A view of the REpower AG (German) wind turbine plant.

In this north German town, Brunsbuettel, a huge crane is helping to build the world's largest wind power plant, a prototype for offshore wind farms from 2006.
Just across a meadow of grazing cows sits another source of energy, one generation older and a symbol of a different political ideology.
Built in the 1970s, the Brunsbuettel nuclear power station is still part of the backbone of German energy production, but will soon reach the end of its life cycle because of Germany's drive to phase out nuclear energy.
"I think it's a really charming scene," said Fritz Vahrenholt, chairman of Germany's Repower, the company producing the wind turbine, Reuters reported.
"Nuclear reactor meets wind plant. Here the future and over there the past and none of them produces carbon dioxide (CO2)," he told Reuters.
The construction of Repower's 14 million euro ($16.99 million) turbine comes as Germany is caught in a controversial debate over the reasons for the country's rising energy prices, in which the subsidized wind power industry plays its part.
Consumer groups say Germany's four leading utilities, including RWE and Vattenfall Europe, were abusing their power in a market which lacks competition and a state regulator.
The industry, on the other hand, says price hikes were necessary, partly because of politically induced costs for green energy such as wind power which would force it to spend billions of euros on grids linking offshore wind farms with the mainland.
Some electricity consumers are echoing that criticism, saying they are tired of supporting green energy production by way of their power bill and of the "giant asparagus" on the horizon.

Sightseeing and Sausages
Repower expects sightseers, not protesters, to arrive at Brunsbuettel and has put up a sausage stand to cater for them.
"We have had calls from fan clubs keen to know more about our turbine and the giant crane on the site," said Martin Skiba, who is responsible for Repower's "5M" prototype project.
The best time for Brunsbuettel sightseeing in the coming days will ironically be during calm winds as that will be the time for Repower's workers to install the three rotor blades.
It will be a particularly challenging task as each of the 62-meter (203 feet) blades weighs 18 tons or the equivalent of a dozen average passenger cars.
The tower will be more than 180 meters (590 feet) high when measured from the base to the tip of a rotor blade, almost twice the height of New York's 93 meter (305 feet) Statue of Liberty.
Once Repower's flagship starts rotating, it is expected to produce 17 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity a year at the Brunsbuettel site, enough to power 4,500 average households.
This is much more than other wind turbines, but very little compared to its 806 MW strong nuclear neighbor, which generates around 6,000 GWh per year.

Nuclear Energy--Gone With the Wind?
One question therefore remains: Will wind power be able to compensate Germany's lost capacity as nuclear plants are phased out and other aging plants closed?
Germany must replace nearly half of its 100,000 MW generation capacity in the next two decades and critics say renewables will never be able to fill that gap.
Wind power, they add, is too reliant on weather conditions.
"Wind power can only complement other energy sources. It cannot replace them," Vahrenholt said.
"I am sure there will be a revival of coal-fired energy production with new technologies such as the isolation of carbon dioxide (CO2) during the generation process."
Germany, which depends on nuclear power for a third of its electricity, still has no clear plan on how to replace reactors such as the one in Brunsbuettel.
"That's why it's foolish to shut the reactors so soon. It would overstrain the German economy. We need more time and have to extend the running times for nuclear plants by 5-7 years."
Whether Vahrenholt's view is shared by others in the industry and future governments is hard to predict.
But if he turns out to be right, Brunsbuettel's wind and nuclear power plants might be neighbors for longer than expected. ($1=.8239 Euro)

Russia could become in the near future a stabilizing factor for Asian energy markets.

Asia needs energy and lots of it: Japan is one of the world's top oil importers, the booming Chinese economy is close behind and South Korea and India are major consumers.
But with instability feared in the Middle East and prices rising, Asian officials at an energy forum Tuesday cast their eyes on another source of crude oil and natural gas: Russia.
"Now is the time for Asia to look toward Russia to decrease its dependence on Middle Eastern oil," Minoru Tamba, a former Japanese ambassador and adviser to the Institute of Energy Economics, told the Asian Energy Forum in Tokyo on Tuesday, AP reported.
Japan is second only to the United States in crude oil consumption, burning about 5.4 million barrels a day. China, which became a net importer of crude in 1996, is gaining fast.
India is expected to become the world's fifth-largest importer of oil in coming years. The Asian demand for natural gas is also on the rise.
The volatility in oil markets is also rattling the region. Crude oil topped US$50 per barrel during Asian trading on Tuesday, pushing past the psychological milestone for the first time.
Asian countries, Japan in particular, are heavily dependent on Middle Eastern countries for their oil needs. Combined, Japan, South Korea and China rely on the Middle East for 77 percent of their oil, Tamba said.
With war raging in Iraq and fears of terrorism high, that dependence is starting to worry some in Asia and create an opportunity for oil-and gas-producer Russia.
Russia, the world's largest oil producer and second-largest exporter, is forecast to be able to export between 5.8 million and 6 million barrels of oil a day by 2010, said Armen Safaryan, energy specialist at Moscow State University for International Relations.
"Russia could become in the near future a stabilizing factor for Asian energy markets, being a major oil and gas exporter in the region," he said.
The drive to develop Russia's energy potential is well underway.
Russian, American and Japanese companies are busy on oil and gas projects in Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. Moscow has forecast oil extraction on the Sakhalin shelf will reach more than 185 million barrels a year by 2010, Sararyan said.
Meanwhile, China and Japan are offering competing proposals for oil pipelines in Russia: Beijing wants to ship Siberian oil to Daqing, China, while Tokyo favors a pipeline to Russia's Pacific port of Nakhodka.
In talks with the Chinese in Moscow last week, Russian officials floated a proposal to satisfy both suitors with a pipeline to Nakhodka and a branch leading into China.
The competition for supplies has some in Asia eager to put mechanisms in place to allow joint development of resources to satisfy everyone's needs.
"A joint study of energy reserves and energy savings, promotion of new energy, and investigations of new energy sources ... are important," said Satoshi Morimoto, international development expert at Tokyo's Takushoku University.
Experts from Middle Eastern suppliers said they welcomed Russia's increasing participation in the energy market, though one official said he was uneasy with talk of weaning Asia from Middle Eastern crude.
"Alternatives to Persian Gulf petroleum are untried, less economical and may even riskier," said Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, an official at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.
Al-Ghamdi added that a bigger role for Russian oil would be unlikely to provide cheap energy.
"Diversification of sources of supply offers no protection from rising prices," he said.

To efficiently operate a fuel cell, carbon monoxide has always been a major technical barrier. But now, chemical and biological engineers at the University of WisconsinàMadison have not only cleared that barrier­they also found a method to capture carbon monoxide's energy.
To be useful in a power-generating fuel cell, hydrocarbons such as gasoline, natural gas, or ethanol must reform into a hydrogen-rich gas. A large, costly, and critical step to this process requires generating steam and forcing a reaction with carbon monoxide (CO). This process, called water-gas shift, produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2). Additional steps then must reduce the CO levels further before the hydrogen enters a fuel cell, isa.org reported.
Researchers eliminated the water-gas shift reaction from the process, removing the need to transport and vaporize liquid water in the production of energy for portable applications.
The team, led by James Dumesic, professor of chemical and biological engineering, uses an environmentally benign polyoxometalate (POM) compound to oxidize CO in liquid water at room temperature. The compound not only removes CO from gas streams for fuel cells, but also converts the energy content of CO into a liquid that subsequently can power a fuel cell.
"CO has essentially as much energy as hydrogen," Dumesic said. "It has a lot of energy in it. If you take a hydrocarbon and partially oxidize it at high temperature, it primarily makes CO and hydrogen. Conventional systems follow that with a series of these 'water-gas shift' steps. Our discovery has the potential of eliminating those steps. Instead, you can send the CO through our process, which works efficiently at room temperature and takes the CO out of the gas to make energy."
The research team says the process is especially promising for producing electrical energy from renewable biomass-derived oxygenated hydrocarbons­such as ethylene glycol derived from corn­because these fuels generate H2 and CO in nearly equal amounts during catalytic decomposition. The hydrogen could directly go into a protonàexchangeàmembrane fuel cell operating at 50% efficiency, and the remaining CO could convert to electricity via the new process.

It's not unusual for the students traveling cross-country aboard an old school bus to get a craving for fried chicken. Or popcorn. Or french fries. That's because their vehicle is powered by vegetable oil, and the used oil they put in their tank can carry the telltale odors of the restaurant it came from.
"Sometimes it makes us hungry driving," says Thomas Hand, 21, one of 13 Middlebury College students who are traversing the country this fall to promote the use of alternative fuels. "You can fill up at the same place your car does."
The students actually have two vehicles: the bus that runs on biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from refined vegetable oil that's available at some gas station pumps; and a support car with a modified engine allowing it to run on used vegetable oil, news.yahoo.com reported.
"On Sunday, we filled up at a Chinese restaurant," said Kyle von Hasseln, 22.
The students, including three environmental studies majors, took the fall semester off to make the 15,000-mile journey. It's similar to a trip eight of them took last summer, but this time it's more about promoting environmental consciousness than finding the best places to rock climb.
The undergrads set off two weeks ago from Vermont, planning to carry their message to schools and colleges, environmental and civic groups. They're scheduled to visit 22 cities and many rural locales before ending in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8.
On Monday, they spent the morning at a science and technology high school in Monmouth County before making an afternoon presentation at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where they were planning to spend the night, said biobus passenger Stephen Swank.
Throughout the students' 90-day trip, their home is a 1991 GMC diesel bus, which is registered as an RV and painted with abundant yellow cornfields on the outside. Inside, it contains laptops, coolers, skateboards, camping and rock-climbing gear, books, writing desks, music, and a "rainy day box for silly, nostalgic amusement," which the occupants say will be opened only if they get stuck somewhere.
The biobus gets about 8 miles per gallon, roughly the same as a regular diesel-powered bus, Swank said. The bus maintains speeds similar to its diesel-fueled counterparts, Hand said.
The students are not the first promote biodiesel as a domestic alternative to foreign oil. Singers Neil Young and Willie Nelson both power their tour buses with it.
Unmodified diesel engines can run on biodiesel, said Swank. The support vehicle, a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta, was fitted with a heated fuel tank and fuel filter to enable it to run on used vegetable oil, he said. The students use it for grocery runs and to get around in cities where driving a bus is difficult.
"It smells like someone's cooking," said Swank.

Despite the benefits, however, hydropower does have its environmental costs.

Hydropower--electricity generated from turbines churning in dammed rivers--has been part of America's energy mix since the 1880s when the world's first hydroelectric plant began operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. By the 1940s, hydropower accounted for about 40 percent of America's energy needs.
Hydropower today accounts for only about 10 percent of electricity generation in the US, but it plays a crucial role in keeping regional economies afloat, such as in parts of the Pacific Northwest where dammed rivers provide 80 percent of the electricity needed by area residents and businesses.
Many environmentalists still cheer hydropower as the only major source of electricity that is renewable and non-polluting. Unlike energy generated from fossil fuels, hydropower plants do not emit the waste heat and gases that are major contributors to air pollution, global warming and acid rain. Nor do they require the environmentally destructive mining and drilling needed to acquire coal, natural gas and oil, enn.com reported.
Another environmental benefit of hydropower is its ability to help control otherwise wide fluctuations in water flow in and around rivers. By increasing water flow during dry months and reducing flow during periods of heavy run-off, hydropower projects help to enhance aquatic habitats while preventing damage to vegetation and wildlife along stream banks.
Despite the benefits, however, hydropower does have its environmental costs. In general, damming rivers and installing hydropower turbines permanently alters the environment and disrupts naturally functioning ecosystems. For example, populations of wild salmon and trout--which migrate back and forth between upstream spawning grounds and the ocean--have fallen off by as much as 90 percent in parts of the US due to the damming of major coastal area rivers for hydropower.
Last year, one of Maine's major utilities agreed to remove three dams on the Penobscot River and its tributaries in order to restore declining populations of wild Atlantic salmon. Environmentalists are calling for similar measures in the Pacific Northwest to save dwindling populations of Coho and Chinook salmon.
As more harmless forms of renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydrogen become more economically viable, hydropower will likely play an increasingly smaller role in America's energy mix. Indeed, only time will tell whether these more efficient sources of renewable energy might finally end the need for hydropower while making fossil fuels obsolete as well.