The share of world energy provided by renewables such as hydro and wind power was 5.5 percent in 2001.

Investment in renewables is unlikely to be spurred by this year's record rally on oil futures, as only longer-term high prices and stable revenues for new projects will force an energy shift, experts say.
Oil futures in New York shot to record highs of nearly $50 a barrel this month, creating higher costs for energy-importing nations and leading to fears of global economic damage, before prices slipped to under $42 on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
"Industry is going to need more bad news on oil prices before switching to renewables," said Andrew Oswald, economics professor at Warwick University. "Spikes won't do it as they don't change people's long-term outlook--you'd need to see prices running at $50-$60 a barrel for over a year."
The oil price shocks of the 1970s spurred governments' research in alternative forms of energy, but the drive to cut dependence on fossil fuels faded in the 1980s as oil became cheap once more. In real terms current prices are only half the level for Arabian crude hit in 1980, when the Iran-Iraq war started.
Industrialized nations' spending on energy research and development followed oil's curve, peaking in 1981 at $16 billion but dropping to $9 billion by 1987, according to the International Energy Agency.
The share of world energy provided by renewables such as hydro and wind power was 5.5 percent in 2001, only slightly higher than 4.6 percent in 1970, the latest IEA figures show. In the past decade global energy research spending has shown little growth.
"The decreasing share of public funding for energy R&D allocated to renewable energy appears to be inconsistent with presumed political intentions in many IEA countries to increase the share of renewables," the West's energy watchdog said in a recent study.
Growth in renewables has varied widely. In Norway they made up 45 percent of its energy sources by 2001, compared to 4.4 percent in the U.S and 3.1 percent in Japan, according to the IEA. In the Czech Republic they grew rapidly by over 15 percent in the 1990s, though remained just 1.5 percent of its energy sources.

Climate Change Driver
Analysts say environmental concerns are likely to act as a bigger driver of energy investment than high fossil fuel costs. European Union countries are increasingly looking at wind and nuclear power, given commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
But experts say much government research spending is still focused on nuclear fission and hydrogen fuel cells, which could both provide electricity without harmful emissions but remain years away from commercial viability.
"In terms of R&D, for things that would be really useful, such as marine power, my impression is that very little is government money," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director of Greenpeace. "A guaranteed power price is the key thing," he said.
"Where most OECD countries get hurt (by high oil) is on liquid transportation fuels, but the most viable technology is on the electricity side," Sawyer said.
Biodiesel made from vegetable oils or ethanol is seen as having the best prospects in economies reliant on imported oil, but green fuels remain some 50 percent more expensive than petrol. Oil companies and vehicle manufacturers are also researching fuel cells, though costs to produce and store liquid hydrogen are high.
Despite record profits from surging crude prices, oil majors with investments in renewables such as BP and Shell are not boosting funds for research or oil exploration, preferring instead to buy back shares or pay dividends.
In any case, analysts say public funding is the key to growth in renewables.
"In all cases, the advancement of renewables has been spurred by strong government policies designed to nurture nascent energy industries and to create demand for these technologies, often in markets dominated by mature, heavily subsidised fossil fuel and nuclear power," said Washington-based research group Worldwatch Institute in a recent report.

Single-cell algae readily consume carbon dioxide and other power plant emissions and emit oxygen during photosynthesis.

Could simple algae offer the next solution to both decreasing industrial pollution and providing a form of renewable energy? Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) think so.
Single-cell algae readily consume carbon dioxide and other power plant emissions and emit oxygen during photosynthesis. This makes single-cell algae tiny power plants in their own right--power plants that may transform toxic emissions to renewable energy, according to Isaac Berzin, 37, a former postdoctoral student in chemical engineering and founder of a Cambridge-based company, GreenFuel Technologies.
Berzin started GreenFuel, a 2001 receipient of a $1,000 grant in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition and an additional $10K as 2002 runner-up, with guidance from MIT faculty including Robert Langer, the Kenneth J. Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering; Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, principal research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Charles Fine, Chrysler Leaders for Manufacturing Professor in the Sloan School of Management, solaraccess.com reported.
Berzin retains a student's delight in discovery and natural processes. Speaking of algae, he has said, "It's very tolerant of everything. You can find it in the Charles River, in sewage, in boiling water, in ice, in Antarctica, in the Dead Sea."
Berzin's idea is simple, once you accept algae's appetites and its astonishing efficiency. Laboratory research at GreenFuel had already demonstrated that single-cell algae could consume carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides and then be "harvested" in a reusable form. This form, a biomass similar to an artist's soft charcoal, potentially could be burned like coal or liquefied into oil or used to make plastics, nutraceuticals or food.
Now, Berzin and GreenFuel are taking their system to the roof of MIT's cogeneration plant on Vassar Street. Their goal: to determine if the system can be scaled up so actual emissions from a live power plant can be transformed from greenhouse gases to, well, green resources.
GreenFuel has installed 30 bioreactors on the roof of the Cogen plant, MIT's main steam, chilled water and electrical power plant. Each bioreactor is composed of polycarbonate tubing in the shape of a triangle; the tubes are clear, to allow sunlight in. Inside each tube, exhaust will mix with the algae. Thanks to photosynthesis, the algae will consume the CO2 and pollutants, grow in volume and give off oxygen and nitrogen.
The algae will be harvested and dried into the charcoal-like solid to be reused as fuel. In a later phase Cogen heat may be used for the drying process.
Peter Cooper, director of utilities, commented, "The Department of Facilities is very pleased to host this beta test of a very promising technology that addresses the difficult issue of greenhouse gas emissions reduction. When Cogen came on line in 1995 using state-of-the-art gas turbine technology, it reduced regulated pollutants by 45 percent. Also, by the fact that cogeneration reuses otherwise wasted heat, thereby burning less fuel in the fist place, MIT's CO2 emissions dropped by nearly 60,000 tons. As a utility engineer I think of the GreenFuel process capturing CO2 for reuse as analogous to cogeneration's reuse of energy."
The GreenFuel bioreactors are currently visible from the sidewalk in front of Building 37 on the MIT campus.

The Hydrogen Engine Center (HEC) has introduced the world's first production-ready hydrogen fueled engine, the HEC-F-C649. The engine is a highly modified Ford 4.9L engine that produces 74 HP using commercially available hydrogen.
The expected applications of such an engine are powering: generator sets, luggage tugs for airports, pumping stations, man-lift systems that must operate inside closed buildings, forklifts, and subterranean mining equipment.
The hydrogen fueled engine can bridge the gap between today's program needs and the promise of tomorrow. Founder and President of HEC and former Director of Engineering at Ford, Ted Hollinger stated, "We wanted to build a system that was cost-effective in today's market, and could be maintained by the same people who maintain gasoline fueled engines. If it took specialists to maintain the engine, then it would be the wrong design. HEC figured out how to modify these engines, and then searched for production techniques that kept costs reasonable."
This introduction ends speculation that the idea of a hydrogen fueled engine would wither in research and development labs. It also ends the program delays resulting from stagnation in fuel cell development. Until fuel cell development reaches the point where it can offer cost effective solutions, all other dependent programs have been stalled. This signals the true start of the hydrogen age, theautochannel.com reported.
HEC uses fuel injection rather than fumigation (similar to carburetion) to more precisely control the combustion process. Hollinger stated that fuel injection increases the engine's efficiency and output power while lowering emissions. "Fumigated hydrogen engines can be built, but fuel injection takes a hydrogen engine from a scientific curiosity to a production-ready design." He noted that the engine uses commercially available hydrogen rather than the ultra pure hydrogen needed for fuel cell power. HEC is also working on higher power versions of the same engine.
If this engine is coupled with a generator, it could produce as much as 30 kW of electrical power. Programs waiting for economic fuel cells can start immediately by using these engines connected to generators. When asked the engine production rate, Hollinger replied, "Demand really determines how many will be built. We have the capability to build 10 per week now and expect to reach 20 per week by the end of the year. We can ramp to whatever volume is required, because we have selected our suppliers and our systems to support higher volume production."
Hydrogen Engine Center was founded after a leading fuel cell manufacturer cancelled a program that used a hydrogen fueled engine to generate electrical power. This had been a joint program with a noted automotive engine manufacturer. HEC's founders left this fuel cell manufacturer to continue their work, this time with a smaller engine and a burning desire to simplify the design, eliminating unnecessary cost.

Wind power today is used to generate electricity supplied to big communities.

With oil cost continuing to rise, the Philippines– most promising alternative energy source has been identified as wind power.
The technology for wind power use has already been developed and has in fact been used worldwide.
At present, there are 10 to 12 manufacturers of large, utility-scale systems all over the world marketing 200 kw to 1.5 mw systems of various configurations, including three-bladed machines with full-span pitch control and two-bladed, stall control machines with teetering hubs.
In other words, wind power is no longer just windmills drawing water for farms.
Wind power today is used to generate electricity supplied to big communities. And the cost of generation has been reduced to only $0.04 per kwh, despite inflation. And this can even go lower at about $0.025/kwh.
Use of wind power is very visible in many places worldwide, specially in California, USA where it has been well utilized.
The Philippines which is distributed in 7,100 islands and blessed with steady tropical winds is most ideal for the setting up of wind power systems to provide much-needed energy for its growing population of over 80 million people, news.yahoo.com reported.
Oil and gas which used to be available at low prices, the reason development of alternative energy has been dampened, are predicted to continue to become more and more expensive because of great demand from newly-industrializing economies of the world.
One such economy is the People's Republic of China (PROC) which has been going full-blast in its production initiatives.
Actually, wind power experts are saying that the investment in putting up those wind power turbines is not that great.
Once installed, the only problem left is good maintenance so that it can have a long life span.
Wind power is not a recent concept. It has a long history that dates back to 1000 BC to 1300 AD.
Its history shows a general evolution from the use of simple, light devices driven by aerodynamic drag forces to heavy, material-intensive drag devices, to the increased use of light, material efficient aerodynamic lift devices in the modern era.
The earliest known use of wind power, of course, is the sail boat.
This technology had an important impact on the later development of sail-type windmills.
Ancient sailors reportedly understood lift and used it every day, even though they didn,t have the physics to explain how or why it worked.
According to historical data, the first windmills were developed to automate the tasks of grain-grinding and water-pumping and the earliest-known design is the vertical axis system developed in Persia about 500-900 AD.
The first use was apparently water pumping, but the exact method of water transport is not known because no drawings or designs, only verbal accounts, are available.
The first known documented design is also of a Persian windmill, this one with vertical sails made of bundles of reeds or wood which were attached to the central vertical shaft by horizontal struts.
According to historical accounts, grain grinding was the first documented wind mill application and was very straightforward.
The grinding stone was affixed to the same vertical shaft.
The mill machinery was commonly enclosed in a building, which also featured a wall or shield to block the incoming wind from slowing the side of the drag-type rotor that advanced toward the wind.
Vertical-axis windmills were also used in China, which is often claimed as their birth place.
While the belief that the windmill was invented in China more than 2000 years ago is widespread and may be accurate, historial accounts said the earliest actual documentation of a Chinese windmill was in 1219 AD by the Chinese stateman Yehlu Chhu-Tshai.
Here also, the primary applications were apparently grain grinding and water pumping.3