A Chevy Volt being charged at a public electric vehicle charging station in Detroit, Oct. 12, 2010. Google will help electric vehicle owners find charging stations. (Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg)
Soon electric vehicle owners looking for somewhere to charge up will need little more than Google.
The U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday that a new partnership will draw on Google Maps to create an online network of all the charging stations in the country and will serve as a primary data source for GPS and mapping services to track electric vehicle charging locations. Get the full story »
The fund established to compensate Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of last year’s massive BP oil spill said Monday it has paid out $3.8 billion so far. Get the full story »
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Thursday high oil prices posed a threat to the global economy. “The oil producer countries and the oil consuming countries are concerned because it does have an impact on a very fragile economic recovery. There is great concern,” Chu told a news conference while attending a clean energy conference. Get the full story »
General Electric says it’s going to build the nation’s largest solar panel factory, part of a $600 million dollar bet on the future of solar power in the United States. The new plant will employ 400 people and produce enough solar panels to power 80,000 homes per year, GE said Thursday. The company isn’t saying where the plant will be located, but it does say that there are multiple locations being scouted. Get the full story »
Declaring 2010 “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history,“ Transocean Ltd., owner of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig that exploded, killing 11 workers, has awarded its top executives hefty bonuses and raises, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Get the full story »
If a nuclear reactor were to melt down in Illinois, the state has enough potassium iodide on hand to distribute to residents living within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency said Friday.
A top official with the agency had said earlier at a public forum hosted by U.S. Senators Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin that there weren’t enough tablets on hand.
An IEMA spokeswoman clarified Friday, saying that the agency has 90,000 tablets on hand for first responders and 175,000 tablets on-hand to distribute to the public. She said about 180,000 people total live within 10 miles of a nuclear reactor in Illinois. Joseph Klinger, the assistant director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency misspoke when he said 180,000 people on average live within 10 miles of each nuclear plant in Illinois. Get the full story »
The U.S. nuclear industry will see a “significant” increase in operating and regulatory costs following the Japanese nuclear emergency, but the magnitude won’t be known for several months, the head of the largest fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors said on Thursday. Get the full story »
Residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side descended on the Thompson Center Wednesday morning to urge Gov. Pat Quinn to veto a bill that would pave the way for a coal-to-gas plant to be built in their neighborhood.
The deadline for the governor to sign or veto the legislation is March 14, and he has not said whether he plans to sign the bill, which would require utilities to purchase the synthetic natural gas the $3 billion plant would produce for the next 30 years. Get the full story »
Natural gas will remain cheaper than other sources of electricity generation for “a long time,” Exelon Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive John W. Rowe said Tuesday.
“I have never seen a time, not once, where one fuel source seems to be so dominant for so long,” said Rowe, one of the senior utility executives in the U.S. and former head of two utility trade organizations in Washington. “The supply-demand equations for gas are very powerful and I believe they are real for a long time.”
As a result of those economics, Rowe said, the U.S. Congress should “do nothing” on energy policy and allow the market to replace aging coal generating plants with natural gas, which releases less carbon than coal when burned. Get the full story »
Businesses that emit greenhouse gases will have more time to report their emissions after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency extended a deadline Tuesday.
The EPA announced that it would extend the deadline, originally March 31, saying it would take more time to test the online system to collect data. The agency said it expected reporting to begin in late summer but did not set a new deadline. Get the full story »
The Chevrolet Volt didn’t rank as one of the 10 “greenest” cars in America, coming at no. 13, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual list.
The fully electric Nissan Leaf ranked second among all 2011 model year cars on the list. First place went to the compressed natural gas powered Honda Civic GX. Get the full story »
A residential electric car charging station in Washington D.C. (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty)
By the end of this year, Chicagoans will not only be able to purchase and drive electric vehicles, but also charge those vehicles in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee.
The city of Chicago has awarded a $1.9 million contract to a California firm to install 280 electric vehicle charging stations in Chicago and surrounding suburbs by the end of 2011.
The contract — paid for with equal state and federal dollars though a grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — means the city has cleared a major hurdle on the road to widespread electric vehicle adoption. Get the full story »
Looming U.S. rules that power utilities face on air pollution could create nearly 1.5 million jobs in the next five years, according to a report.
Engineering, construction and pipefitting are some of the professions that could see a rise in jobs as Environmental Protection Agency rules push utilities to invest in new capacity and pollution controls, said the report “New Jobs — Cleaner Air,” commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of environmentalists and institutional investors. Get the full story »
From Bloomberg News | BP expects to fetch at least $4.4 billion from selling half of its crude refining capacity in the U.S. and some retail assets as it raises cash to pay for last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The company plans to focus on refining and marketing networks in the country based around its Whiting, Indiana, and Cherry Point, Washington, refineries.
General Motors Co. has withdrawn its application for $14 billion in subsidized loans from the Department of Energy, saying it has the financial strength to fund investment in more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles on its own.
The move could provide a public-relations boost to GM, which has struggled to distance itself from a $50 billion bailout and the stigma of having become ”Government Motors” after being restructured in bankruptcy. Get the full story »
