STUFF

TOP STUFF

~20M acres in Gulf of Mex were due to be auctioned yesterday by US govt for fossil fuels exploration. All I know about that.

NY Gov to file 90-day extension on fracking rules. 4 years studying it already.

Senate voted 62-37 to back military av biofuels plans.

US Chamber CEO: make energy production part of deficit fix.

Poll: majority of US voters support tighter soot standards.

Area of Arctic sea ice that melted this summer was larger than US.

Study found UK media strongly biased against clean/ren energy. Wonder why. Who owns the media?

Brazil's BNDES approved $10.8B loan for build of 11.2Gw hydro plant on Xingu River. Overall cost $17B. World's 3rd largest when done. Construction began earlier this year. $1.54B of loan for social, enviro issues over the dam. Online '15-'19.

Amazon deforestation down 27% year ended July 31. Lowest level in nearly 25 years.

Sun Ed closed on $314M funding for 58Mw of solar projects (2) in S Africa.

Irish utility got $200M loan from EU Investment Bank to finance 141Mw of 6 onshore wind farms. Total investment ~$400M.

Denmark to invite bidding to build 450Mw of offshore wind farms @ 6 sites. Country seeking to replace coal-fired power plants.

India started anti-dumping investigation of solar imports (PV and thin-film) from US, China, Taiwan, Malaysia.

India launches E5 Dec 1.

$1.1B deal Ukraine was about to sign Monday with Spain's Gas Natural Fenosa turned out to be faked by an interloper supposedly repping Gas Natural. Would have secured investment to build Ukraine's 1st LNG terminal (on Black Sea) and pipeline connecting country's NG pipe network to terminal. Also would've enabled Ukraine to import up to 10BCM/yr of Euro NG at 20% cheaper than Gazprom.

Russia/Gazprom starting construction of 16B Euro NG pipeline Dec 7. To serve SE, Central, East Europe. Initial 15.75BCM flow by '15. 63BCM by '19. Russia just signed 30-year supply agreement with Turkey.

Eyes on Algeria's 321TCF (IEA est.) recoverable shale gas. ~$2.6T worth at current UK NG prices. Offering tax breaks (parliament still to approve). Pipelines already connect to Spain and Italy. Exxon interested. Eni, Shell, Talisman already signed on. Algeria wants to get fracking tech too. Could export up to 110BCM by '30.

OTHER STUFF

Babcock & Wilcox has lined up Lehigh Heavy Forge (PA) to make metal shells of mPower modular nuke reactors. 180Mw design. Intended to run 4 yrs without refuel, current reactors go 18 months. No US steel maker can produce vessels (no weld) for only model reactor now being built in states - Westinghouse AP1000. Congress has appropriated $67M for the modular nuke project. DOE asking for $65M more for this fiscal year.

Japan PM promising end to nuke power.

Mitsubishi partnered with Scot utility for energy storage demo. 2 40-ft cargo containers full of ~2K each of lithion-ion batts. To store up to 800Kwh, max power output 2Mw. 3rd container houses equip to convert DC to AC. Install on Orkney Island, power transmission to/from mainland via seabed cable. Online early '13.

Quebec plans to surpass Ontario in wind E.

Delhi, Shanghai aiming to reduce plastic trash. Delhi banned plastic bags, sheets, films, other. 250K tons plastic waste per year. Shanghai fining manufacturers up to $8K that use "excessive" packaging. (I'm all in on that. I hate opening a new package that's half-filled.)

Canada top crude oil exporter to US so far this year.

National Corn-to-Ethanol Center (IL) needs $2.5M to get add-on tech to commercial scale. Last R&D steps for extracting ethanol from fibrous portion of kernel. Add-on tech for any existing corn eth plant.

Chinese comp wants to build sweet potato-to-ethanol plant on Barbados. They say cost only $600K.

U Cal San Diego proving salt water as viable as fresh for algae production.

Maple Energy in Peru has crushed 468K metric tons of sugarcane for new ethanol plant. Will produce 11.5M gallons of eth by yearend. 20% of product for local mart, Mitsui exports the rest.

Kathmandu govt undermining efforts to promote EV's. Cancelled subsidies, imposed taxes on EV parts, doubled price of el for charging stations.They also have 10 EV buses, but won't put them into ops.

Fisker Karma EV production held up by A123 bankruptcy.

NRG Energy completed solar projects at 20 schools, a fish farm and drip irrigation system in Haiti. $1M from NRG through Clinton Global, $500K from Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.