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The Department of Energy on Wednesday detailed $30 billion in loan guarantees available to promote renewable energy and grid upgrades.

The DOE is soliciting applications for projects in renewable energy and added electricity transmission. This phase of loan guarantees also makes loans available for "cutting edge" biofuels projects.

The solicitations for applications are the sixth and seventh step in the DOE's loan guarantee program, funded by the stimulus act. Billions of dollars of loans and loan guarantees had been authorized before the stimulus but few had been awarded until earlier this year.

Awards for projects to promote … Read more

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in conjunction with the Department of Energy, this week released six maps that could help determine the location of the next big push in solar energy.

The BLM maps cover areas within the six U.S. states most suitable for solar energy generation and transmission as judged by the U.S. government: Arizona (PDF and below), California (PDF), Colorado (PDF), Nevada (PDF), New Mexico (PDF) and Utah (PDF).

"Only lands with excellent solar resources, suitable slope, proximity to roads and transmission lines or designated corridors, and containing at least 2,000 acres … Read more

The National Renewable Energy Lab and U.S. Department of Energy have launched a mapping tool on alternative fuels and vehicles.

Employing Google Maps, TransAtlas plots geographical locations of things like specific types of fuel stations and concentrations where certain types of alternative fuel vehicles are owned in abundance.

It plots points where production facilities and other infrastructure for alternative fuel transportation exist, as well as separate icons identifying projects under development.

The comprehensive tool allows users to turn layers on and off by checking boxes in a legend. It includes alternative fuels like hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, propane, compressed … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Department of Energy plans to establish research centers modeled on Bell Laboratories to spark the development of disruptive energy inventions.

Chu delivered the Compton lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday, where he told academics and local green-tech business people that the world needs technology breakthroughs in energy to hedge against high fossil fuel prices, to improve national security, and to mitigate the effects of climate change.

During his talk, Chu singled out a number of energy technologies that demand more research, including batteries, solar cells that convert sunlight into … Read more

There's hardly a corner of the entertainment business John Doe hasn't explored.

He's not one of the people who waxes on about rights and wrongs in the music and film industries without any hands-on knowledge. The band Doe formed, X, was part of the first wave of punk rock bands that stormed Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The band's 1981 "Wild Gift" was named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone and The New York Times. Doe is also an actor and has appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, including "… Read more

After weeks of supportive words from the president, U.S. green-tech professionals saw something else this week: money starting to flow.

The Department of Energy said last Friday that it expects to provide $535 million in loans to California start-up Solyndra, which has a novel design for rooftop solar arrays. The alternative-energy loan, the first of its kind in four years from the DOE, is a positive sign for the finance-challenged green-tech industry, investors and entrepreneurs said this week.

"I'm happy to see our government supporting advanced research initiatives particularly in regards to energy because the country needs … Read more

Demonstrating that it plans to act quickly with clean-energy loans, the U.S. Department of Energy has made $535 million available to solar start-up Solyndra.

The loan guarantee, announced on Friday, is the first to be approved by the Department of Energy in four years. As part of a broader government stimulus plan, the administration of Energy Secretary Steven Chu has committed to quickly disbursing loans to clean-energy companies.

For Solyndra, the loan will partially finance construction of a second factory in California. The 4-year-old company, based in Fremont, Calif., has designed cylinder-shaped solar cells that are assembled onto arrays … Read more

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created software that uses colonies of borg-like cyberrobots it says will help government agencies detect and fend off attacks on the nation's computer network infrastructure.

The Ubiquitous Network Transient Autonomous Mission Entities (Untame) differs from traditional security software agents in that its cybot "entities" form collectives that are mutually aware of the condition and activities of other bots in their colony (PDF).

When these cybots detect network intruders, they communicate with one another, preventing cybercrooks from creating and using a diversion in one spot within the network to then break through … Read more

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu plans to dispense tens of billions of dollars in loans in the next year in an effort to stimulate the economy and shortcut bureaucracy at the Department of Energy.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Chu said that the goal is to spend about half of the roughly $37 billion set aside for clean-energy projects in the coming year.

The clean-energy provisions are a central piece of the government stimulus package, which was passed by the House earlier this week. The Senate late Friday reached an agreement on the spending bill … Read more