equipment and vessels into foreign countries, which included Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia and Turkmenistan.
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