eBay to Use Renewables as Primary Energy Source, Texas Looks to Make Profit off Converted Captured Carbon

eBay will soon become the first major tech company using renewable energy as a primary power source. The company will incorporate 30 Bloom Energy servers at their main data center just a few hundred feet from the center in order to limit utility grid losses as well. The fuel cells will be powered by biogas, but will serve only 15 percent of the nationwide energy needs of eBay, so the general dependence on the grid will otherwise continue for the company.

A new carbon capture project in Texas has received $9 million in investments to turn gas from a coal-fired kin into marketable chemicals. The hope is to turn a profit by selling the chemicals from the converted gas. Several oil and chemical companies have invested in the project set to begin in 2014. This project is an alternative to sequestration, making carbon capture less energy consuming and more commercially viable. The hope is that the project will capture both carbon from their plant as well as take more out of commission because other industries will no longer need to make the chemicals produced from the captured carbon conversion from their current sources.