In recognition of the widely acknowledged studies that show that organizations with gender equality perform better financially, this year POWERGEN International, along with partner UL, is launching a new awards program that seeks out women of good character.

Presentation by Jeff Duce of Boeing

Presentation by Jasbir Bath of Christopher Associates.

Presentation by Glenn Oliver of DuPont Electronic Technologies.

Presentation by Michael Freda of Oracle’s Semiconductor Packaging & Technology Group.

Lockheed Martin 由于作出超越常规的贡献和积极参与活动而荣获 IPC 的知名 Peter Sarmanian 大奖。公司广泛使用 IPC 文档，并在全球运营中努力共享。

A Virginia Tech research team has developed a battery that runs on sugar and has an unmatched energy density, a development that could replace conventional batteries with ones that are cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable.

New York State is pushing its utility industry to shift away from a century-old business model into a system that can accommodate more power from solar and wind.

Bracing for greenhouse-gas rules from the Obama administration, two industries are staking out different positions. Coal companies are pledging to sue. Electric utilities are ready to talk.

Power infrastructure in the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda is inherently connected to their economic growth. As urbanisation and industrialisation fuel the need for electricity in cities, the demand for electricity in East Africa is expected to grow at approximately 5.3 percent per year until 2020. To meet these requirements, generation capacity would have to increase by 37.7 percent in Uganda, 96.4 percent in Kenya, 75.3 percent in Tanzania and 115 percent in Rwanda. The government, in conjunction with development partners, must build a more favourable business environment to facilitate growth.

The European Union needs an ambitious emissions-reduction goal, targets for energy- efficiency and renewables as well as tools to foster investment under its planned 2030 policies, an advisory panel to 14 ministers said.

For most people, the best way to build a green or fossil-free portfolio will be to use mutual funds or an investment advisor. The exceptions are those who like to do things for themselves, and understand the significant advantage that saving just a fraction of a percent in annual fees can make to the long term performance of a portfolio.

Tesla Motors Inc.’s Elon Musk said the electric-car maker may form another partnership with Toyota Motor Corp., as the companies conclude an initial vehicle project that met with mixed results.

Abengoa SA, a Spanish energy and environment company, plans to issue its first green bond to raise 500 million euros ($642 million) to finance projects.

The European Union is seeking to speed up the creation of a common energy market to help its shift to a low-carbon economy and boost security of energy supplies amid a natural-gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

European Union leaders backed the most-ambitious carbon emissions goals of any major economy, in a bid to crank up pressure on the U.S. and China ahead of climate talks in December.

Humans are causing irreversible damage to the planet from burning fossil fuels, the biggest ever study of the available science concluded in a report designed to spur the fight against climate change.

President Barack Obama pledged deeper U.S. cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions and China will for the first time set a target for capping carbon emissions under an agreement between the world’s two biggest economies.

The U.S. expects to earn $5 billion to $6 billion from a federal loan program, bolstering President Barack Obama’s decision to back low-carbon technologies.

While OPEC is helping drive down global prices for crude, it’s having less success squeezing the $250 billion clean power industry.

We here at RenewableEnergyWorld.com would like to send a big "thank you" to our blogging community. Year after year, bloggers contribute content that is filled with valuable insights, up-to-date news, innovative project highlights and cool new technology updates. RenewableEnergyWorld.com bloggers are truly a crucial part of our website.

The online community of readers who visit RenewableEnergyWorld.com is an important aspect of the news and information that we offer renewable energy stakeholders. We often post news that we feel will get people to view important topics from new angles, offering insights and opinions about technology, policy and more. Often that leads to engaging and informative discussions that add even more value to the article that we have posted.

At the close of each year, we like to take a look back to see which stories made an impact on our readers. This year's most read articles show the many twists and turns that the industry took this year and reveal interesting trends for us as editors and for other industry insiders.

Not all alternative energy mutual funds are created equal. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, a reporter asked me which alternative energy mutual funds were the most focused on renewables, noting that many mutual funds hold non-energy related companies such as Apple, PepsiCo and Google. The answer to this question is not as straight forward as one might think. This article sorts out which mutual funds are truly invested in the dynamic and growing green energy sector, and which ones are more peripheral.

The UN climate conference in Lima set the stage for Paris in 2015. Next year’s accord is to provide a working, albeit not a final, answer to the question: Is it possible to keep global warming at or below the 2 degree Celsius limit? This limit is considered the boundary beyond which the negative climatic, economic and social consequences of climate change are thought to become intolerably severe and potentially irreversible.

Actress Natalie Portman, environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and other high-profile Harvard University alumni are calling for demonstrations to urge divestment from fossil fuels.

Iberdrola SA, Spain’s largest electricity company, agreed to buy UIL Holdings Corp. in a deal valued at about $3 billion in cash and shares to create a U.S. utility with about 3.1 million customers.

The annual outlook issue of Renewable Energy World magazine is our attempt to predict what will happen within the renewable energy industry over the course of the year. To do this, we went straight to the top of major renewable energy companies, asking CEOs and presidents to tell us where they are devoting their company resources in order to capitalize on some of the market growth that they expect to see in 2015.

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…

Ormat is a successful developer of geothermal energy projects. Two former employees have brought a lawsuit alleging that Ormat made inaccurate 1603 Cash Grant submissions to obtain grants for projects that should not have qualified for such grants.

Alternative energy mutual funds are continuing to recover from a slump which started in fall 2014. Annual returns range greatly, though, from a high of 15.6 percent for Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth (BIAWX), to a low of -15.8 percent for Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy (GAAEX). The large 12-month drop by GAAEX was precipitated by painful losses in some of its top weighted holdings.

A $2 trillion push in the U.S. to blend renewable energy into the power supply and fortify transmission lines against extreme weather means that Americans must act more like Europeans to keep their power costs down.

Europe’s utilities are re-evaluating their business models due to the energy transition. Members of POWER-GEN Europe’s Advisory Board consider how a reliance on fossil fuels is no longer politically desirable, forcing utilities to transform their portfolios to adapt to radical change.

In 1984, when this year’s POWER-GEN 2015 Woman of the Year Kim Greene started engineering school, about 16 percent of her class was made up of women. Today, more than 30 years later, that number has jumped to just 18 percent.

Greene, the Chief Operating Office of Southern Company was one of three finalists for the 2015 Woman of the Year award during Power Generation Week and on Tuesday December 8, she took part in a panel discussion with her co-finalists: Terry Jester, CEO and Chairman of Silicor Materials and Roxann Laird, Director of the National Carbon Capture Center, during the Women in Power luncheon.

The fact that women only make up 18 percent of engineering students is an alarming statistic and was the topic of discussion for much of the panel. To combat it, Greene believes that everyone should be encouraging young women to study engineering. “Fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, school teachers,” she said, explaining that it should be important to all of us to encourage girls to pursue education in technical fields that will (hopefully) ultimately lead to careers in the energy industry. Laird explained that she does simple things in her household, such as conducting science experiments at birthday parties for her daughter.

Also important is persistence, said Greene. Girls may need a bit of extra encouragement when they do poorly on a test or fail a class. If a mentor can offer words of encouragement like “keep your chin up” and “you can do this,” that may be all that is needed to keep a girl motivated who may otherwise have become discouraged.

As far as rising through the ranks of an organization, Jester believes it isn’t about being the smartest person in the room or always making the right decisions. Women just need to believe that they are capable of being charge. If you make a mistake, own it and move on, said Greene. It’s ok to admit you are wrong, don’t dig in your heels.

Panelists were also asked for tips on how to re-enter the workplace after a hiatus or after switching careers and all agreed on one thing: “don’t apologize for the gap.” Jester believes that someone who has re-dedicated herself to the workplace makes for an excellent employee.

At the end of the day “engineers solve problems,” said Laird adding, “it’s a fun industry.” Jester said that there are misperceptions in the industry that engineers are stuck in a cube or an office doing very boring jobs but it is not like that. Those of us in the industry know its fun.

Robynn Andracsek, an engineer with Burns & McDonnell and member of the Women in Power committee led the panel discussion during the luncheon.

The purpose of the Women in Power committee is to provide role models to inspire young women to pursue careers in energy. Anyone in the energy industry can nominate a woman for the Woman of the year award. Nominations are open from April to August each year.

By Kelly Scanlon, director, environment, health and safety policy and research, IPC Over the past month, IPC has brought to your attention that the TSCA Fees Rule may apply to your company beginning in 2020 and that there could be several challenges for those who need to comply. Challenges include the requirement to self-identify as […]

What better way to learn about the electronics industry than from real people successfully pursuing their careers in great companies? Charlene Gunter du Plessis, Senior Director of the IPC Education Foundation talked to Kate Stees, a Materials and Process Engineer at Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control in Ocala, Florida. Kate currently works in the […]

A partnership between Austrade and Hort Innovation Australia is supporting horticulture growers and exporters to build reputation and market share in China.

Austrade has partnered with the NSW Government to deliver one of the largest business missions from Guangdong Province ever to visit Australia.

Queensland-based Capricornia Contact Lens has signed a 10-year strategic distribution agreement with one of China’s leading pharmaceutical and medical equipment distributers, Shenzhen Relin Medicine.

COVID-19 is affecting many e-commerce businesses and how consumers shop online. In this difficult time, many brick-and-mortar retailers are watching foot traffic and sales drop to near zero.

The San Francisco-based utility is under investigation for any role its equipment might have played in the deadly wildfires of late 2018, only one year after getting blamed for an earlier, devastating rash of blazes.

EIA expects non-hydroelectric renewable energy resources such as solar and wind will be the fastest growing source of U.S. electricity generation for at least the next two years. EIA’s January 2019 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts that electricity generation from utility-scale solar generating units will grow by 10 percent in 2019 and by 17 percent in 2020. According to the January STEO, wind generation will grow by 12 percent and 14 percent during the next two years. EIA forecasts total U.S. electricity generation across all fuels will fall by 2 percent this year and then show very little growth in 2020.

Tata Power Co. is seeking to set up electric vehicle chargers in the Indian capital, a company official said, as one of the most polluted cities on earth plans an ambitious push toward cleaner vehicles.

Tata Power in India has this week started utilizing a digital asset management system from GE to optimize its thermal fleet.

Hundreds of young activists stormed Nancy Pelosi’s office after Democrats won the House in November, inspired by the new hero of the left, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who briefly joined them in a live-streamed protest to demand passage of a radical plan to fight climate change.

PG&E Corp. is seeking court protection to amend or cancel power purchase agreements with suppliers as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

Federal energy regulatory commissioner Cheryl LaFleur announced on Twitter on January 31 that she will not be seeking a third term and will be leaving the commission later in 2019. She said in the tweet that this is not the outcome she had hoped for but that she felt very lucky to have served on FERC for more than 8 years. She said she plans to serve out the rest of her term, which is up at the end of June.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a sweeping package of environmental measures Thursday that has pitted progressives in the House Democratic caucus against moderates over how far to go in pursuit of resetting the climate change debate.

This week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that rather than investing in the Haynes, Harbor and Scattergood natural gas power plants to meet the requirements of a 2010 law related to a practice known as once through cooling, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will phase them out in favor of renewable energy.