A news round-up of global hot topics

• Oil firm’s African solar farm will transmit sub-Med electricity to Italy – SmartPlanet: Top Oilfield Services, a Tunisian oil and gas engineering company, is joining with Nur Energie – a British solar firm with a French name – to build a giant solar park in the Tunisian desert that will transmit electricity under the Mediterranean to Italy… (more)

• Cleantech Survives a Crisis of Confidence – GreenBiz: Let’s be clear: The perception of clean technology these days is far less sunny than the reality…(more)

• A new era of domestic energy – Biofuels Digest: As we move into 2012, I think everyone is in agreement the world needs more fuel – of any type…(more)

• The top 10 trends from the year’s big smart grid show – GigaOm/Earth2Tech: One of the year’s largest smart grid conferences — DistribuTECH — closes today in San Antonio, Texas. The event is relatively unknown in IT and web circles, but it’s like the CES for utilities, power companies and the vendors that are trying to sell them stuff…(more)

• Opportunities and Challenges in the 2012 New England Solar Market – Renewable Energy World: The New England solar market is extremely strong. But even with these strong existing players, there is still room for more competition and new players enter every day…(more)

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