(Midwest Energy News, December 5, 2012)—Cheap natural gas and flat electricity demand has left the prospects for wood-chip and wood-pellet fuels barely smoldering in recent years. But wood biomass could soon have a new role in energy production: cleaning up coal-fired power plant emissions. A year-old company called Biogenic Reagents recently completed construction of a [...]
(Midwest Energy News, November 26, 2012)—As the holiday shopping season kicks into full gear, some experts predict online businesses will rake in $2 billion in sales today, which retailers have dubbed “Cyber Monday.” That also means millions of gallons of fuel will be consumed in getting all those packages to customer’s doorsteps. The good news: there’s [...]
Twin Cities entrepreneur George Anderson thinks a bunch of Iranians on boats are going to take down the U.S. electricity grid — if the sun doesn’t destroy us all first. He’s backing up his data on portable hard drives, stockpiling food for his family, and pouring his personal fortunes into a company he thinks can [...]
(Midwest Energy News, November 19, 2012)—One of Ohio’s largest electric utilities wants lawmakers to suspend the state’s landmark 2008 energy efficiency law during the upcoming lame duck legislative session. FirstEnergy has been shopping a proposal to lawmakers in recent weeks that would freeze Ohio’s mandatory energy efficiency goals for utilities at current levels. “We’re concerned [...]
(Midwest Energy News, March 12, 2012)—Over the weekend I had the chance to sit down for breakfast with Arjun Makhijani, author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy. Makhijani is also president and senior engineer at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) in Takoma Park, Md. He’s on a mini-Midwest tour this week [...]
(Midwest Energy News, March 6, 2012)—Last week we reported on efforts in Illinois to implement a new building code that would be the most energy-efficient in the Midwest. The state’s homebuilders association opposes the changes, in part because it says the rules will add to the cost of home construction. On that point, there’s little dispute. Building [...]
(Midwest Energy News, March 2, 2012)—Military leaders are increasingly connecting the dots between energy, climate and national security issues. We’ve reported here before on the U.S. military’s push to go green with solar, biofuels and other renewable technologies. Across the pond, defense leaders in the United Kingdom have also made energy and climate a top priority. Rear Admiral Neil [...]
(Midwest Energy News, January 25, 2012)—A presidential election year is upon us again, and that means the return of maps splitting the nation into red and blue states. James Lenfestey thinks we should be seeing green and black instead. Lenfestey, a Minneapolis poet and former journalist, spoke at a monthly Environment Minnesota breakfast Tuesday about the politics [...]
