In 2008, biodiesel production grew by more than 35 percent in the European Union and volume is set to rise again this year, even as half the facilities are currently inactive due to reduced demand. It has been projected that the weak demand is mainly because of strong United States competition, as well as the fall in the cost of crude oil…

Assembly Bill 522 was recently proposed to initiate a Nevada State Energy Commission, which will help educate the public about saving energy, ease and accelerate thegreen-energy-nevada permit/lease process developers need from the Federal Bureau of Land Management to begin renewable energy, collect information about the companies to certify they meet tax decrease specifications and manage rebate programs for renewable energy development ventures. Previously, such duties…

Southwest Windpower, the world’s largest manufacturer of small wind turbines, announced their newest household wind turbine at the WINDPOWER 2009 conference. Thanks to a $10 million investment from GE, the company was able to assemble Skystream, a 2.4 kilowatt generating turbine which may help cut energy costs significantly for a single-family home by supplying anywhere from 40 to 90 percent of renewable electricity. The technology is open to homeowners with a 4-5 year payback…

Southern California Edison recently signed a power purchase agreement with eSolar, engineers of scalable solar thermal power plants, to construct 245 megawatts (MW) of concentrating solar power (CSP) manufacturing units throughout So Cal. eSolar has received $130 million in new investment funds from technology giant, Google, as well as other eager venture capitalists to apply toward construction of this mega-scale solar tower project. The development will be built…

Sunpower (Nasdaq: SPWR), a solar photovoltaic engineering company based in California, stock shares plummeted by more than 2 percent following the company’s report of unexpected losses in its first quarter. Revenue dropped a staggering 22 percent to $213.8M from the previous quarter and recorded net loss totals $4.79M, or $0.06 per share. The company has scratched its expected income for 2009 and is now projecting…