STUFF

General Motors joined SEIA.

Congested roads cost US drivers ~$100B/y in wasted fuel, time.

US to auction off 38.6M acres of oil/gas leases 3-230 miles offshore LA, Miss, Ala March 20. Could be up to 1B bls oil, 4TCF NG. 4 more auctions to follow. 20M acres western Gulf auctioned in Nov '12, $134M bid for 650K acres. 39M central Gulf acres auctioned June '12, $1.7B for over 2.4M acres.

Turkey hopes to spend $10B/y on new power gen next 20+ yrs. Gen capacity now 55Gw. GE already has 32.5Mw of wind farms online. Siemens also filling turbine orders from Turk comps.

US extracted over 29TCF NG in '12. US demand somewhere ~22TCF/y.

OSU researchers creating process to get energy from coal by heating it, not burning it. "Coal-direct chemical looping." DOE has ~$5M invested. Ready to go from lab to test facility in Ala. Hope for retrofitting coal plants with the tech. Iron oxide pellets used for ox source. Process contained in chamber, no pollutants escape. Water, coal ash only waste. OH State has sustained process far longer than any other lab worldwide. DOE looking for 20-50Mw from it by '20. (I think we should push this a lot more and be able to export the tech as soon as possible.)

US govt has $150M of tax credits left over for clean energy manufacturers from Advanced Energy Manufacturers Tax Credit program started in '09. 30% investment tax cred. Program provided $2.3B to 183 projects.

Researchers at U of Toledo looking into turning abundant toxic algae in Lake Erie into biofuel. DOE, NSF supporting with $4M grant.

Cornell researchers found more innovation needed to make algae biofuels viable at commercial scale.

Origin Oil (OOIL) says its "Solids Out Of Solution" tech could be used by aquaculture industry to lower toxin levels.

U of Cal Davis chemists have engineered blue-green algae to grow chem precursors for fuels, plastics.

DOE granted $10M for algae fuel research. Will support projects aiming to boost productivity of algae cultivation, develop and demo effective, energy-efficient, low-cost algae harvest/processing techs.

Enviro, solar interests in Hawaii urging state to gradually reduce solar credits and undo temp rules many believe undercut solar in the state. Now 35% renewable energy credit.

Cost for large-scale solar dropped from 31 cents/Kwh in '09 to 14 cents in '12. Large-scale wind dropped from 9 cents to 8 in same time.