1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.309 Hong Kong Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0321 British Pound Sterling

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0896 Fiji Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0363 Euro

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.6193 Egyptian Pound

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.5675 Estonian Kroon

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 5.1064 Algerian Dinar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 2.19 Dominican Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2738 Danish Krone

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 22.6374 Costa Rican Colon

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 155.0377 Colombian Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2815 Chinese Yuan Renminbi

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 32.8579 Chilean Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0386 Swiss Franc

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0558 Canadian Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.4832 Botswana Pula

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2281 Brazilian Real

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.2744 Bolivian Boliviano

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0562 Brunei Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.015 Bahraini Dinar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0718 Bulgarian Lev

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 3.3818 Bangladeshi Taka

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0609 Australian Dollar

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 2.6449 Argentine Peso

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.0714 Netherlands Antillean Guilder

1 Czech Republic Koruna = 0.1462 United Arab Emirates Dirham

1 Bolivian Boliviano = 3.6447 Czech Republic Koruna

1 Japanese Yen = 0.2356 Czech Republic Koruna

The renewable energy market is fast-paced and growing with each passing day. It’s hard to keep up with every industry announcement and insight, so we decided to highlight interesting developments that took place during the past few weeks, and some valuable insights that are worth revisiting.

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.

The Brazilian government is seeking to award contracts in an auction tomorrow for natural gas- and coal-fueled power plants, reversing a drive that previously favored renewable-energy projects. It would lead to the first new thermal plants in three years, after the government scaled back such projects and awarded wind contracts starting in 2009 and solar energy earlier this year.

Cleantech investing has taken quite a hit in recent years. Last year, CBS News highlighted the “cleantech crash” on U.S. primetime television, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a Bloomberg-owned energy data firm, has tracked the multi-year decline in cleantech investing. However, there are additional trends that tell another side of the cleantech story and suggest innovation and hope for a low-cost, low-carbon future are far from gone.

Last year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed its aggressive Clean Power Plan (CPP), which calls to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels. States are required to submit reduction plans that can include increasing renewables, efficiency, and cap and trade programs by June 2016.

Investors have spent more than $2 trillion on clean-energy plants in the past decade and last year added more renewable capacity than ever before.

Jim Keffer is Republican state lawmaker in Texas with a permit to carry a concealed weapon and doubts about whether human activity is causing global warming.

The World Bank indicated in its new report "Building Competitive Green Industries: The Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries" that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are set to undergo significant growth and create more jobs in the field of clean technology. Anabel Gonzalez, senior director for the World Bank's Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, said developing home-grown clean-tech industries will help developing countries more effectively increase the adoption of low-cost clean energy and drive sustainable economic development.

According to the most recent issue of the "Monthly Energy Review" by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), with data through June 30, 2013, renewable energy sources (i.e., biofuels, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, solar, and wind) provided 9.81 percent of U.S. energy consumption and 11.82 percent of domestic energy production for the first half of 2013.

Coal contributes 60 percent to India's power mix today; solar is less than 1 percent. But what was a factor-of-seven difference between the cost of coal and solar two years ago shrank this summer to just a 1.8x gap. Can solar catch up within the next ten years?

Brazil's latest A-3 auction, matching up developers and power purchasers to prepare renewable energy projects to meet the nation's electricity demand by 2016, was a landslide win for wind energy -- but a shutout for solar, which was included in the process for the first time.

There are no plans for new coal plants to be built in the United States. This opens doors for the geothermal industry possibly more than ever before in U.S. history. In an Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast to 2018, coal was one of the top-cost commissioning technology options; geothermal was one of the lowest.

India's solar market is on track to be roughly the same in 2013 as it was in 2012, which is surprising given the ~20 percent overall growth projected for global solar demand. But optimism and expectations continue to emerge for India's solar potential.

The U.S. market for wind energy is something of a contradiction: it's one of the world's larger markets and fastest growing with its own supply chain, yet it's still heavily reliant upon a production tax credit, which was renewed at the last minute last December (yet late with enough uncertainty to chill many projects in the pipeline), and this time its renewal is even less certain.

Developing countries that are interested in geothermal energy may see transformational results by approaching World Bank and other institutions, as Djibouti did. In an interview, the World Bank Djibouti geothermal project team talks about the project investment, lessons from Kenya’s experience, and preparations that are being made for the private sector to take up the next steps.

After being shut out of previous renewable energy auctions, and delaying its own auction by two weeks, the state government of Pernambuco held the nation's first solar energy auction on December 27, registering 122.82 MW of energy, six times the country's current entire solar energy output (20 MW). The auction involved 34 bidders proposing roughly 1 GW of capacity; at the end it was narrowed to six companies from Brazil, Italy, Germany, China and Spain. Average price of power finished trading at 228.63 Brazilian reais/MWh (just under U.S. $97), about 9 percent lower than the starting price of R 250.

General Electric Co. is in talks to buy Alstom SA, the French builder of trains and power plants, people with knowledge of the matter said, in what would be GE’s biggest acquisition ever.

Collection of articles related to hydropower technology