It’s no secret that the world has come to depend almost entirely (87%) on fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—for meeting our energy needs. Since the Industrial Revolution the discovery and use of fossil fuels have led to the largest increase in human well-being ever experienced, quite literally making modern life possible (think electricity, medicine, computers). Continue reading »
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – The Minnesota ENERGY STAR Challenge is excited to announce the selection of its community partners: the cities of Hutchinson and Woodbury. Each of these communities has demonstrated leadership in energy and sustainability initiatives and marks the beginning of lasting partnerships that will deepen efforts to increase building energy efficiency. Continue reading »
E&E Publishing’s EnergyWire featured an in-depth article, “Initiative Aims to Reinvent Utility Industry the Minnesota Way”, on the e21 Initiative which is co-convened by GPI and is working to “reinvent the utility business model and the regulations and policy that guide it.” Continue reading »
Located in westernmost China and home to the historic Silk Road that made this region a crossroads of Central Asia, the province of Xinjiang today plays the role of major energy producer, supplying China’s 1.35 billion people and burgeoning economy with fuels, chemicals, fertilizer and other products derived from the province’s abundant coal and oil reserves. If government and industry leaders in Xinjiang and Beijing play their cards right, this region of China can also become a world-class hub for carbon capture and storage, helping China to satisfy its urgent need to expand domestic energy production and to meet it national commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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As cellulosic ethanol production facilities have come online, anaerobic digesters have been co-located at the plants to recover biogas from soluble residues inherent in the ethanol production process. These soluble residues contain a source of energy that can be recovered using anaerobic digestion, and the captured biogas can help meet process energy needs. Continue reading »
The Tesla electric cars arrived before the guests, tires squeaking over the grass of the Nicollet Island Pavilion louder than the whisper quiet motors. During the Great Plains Institute’s inaugural Energy Innovation Celebration, the Teslas were a symbol of progress, but also of the distance left to travel. Continue reading »
The Bipartisan Policy Center and Great Plains Institute hosted a regional workshop, “The Final Clean Power Plan: Understanding the Options for the Midcontinent,” in Little Rock, AR, on October 19 to discuss compliance options under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan. The workshop was the second in a series of stakeholder workshops in the midcontinent focused on implementing the Clean Power Plan. The event brought together state officials and stakeholders from the region, including those participating in the Midcontinent States Environmental and Energy Regulators group and the Midwestern Power Sector Collaborative. Continue reading »
On October 22nd, over one hundred people attended the 9th annual gathering of the Metro CERT region. As always, the program provided information, connections to resources and networking around community clean energy implementation. This year, participants were also offered the opportunity to provide input on both the Metro CERT priorities over the next two years and the Minnesota 2025 Energy Action Plan. The Great Plains Institute, in partnership with the MN Department of Commerce, the Legislative Energy Commission, and Rocky Mountain Institute, coordinates the 2025 Energy Action Plan. Continue reading »
One of the greatest attributes of biogas is the flexible nature of the resource. It can be generated from a variety of organic feedstocks such as food waste, livestock manure, crop residues, biosolids, or solid waste in a landfill. It is also flexible in the utilization of the gas. Biogas can be burned for electrical generation or heat, cleaned and used as a replacement for natural gas or compressed for use as a vehicle fuel. Continue reading »
If you google “oil reserves” (or natural gas reserves, or coal reserves, or uranium reserves) you will be inundated with data sources, such as the resource map below. There is a whole industry of companies and agencies who track and measure our country’s traditional energy fuel reserves.
On the other hand, if you search for information about solar energy reserves, your result is considerably different. Continue reading »
