According to REFUEL project, which is project commissioned by the EU's Intelligent Energy Europe program to examine the biofuels potential in Europe, Europe has high biofuel potential. This REFUEL project, coordinated by the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands, and implemented by a consortium of seven European institutes with different disciplinary backgrounds concluded that European biofuels target can be met with conventional feedstocks and current technology without major agricultural land use changes or environmental consequences.

Many people are worried that biofuels necessary mean shortage in food supply as biofuel production is direct transformation from food into biofuels but according to REFUEL results current biofuel targets can be met, without any negative effect on food supply and what is equally important current biofuel targets will not require conversion of forestland, grassland and nature conservation areas into arable land, mainly because there are new opportunities for increasing crop and livestock yields in some newest EU member states, which will mean more agricultural land for biofuel feedstock cultivation.

Solar energy is often spoken as being renewable energy source that could be used on global scale as the alternative to currently dominant fossil fuels that are mainly responsible for current global warming phenomenon. However there are many environmentalists and some scientists that are worried about the potential negative impact of solar cells (photovoltaic technology). This is because manufacturing process of photovoltaic cells needs toxic metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium, and this process also produces carbon dioxide (CO₂) which is greenhouse gas mainly responsible for global warming phenomenon.

However newest study issued under title "Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles" and carried by Professor Vasilis M. Fthenakis and his colleagues should really help ease this concern about harmful environmental impact of manufacturing photovoltaic cells. As this study showed manufacturing process of solar cells produces far less air pollutants that the traditional fossil fuels technologies.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a strategy to capture, store and eventually recycle carbon from vehicles to prevent the pollutant from finding its way from a car tailpipe into the atmosphere. Georgia Tech researchers anticipate a zero emission car, and a transportation system completely free of fossil fuels. Many people think that huge power plants are main source of harmful carbon dioxide inventions, but this is not the case as smaller polluters such as cars and transportation vehicles account for nearly two thirds of total carbon emissions.

What team at the Georgia Institute of Technology plans is to create a sustainable transportation system that uses a liquid fuel and traps the carbon emission in the vehicle for later processing at a fueling station. The carbon would then be shuttled back to a processing plant where it could be transformed into liquid fuel. Their current research is based upon developing a fuel processing device to separate the carbon and store it in the vehicle in liquid form. As Professor Andrei Fedorov said "we wanted to create a practical and sustainable energy strategy for automobiles that could solve several severe limitations, including a limited supply of fossil fuels, high cost and carbon dioxide pollution, eventually using renewable energy sources and in an environmentally conscious way".

China's rapid economic growth transformed this country into industrial giant, but there are also some not pleasant side effects that also resulted from China's economic boom, mainly heavy reliance on ever-increasing expensive foreign oil and huge environmental damage done by fossil fuels. These reasons as well as periodic power shortages have really forced China's government to turn to renewable energy sector in upcoming years as they have decided that renewable energy must be much larger part of China's economy if China wants to achieve energy security needed to maintain its current economic growth rate.

In the near-term China is set to develop 120,000 MW's of renewable energy by the year 2020 and if this plan turns out to be success this would account for 12% of China's total installed energy producing capacity. China's growth target for renewable energy production will require an investment of approximately 800 billion Yuan (about US$100 billion) by 2020 which is large investment but would have positive effects on cutting down import of expensive foreign fuels and reduce amount of ecologically unacceptable coal that is still by far the most dominant fuel used in China.

World must cut down amount of energy gained from fossil fuels, mainly because of global warming problem caused by harmful CO₂ emissions, and many people see nuclear energy as the ideal fuel capable to replace dominant fossil fuels. Scientists calculated how nuclear energy production should increase by more than 10 percent each year in period from 2010-2050 in order to satisfy all future energy demands and successfully replace fossil fuels. But is this possible and is this acceptable or not? According to a report published in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology this rather high growth rate demands greater improvement in nuclear power efficiency, otherwise each new power plant will simply cannibalize the energy produced by earlier nuclear power plants. There are many additional problems that still don't justify dominance that nuclear energy currently has against renewable energy projects and seems like the real solution.

China and India are having major economic growth recently and they own it almost all to coal. However coal is highly ecologically unacceptable fossil fuel and will contribute to the global warming problems because of its release of CO2 when burning. We all know that CO2 is very dangerous greenhouse gas, but unfortunately knowledge isn't the key factor in many of the countries as many of them sacrifice environment to boost their economic growth. Despite the fact that China and India are under great pressure from the international community to reduce their carbon emissions this is very unlikely to happen. This is the conclusion that energy executives and government representatives at an energy conference in Rome agreed Wednesday, on 14th November 2007.

Renewable energy is increasingly being used as a mainstream alternative to the fossil fuels which are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says in a new report. At the end of 2005 installed renewable energy power (without large hydro) was about 182 GW. The REN21 Renewables Global Status Report 2007 says that out of a total global power capacity of 4,300 GW, renewable energy (without large hydro) now provides about 240 GW of clean power, avoiding about 5 gigatonnes per year of carbon emissions. That is 32 percent increase in less than two years and it’s very encouraging for renewable energy market. REN21 is a global policy network that provides a forum for international leadership on renewable energy. Its goal is to bolster policy development for the rapid expansion of renewable energies in developing and industrialized economies. Linking the energy, development and environment sectors, REN21 strengthens the influence of the unique renewable energy community that came together at the “renewables 2004” conference in Bonn.

Recently there's more and more talk about the biofuels as the replacement for the traditional fossil fuels and majority of politicians are saying how biofuels are the perfect renewable energy source which can be manufactured by literally anyone and therefore decrease the energy import dependence. Despite the fact that there are benefits in importing dependence, things must be observed on the more detailed way. When we look at origin, properties and methods of using biofuels more closely, it all results with the conclusion that biofuels are extremely dangerous for the further development of the humanity. Basically, biofuels production is in fact direct transformation of food to an oil, so additional demands for some types of food will increase the price of that food causing direct increase of hunger spreading in the world because bigger price means also smaller availability of that food to poor countries.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Democratic rewrite of the American energy policy that will take away $16 billion in tax incentives from "Big Oil" domain and transfer this money to renewable energy resources like solar energy and wind energy. "Big Oil" is an expression that is used for definition of individual and general economic power of largest refiners and manufacturers in oil and gasoline industry and refers to huge political influence, especially in USA. Companies that are usually connected with term "Big Oil" are Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total S.A., Chevron Corporation and ConocoPhillips. These changes of energy police are initiated from Democrats.

Wealthy countries' governments failed to response to ever-growing disturbing news coming from scientists all around the globe concerning the prediction of climate changes. In dying hours of United Nations Climate Conference which took place in Nairobi from 6-17 November of 2006, final agreement about uttermost term until which new goals for reducing the greenhouse gases emission and after which Kyoto protocol wouldn't be legally binding wasn't realized. Since Kyoto protocol defines limitations of gasses emissions only to 2012, it's very likely that until then there won't be any new legal regulations concerning that matter and in the absence of legally binding regulations each country could emit amount of gas that strictly depends on her will.

Google plans to build a massive system for taking advantage of solar energy in its headquarters, city of Mountain View in California. Solar energy will be transforming itself to an electric energy with a help of 9212 solar panels, and predictions are that the strength gained from it should be about 1.6 megawatts. Just for comparison, that strength is well enough to provide with electricity thousand of average Californian households. Acquired energy will cover 30% of all energy needed for normal functioning of the Google's headquarter. Installation of the system in campus will be over in the spring of 2007, and by completing it this will become the largest solar energy exploitation system installed in some corporative residence in USA.

European Union and China will sign an understanding memorandum for research and use of clean technologies for producing energy form coal. According to this memorandum, work on programs like action plan for clean energy from coal, energetic efficiency and renewable energy sources, will be empowered. Development of new technologies which will enable collection and underground storage of carbon dioxide will be stimulated as well, because of great importance in fighting against global climate changes. Emissions of carbon dioxide released in coal power plants grow increasingly, presenting a great threat to the long term climate stability. China is currently world's biggest producer and consumer of coal. European Union and China are working together on more than 100 mutual research projects, including even bigger projects like satellite navigation system Galileo and nuclear fusion research project ITER. More information regarding coal you can read here.
Source of information’s: http://www.energycentral.com/

6183 MW of new wind power plants was installed in European Union in 2005, and with those five years before deadline goal that included installation of at least 40 GW of wind power plants was achieved. In the last ten years, European Union had alone each year 32% increase of installed power plants. Five biggest wind energy markets in European Union in 2005 were Germany (1808 MW), Spain (1764 MW), Portugal (500 MW), Italy (452 MW) and United Kingdom (446 MW). After year 2005 two countries of European Union installed more than 10 GW wind power plants (Germany with 18428 MW and Spain with 10027 MW), and five of them had more than one GW (Denmark 3122 MW, Italy 1717 MW, United Kingdom 1353 MW, Netherlands 1219 MW and Portugal 1022 MW). 40504 MW altogether installed wind power plants in European Union have average year production about 83 TWh of electrical energy which equals 2.8% of overall electrical energy consumption in European Union in year 2004.
Source of information’s: http://www.ventusvigor.com/

New national goal of United States which President Bush set is to decrease oil import from Middle East for 75% until the year 2025. Oil should be replaced with United States non importable energy sources. Primary idea includes plan of replacing oil with coal and nuclear energy and smaller percent of oil will be the result of replacement from wind and sun energy. Because of that president Bush introduced initiative according to which investments in clean energy sources should increase by 22%. Researches would be primarily concentrated on getting the clean energy from coal and nuclear power plants, and lesser founds would be spend on research of other energy sources. It's no surprise that coal has the key role in this plan, because as some estimate, USA has enough coal for the next 200 years.
Source of information’s: http://www.whitehouse.gov/