Spanish Looking to Build Largest Wind Turbine in World

Offshore wind energy is gaining momentum. 

As I wrote yesterday here on Cleantechnica, the U.S. is finally looking to move forward fast on this promising clean energy source and the nation’s first offshore wind farm is finally on its way to being built. Just a couple month ago, I wrote about the opening of the largest offshore wind farm in the world, built in the UK. But since then, China has started construction on an even larger wind farm and South Korea has announced it is planning a massive offshore wind farm that will be even two-and-a-half times larger than that one. More >>>

The Peak Oil Crisis: Did We Vote Ourselves to Extinction?

By Tom Whipple  

November 17 2010 The disconnect between the American body politic and reality grows larger every day. 

In reviewing hundreds of pages of commentary on the election, one searches in vain for analysis that even come close to describing what is happening to the nation - i.e. we are in the midst of a massive deflating credit bubble and running short of affordable liquid fuels at the same time. There seems to be general agreement that the new balance of power in Washington means two years of gridlock. Despite an occasional bow in the direction of bi-partisanship, the new majority in the house is saying quite openly that it will work to lower taxes, cut spending, will stop any efforts to deal with climate change, and will spend the next two years investigating everything it can about the Obama administration in hopes it will be so discredited in two years that the President can't possibly win another term. Whether this agenda is what the voters thought they would get on November 2 when they voted yet again for change is another question. More >>>

IEA releases World Energy Outlook 2010, “peak oil is an inevitability”

November 9th, 2010 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) today launched its eagerly awaited World Energy Outlook 2010 at the Hotel Crowne Plaza Hotel in London. At the press conference, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, began by saying that “recent events have cast an veil of uncertainty over our energy future. 

In the wake of recession, the pace of economic recovery certainly promises to have a major impact on energy markets over the next few years.” He highlighted the importance of government actions to energy security and climate change and explained that while considerable progress has been made in the past 12 months in terms of reducing fossil fuel subsidies and the promotion of low carbon technologies (partly due to commitments made by Copenhagen), such policies are not binding. 

Mr Tanaka went on to say that the new edition of the WEO marks a departure from previous efforts, in that it makes projections not just based on current policies (the so-called business-as-usual scenario), but also on likely policy developments (the new policies scenario), as well as the 450ppm scenario in which global warming is kept below 2˚C, a result that is now “very very difficult” to obtain. In fact, the WEO 2010 indicates that thanks in part to the collective failure of Copenhagen, the cost of achieving this goal has increased by US$1tn, since the publication of the WEO2009. More >>>

Executive Summary of World Energy Outlook Click Here

Has the World Already Passed “Peak Oil”?

New analysis pegs 2006 as highpoint of conventional crude production

 National Geographic News - November 9, 2010

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. 

The year 2006 may be remembered for civil strife in Iraq, the nuclear weapon testing threat by North Korea, and the genocide in Darfur, but now it appears that another world event was occurring at the same time—without headlines, but with far-reaching consequence for all nations.

That’s the year that the world’s conventional oil production likely reached its peak, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Vienna, Austria, said Tuesday.

According to the 25-year forecast in the IEA's latest annual World Energy Outlook, the most likely scenario is for crude oil production to stay on a plateau at about 68 to 69 million barrels per day.

In this scenario, crude oil production "never regains its all-time peak of 70 million barrels per day reached in 2006," said IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2010. More >>>