Announced greenfield projects into China plummeted in early 2020 with the US and Europe taking the lion's share of global foreign investment. 

The documentary "American Factory" tells us communities need to go beyond the job creation narrative when it comes to attracting foreign investment. 

Belarus’s Great Stone Industrial Park is another ambitious Belt and Road Initiative venture, designed to evolve into a smart city and industrial hub. But what are the benefits for Belarus or China? Jacopo Dettoni and Wendy Atkins report.

Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.

On Wednesday in New Jersey, the world’s largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of waterparks in North America said that its New Jersey park, Six Flags Great Adventure, is now powered by solar energy.

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.

In April 2019, in the heart of coal country, Indiana regulators rejected a proposal by its electric and gas utility, Vectren, to replace baseload coal plants with a new $900 million, 850 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant. Regulators were concerned that with the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy, maturation of energy storage and rapidly changing customer demand, such a major gas plant investment could become a stranded, uneconomic asset in the future. Regulators are now pushing Vectren to consider more decentralized, lower-carbon resources such as wind, solar and storage that would offer greater resource diversity, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

India’s ambitious plan to take the leadership position among nations as one of largest producers of renewable energy may have run into some unfavorable weather.

Steve Sawyer, 63, Senior Policy Advisor and former Secretary General of the Global Wind Energy Council, passed away on July 31, 2019 of a sudden and aggressive lung cancer.

Eos Energy Storage and energy equipment firm Holtec International are creating a joint venture to produce Eos’ next generation of large-scale zinc batteries.

Mayors from cities across the U.S. are stepping up and committing to broad and inspirational action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize local energy systems. This leadership is especially critical given lack of federal climate action, but translating a mayoral commitment to reality can be a challenge.

What happens when a famously left-leaning city dives into the buttoned-down business of electric utilities? San Francisco may soon find out.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to use PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy to take over some of the company’s assets for the city’s power needs, a move that would shake up California’s largest utility and remake the state’s energy landscape.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise victory in Australia’s election was a win for the coal industry and ensures the debate about tackling climate change will continue to polarize the nation.

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.

In April 2019, in the heart of coal country, Indiana regulators rejected a proposal by its electric and gas utility, Vectren, to replace baseload coal plants with a new $900 million, 850 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant. Regulators were concerned that with the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy, maturation of energy storage and rapidly changing customer demand, such a major gas plant investment could become a stranded, uneconomic asset in the future. Regulators are now pushing Vectren to consider more decentralized, lower-carbon resources such as wind, solar and storage that would offer greater resource diversity, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

India’s ambitious plan to take the leadership position among nations as one of largest producers of renewable energy may have run into some unfavorable weather.

Utilities are a natural partner for the geothermal heat pump (GHP) industry. Why? Because utilities have a broad consumer base and infrastructure, and need to both build load (sales) and levelize that demand to make the most efficient use of their electrical generation capacity throughout the year.  GHPs are a technology that fills that niche.

IEA report reveals that more than US $750 billion went to the electricity sector while US $715 billion was spent on oil and gas supply globally as the world continues on the path to electrification.

Green Mountain Power’s commitment to innovation delivered bigger savings to customers as New England recently hit a new yearly peak for power demand.

Two big trends are converging in the world of power generation -- Combined Heat & Power (CHP) and biomass. CHP is gaining ground in many areas of the world due to the fact that its superior efficiency often results in major economic gains (CHP takes the waste heat from a turbine and uses it to generate steam which is often uses in district heating, or in industrial processes).

Bloated by debt, bled by corruption and battered by structurally declining sales, South African power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is facing what’s known in the industry as a “death spiral.”

Renewable energy muscled out coal to become Germany’s biggest source of electricity for the first time last year, helped by a surge in solar panel installations and coal-plant closures.

This week at the Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), political and business leaders from around the world outlined the far-reaching geopolitical implications of an energy transformation driven by the rapid growth of renewable energy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise victory in Australia’s election was a win for the coal industry and ensures the debate about tackling climate change will continue to polarize the nation.

Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.

The Obama administration is proposing a $4 billion fund to reward states that exceed cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, and wants Congress to back steeper royalty rates for oil, gas and coal extraction from public land.

Renewable energy will draw almost two-thirds of the spending on new power plants over the next 25 years, dwarfing spending on fossil fuels, as plunging costs make solar the first choice for consumers and the poorest nations.

Stocks of clean-energy companies are proving to be better investments than those of companies that produce most of the Western Hemisphere's power, and are outperforming the rest of the stock market as well.

The evidence is found in the New York Stock Exchange Bloomberg Americas Clean Energy Index. Its 141 companies, all based in North and South America, returned 32.62 percent in the past two years. In contrast, the 40 conventional-energy companies in the Standard and Poor's 500 Energy Index returned 1.02 percent over the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Clean energy also is beating the rest of the stock market. The Clean Energy Index is up 6.02 percent so far this year. Lagging behind are both the S&P 500 and the Russell 3000 Index, which gained 3.12 percent and 3.86 percent respectively in 2015.

Safety concerns raised by wildfires have forced utility Seattle City Light to evacuate employees from the town of Diablo, the nearby 711-MW Skagit hydropower complex and the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center.

What happens when a famously left-leaning city dives into the buttoned-down business of electric utilities? San Francisco may soon find out.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to use PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy to take over some of the company’s assets for the city’s power needs, a move that would shake up California’s largest utility and remake the state’s energy landscape.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise victory in Australia’s election was a win for the coal industry and ensures the debate about tackling climate change will continue to polarize the nation.

Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.

In April 2019, in the heart of coal country, Indiana regulators rejected a proposal by its electric and gas utility, Vectren, to replace baseload coal plants with a new $900 million, 850 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant. Regulators were concerned that with the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy, maturation of energy storage and rapidly changing customer demand, such a major gas plant investment could become a stranded, uneconomic asset in the future. Regulators are now pushing Vectren to consider more decentralized, lower-carbon resources such as wind, solar and storage that would offer greater resource diversity, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

Eos Energy Storage and energy equipment firm Holtec International are creating a joint venture to produce Eos’ next generation of large-scale zinc batteries.

Broader domestic social issues and an international policy that moves away from "a permanent war footing" took center stage in President Obama's State of the Union address (SOTUS) last night. Domestic energy policies, including renewable energy, largely took a back seat to the President's bigger talking points: hiking the minimum wage for federal contractors, urging final immigration reforms, strong pushes in employment and job-training, education, retirement savings, and healthcare.

Talks between Germany and Norway about how to boost the trading of electricity from renewable sources are being held up by concerns that the power cable running under the North Sea won’t ever make money.

UPDATE: The U.K. government yesterday launched its Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (d-RHI), which pays households that generate heat and hot water using renewable energy systems such as solar hot water, geothermal heat pumps and biomass heating.

Electric utilities seeking the renewal of their franchises, and politicians seeking municipalization, both ignore the transformative possibilities of the microgrid. Microgrids represent a promising new business opportunity for both existing utilities and new entrants in the electricity business. Microgrid deployment will also provide the same public benefits as municipal control, likely more.

Energy use in the U.S. can be split into two large (very, very large) pies. One is electricity for use in homes, buildings, and industry, and the other is transportation, which is powered primarily by liquid fuels (gasoline and diesel) from oil. There are some exceptions, and small overlapping fuel uses — direct industrial use of liquid fuel (a fairly significant quantity), some liquids burned to make electricity (this used to be a significant amount, but is now only a very small amount), and now a very small amount of electricity used to power electric vehicles (EVs).

More than 100 world leaders converged upon New York City today to discuss international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. The list of speakers at the UN Climate Summit included U.S. President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, French President François Hollande, and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.

Ending a year-long race that had been nip-and tuck every month, renewable energy sources cumulatively provided more new electric generating capacity in 2014 than did natural gas.

Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) has filed a bill that would eliminate Texas’ Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – a policy that has catapulted Texas to world leadership in wind energy and strengthened Texas’ energy diversity. In addition to terminating the RPS at the end of the year, SB 931would make it more difficult to build renewable energy infrastructure. The argument behind the bill is that because Texas has achieved its RPS goals it’s time to move on. Sounds reasonable, right? Well…