STUFF

Southern stretch of High Plains Aquifer - SD to TX - has dried up. Most of creeks, rivers in area dried up. This is where the Dust Bowl happened in '30's, kids.

Petroleum coke from oil sands refining covering a city block 30 ft high on Detroit River. Owned by Koch Carbon. They sell it usually overseas for fuel burn. Almost 56% of Canada's oil production now from oil sands. 80M tons of petcoke already stockpiled around Canada. Marathon's Detroit plant processes 28Kb/d of the bitumen. California exports ~128Kb/d of petcoke from their heavy crude, mainly to China. They burn it for power generation (highly polluting). EPA no longer allows licenses to burn petcoke. India, LatAm use petcoke to fuel cement-making kilns. Oxbow Corp, owned by another Koch brother, sells 11M tons petcoke a year.

MIT energy economist testified to House committee that oil sands from Canada might be cleaner than heavy crude it would replace, from Venezuela, etc.

DOE conditionally authorized a 2nd comp to export NG to countries that don't have free trade agreement with US.

Report: consumer interest in clean energy topics dropping. (Well, it can't always keep going up. I can attest it's doubled so far this year.)

Study: unusual tropical rainfall patterns increasing.

Attempt to capture CO2 from cement factories kicked off in Norway.

PA pushing NGVs. (They do have a lot of new NG.)

Chevron says Argentina has world's 2nd biggest shale oil potential. Working $15B deal with YPF to help develop the 23B BOE (bls oil equivalent).

India inviting bids through May for up to 750Mw of solar capacity. 300Mw required to use domestic equipment. Grants to cover 30% of up front costs up to $348M. (Ontario just lost its appeal to WTO over domestic content.)

Tata Power (India) plans to increase wind, solar cap ~5x through next March.

Asian Development Bank giving $30M to India comp for hydro and wind projects. 100Mw run-of-river, 75Mw wind projects. ADB also considering loaning up to $40M for pair of combined heat and power biomass projects in Azerbaijan. 16Mw total.

Denham Capital  investing $75M to accel development of 1Gw of wind power projects in Australia. 3 comps - "One Wind Australia". 590Mw of it to cost $800M to develop.

Nordex got order for its 50Mw wind farm in Pakistan. 1 of 5 50Mw deals in its local pipe.

Solaria opened office in China. Has several Mw-size projects in construction in China, Mongolia.

2 China comps pooling $489M to develop 300Mw of solar plants in China by '15.

Welspun Energy to develop 60Mw solar plant in Tamil Nadu, India. State wants to install 5Gw of solar by '20.

Yingli to supply 220Mw of solar PV modules this year to China Power Investment Corp for 5 power plants.

LDK Solar to provide ~500Mw of silicon wafers to China's Realforce Power through Dec '14.

Intl Finance (World Bank) to lend up to $50M for 25Mw solar PV plant in Madhya Pradesh, India. May extend to projects in 2 other states.

China Hydroelectric sold 30Mw project last Oct for $44M. $20M profit.

NREL, Regen Power (India) helping Bangladesh map wind resources.

Tonga 1st small wind project - 11Kw - starting up.

Trony Solar (China) "massively" (10% or less) over reported sales, production data in period before '10 IPO.

Saud comp to develop $1.6B polysilicon plant in Malaysia. Online in '16.

Japan group plans to install hybrid wind, ocean current power system off coast later this year.

Goldman Sachs plans to invest up to $487M in clean/renewable energy in Japan next 5 years.

Poland minister: EU should scrap all energy subsidies, set target to cut oil imports to remain leader in global warming fight.

Wind energy prices in Brazil, now lowest in world, may rise at least 15% from govt policies to make grid more reliable.

Global crude industry $3.4T/yr.

IEA: non-OPEC oil production to increase near 1Mb/d per year next 5 yrs - mostly from US, Canada.

Iraq-Turkey oil pipe blown up again on Friday. Also bombs in Basra.

Reports China has reduced pace of new thermal power plant construction from 2/week to 1. Making effort to cap coal consumption to just above 4B tons/yr - 4x US consumption. China probably to continue to increase annual oil demand by 500Kb/d/yr or more.

Ideal temp - 65-70F - for biofuel conversion ID'd by Energy Biosciences Inst. Most flexible amino acids in enzymes most likely to fall out of place when protein thermally stressed.

EU placing tariffs on biodiesel imports from Argentina, Indonesia effective May 29.

Iowa Senate approved ethanol tax break extension. 20 cents/gal for another year.

Canada has doubled PR budget to promote tar sands in US.

Norway scientists working on storing el on ocean bottoms using the pressure.

Musk claiming EV recharging of Tesla sedans throughout US faster than refilling a gas tank. Battery swapping. Batt swap already used by Better Place. But their stations in Israel, Denmark struggling to stay afloat. Avg American drives 29 miles/day.

China approving world's tallest hydro dam - 314 meters. 2.9B Pounds cost. 10-year build. If built, near 4Gw. Current tallest - 300 meters - in Tajikistan.