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Ogden High School students are making their own biodiesel fuel out of used cooking oil (right) and using a small jet engine (bottom) to test the fuel, possibly leading neighbors and fellow students to wonder if a jet is taking off nearby. (Photo composite by MATTHEW ARDEN HATFIELD and BRYAN NIELSEN/Standard-Examiner)

Ogden High students all revved up over biodiesel fuel

Last updated Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 6:06am

OGDEN — Neighborhood residents and students in and around Ogden High School may wonder why it sounds like a jet has been taking off over the past couple of weeks — but it’s just a little engineering being put to good use.

Students in Roger Snow’s principles of engineering class are getting hands-on experience using recyclable energy by creating biodiesel fuel and then running it through a small jet engine.

Education, Engineering, Aerospace, Alternative Energy, Biofuel, Careers, Employment, Fuel, Jobs, Ogden High School, Ogden School Foundation, Research, Researchers, Science, Technology, Teenagers, Teens, Utah, Featured Read more Comments

President Barack Obama speaks during a visit to the Daimler Trucks North America Mount Holly Truck Manufacturing Plant in Mount Holly, N.C., Wednesday, March 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Obama unveils 'clean' vehicle initiative

Celeste Smith, Tim Funk The Charlotte Observer

Last updated Wednesday, March 7, 2012 - 6:06pm

MOUNT HOLLY, N.C. -- President Barack Obama used a visit to North Carolina on Wednesday to announce a new initiative to build and use alternative-energy vehicles.

In remarks delivered at the Daimler Trucks plant in Mount Holly, N.C., Obama announced a new $1 billion National Community Deployment Challenge. The goal of that program -- to spur the construction and use of "clean" vehicles.

Business, Alternative Energy, Autos, Electric cars, President Obama Read more Comments

A wind turbine, used for teaching purposes, stands in front of South Weber Elementary School. The South Weber Planning Commission is considering an ordinance that would allow businesses and residents to harness wind power on a conditional-use basis. It plans to hold open houses in April and May so it can receive public input on the issue before making a decision. (KERA WILLIAMS/Standard-Examiner)

South Weber may let businesses, residents harness wind power

Bryon Saxton Standard-Examiner

Last updated Monday, February 27, 2012 - 7:48am

SOUTH WEBER -- A proposed wind energy ordinance that would allow commercial businesses and residents to harness air power on a conditional-use basis is leisurely blowing its way through the political process.

Business, Energy, Alternative Energy, City Government, Electricity, Energy policy, Housing, Job Corps, Open house, Ordinance, Planning Commission, South Weber, Utah, Wind, Wind energy, Featured Read more Comments

Herbert honors fallen Utah veterans and slain Ogden Officer Jared Francom at the State of the State address in Salt Lake City on Wednesday. At rear left is House Speaker Becky Lockhart. At right is Senate President Michael Waddoups. (TRENT NELSON/Pool photo)

Herbert lashes out at federal government in State of the State address

Josh Loftin The Associated Press

Last updated Thursday, January 26, 2012 - 1:18am

SALT LAKE CITY -- During his annual State of the State speech Wednesday, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert vowed to continue defending the state against an "overreaching, out-of-control and out-of-touch" federal government.

Business, Schools, Air Quality, Alternative Energy, Democratic Party, Economy, Federal Government, Federal land, Gov. Gary Herbert, Jared Francom, Jobs, Medicaid and Medicare, Politics, Public land, Republican Party, State of the State, Teachers, Utah, Utah Legislature, Featured, Gary Herbert Read more Comments

Diet Coke-Mentos mixture powers car

Contributed The Associated Press

Last updated Friday, December 9, 2011 - 3:39pm

BUCKFIELD, Maine -- The Maine guys known for creating colorful geysers from Diet Coke and Mentos candies say they've set a distance record for a vehicle with soda-and-candy-powered propulsion.

Features, Alternative Energy, Fuel, Invention, Soda Read more Comments

Workers lay piping at BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on 3,600 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California. (JOSIE LEPE/San Jose Mercury News)

Solar gold rush in Mojave Desert

Dana Hull San Jose Mercury News

Last updated Monday, October 31, 2011 - 11:34pm

MOJAVE DESERT, Calif. — The Mojave Desert, which spans an area larger than West Virginia, is becoming speckled with gigantic solar power plants that are creating hundreds of construction jobs and, when complete, will generate electricity for millions of homes.

Business, Energy, Alternative Energy, Endangered Species, Mojave Desert, Plants, Solar energy, Solar plant, Utilities, Wildlife Read more Comments

Company's solar applications denied for Nevada

Jason Dearen The Associated Press

Last updated Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 2:49pm

SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal land managers are rejecting a Goldman Sachs-owned company's applications to develop solar projects on public lands in the sun-drenched Nevada desert; years after the subsidiary filed more claims to build glimmering solar farms than anyone else.

For years Goldman's Cogentrix Solar Services, LLC held exclusive rights to develop solar plants on nearly as much federal land in Nevada as all other companies combined -- even though the firm had neither written plans nor inked agreements with utilities to buy the power they proposed to make.

Business, Alternative Energy, BLM, Solar energy, Solar plant Read more Comments

Biofuels industry gets boost from military

David Shaffer, Jim Spencer Minneapolis Star Tribune

Last updated Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - 1:22pm

The federal government intends to jump-start the fledgling biofuels industry in the name of national security.

The initiative, introduced Tuesday by President Obama at a rural economic forum in Iowa, commits $510 million to help finance a new generation of plants to produce advanced biofuels for Navy jets and marine craft. The effort would, in turn, boost job creation in rural America, proponents say.

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Toys 'R' Us goes solar in a big way

Joan Verdon The Record (Hackensack N.J.)

Last updated Friday, August 12, 2011 - 8:49am

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Toys "R" Us Thursday unveiled a solar power system at its distribution center in Flanders, N.J., a system that gives the company, at least for now, bragging rights to having the largest rooftop solar panel installation in North America and the second-largest in the world.

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"We're trying to use ocean space in a way we've never used it before," says Andrea Copping, an oceanographer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's marine science lab in Sequim, Washington, standing next to an outdoor tank at the lab on Sequim Bay. Copping is in charge of an experiment aimed at creating electricity from the force of powerful ocean tides and waves. (Rob Hotakainen/MCT)

Will oceans' tides supply endless electricity?

Rob Hotakainen McClatchy Newspapers

Last updated Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - 10:39am

SEQUIM, Wash. -- Joshua Myers has been busy putting electrodes on the heads of juvenile salmon, trying to determine how the fish will react to the simulated sound of giant steel and fiberglass turbines, which soon could be submerged in Washington state's Puget Sound.

Myers, a research engineer, is conducting his acoustical experiments in a laboratory on Sequim Bay, where scientists want to learn how to create electricity from an unusual source: the force of powerful ocean tides and waves.

If all goes as planned, two large hydro turbines will be installed 200 feet deep in the harsh waters of Admiralty Inlet by late summer 2013, marking the first project of its kind in the state. But before then, scientists want to figure out how rockfish, diving birds, whales and other marine life will respond to the intruding turbines, which will weigh 350 tons each.

In the latest quest for clean power, Washington state has emerged as a hotbed of high-tech research into what's known as hydrokinetics.

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Officials investigate eagle deaths at wind farm

Louis Sahagan Los Angeles Times

Last updated Wednesday, August 3, 2011 - 9:47am

LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations.

Alternative Energy, Bald eagles, Fish and Wildlife, Wildlife, National Read more Comments

Proposing to harness power of the waves

Los Angeles Times, Tony Barboza

Last updated Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 9:24am

LOS ANGELES -- The waves off San Onofre have for generations beckoned surfers and sport fishermen to a wild stretch of coastline in the shadow of domed nuclear reactors.

Now, an Orange County entrepreneur wants to tap the power of that legendary surf in a novel but highly controversial plan to build one of the nation's first hydrokinetic wave farms.

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