Wind turbines at London Array offshore wind park, North Sea, near England, United Kingdom.

Navigating the Shifting Sands: Legal Challenges and Opportunities in Offshore Wind Development

Offshore wind energy is rapidly emerging as a critical component of the global transition to renewable energy sources. Harnessing the vast wind resources available at sea offers significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing energy security. However, the development of offshore wind projects presents a complex web of legal and regulatory challenges that must be navigated effectively to ensure successful implementation.

One key legal area involves the permitting process. Offshore wind projects typically require a multitude of permits and approvals from various federal, …

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Wave crashing against the beach

Surf’s up: Wave energy no longer confined to sports venues

Can wave-energy be a green-power solution for coastal communities? That question may be at least partially answered in Newport, Oregon, a small seaside town cooperating with the U.S. Department of Energy in an attempt to convert wave power into electricity. Newport expects the project to provide enough energy to power thousands of its homes and businesses.

The process uses buoy-type converters located miles offshore. These converters transfer energy to underwater connectors into which they are plugged. From the connectors, cables buried underneath the seafloor carry …

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Servers. Servers room data center. Backup, mining, hosting, mainframe, farm and computer rack with storage information. 3d rendering

Big Tech’s Investment in Geothermal Energy Continues to Heat Up

On August 26, Sage Geosystems announced an agreement to supply Meta with 150 MW of geothermal power. Sage will use its proprietary Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) to provide carbon-free power for Meta’s data centers. This makes Meta the latest tech giant to invest in geothermal energy.  In June 2024, Google negotiated a similar deal with NV Energy for 115 MW of geothermal energy to help Google power its Nevada data center.

Data centers typically require ever increasing amounts of energy around the clock, which alternate …

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Wind, sun and water energy.

You Say You Want a (Heavily Subsidized) Revolution: New Clean-Fuel Tech Could Provide Endless Green Mileage

Tech-savvy energy producers are currently looking for economically viable methods to create “green hydrogen” from water using renewable electricity. This technology, which can produce clean fuel for planes, ships, and trucks, could be the world’s biggest development in power generation since the 19th century. In particular, the creation of clean fuels for heavy vehicles could sharply reduce or even eliminate a major source of carbon emissions. Green hydrogen could also cut carbon pollution by providing an ingredient for fertilizers, or to refine steel, chemicals, and oil.

Electric motors can …

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celandic Landscape of geothermal power plant

Some Like It Hot: Geothermal Energy May Become a Watershed Clean-Energy Source

Chevron is part of a group of old-school fossil-fuel companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into geothermal-energy projects aiming to use fracking-type technology to find and access underground heat — heat that might very well become the world’s most-stable source of clean power. 

In sufficient quantities, underground heat can be used to generate a consistent source of carbon-free electricity, making it superior to both wind and solar power, both of which suffer from issues of unreliability.

While finding suitable heat sources in places with …

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