Departments

South Korea, the world’s fourth-largest producer of nuclear power, in June warned of “unprecedented” power shortages this summer after it shut down two reactors due to faulty safety equipment and delayed the start of operations of another last month.

In Japan, where all but two of 50 reactors remain shuttered for safety checks following the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe, at least four major utilities were gearing up to apply for safety screening of 12 reactors across six plants.

A proposal to build a $45.8 billion fixed barrage across the Severn estuary, between Brean in England and Lavernock Point in Wales, suffered another blow in June as an influential UK parliamentary committee deemed a high-profile privately financed proposal unsatisfactory for environmental and economic reasons.

A technology developed by the University of Delaware (UD) and NRG Energy that provides a two-way interface between electric vehicles and the power grid earlier this year became an official paid resource on PJM Interconnection’s regional grid (Figure 4). One of the first of its kind, the project proves the so-called “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) concept can sell electricity from electric vehicles.

An updated estimate of technically recoverable global shale gas resources by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts them at 7,299 trillion cubic feet (tcf)—10% higher than estimated in 2011.

UN Report on Global Renewable Energy Investment. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released its report Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2013 on June 11, finding that renewable energy investment at the global level was $244 billion in 2012. However, global investments in renewable energy fell 12% compared to 2011 due to dramatically lower […]

There are many reasons to anticipate that the use of wireless instrumentation in industrial settings will increase dramatically in the next few years.

Last month’s column, “Opinions à la Carte,” prompted an unusually high number of emails from readers. Unexpectedly, the responses to the different format were universally favorable.

The transformative increases in current and expected future domestic natural gas production have spawned yet another energy debate: Should the U.S. should export natural gas?