Energy Outlook

• Green Energy and Productivity

  In the last year or so the rationale for renewable energy has evolved from emphasizing mainly energy security and climate change to focusing on the creation of "green jobs" and the development of an industry that many perceive as the "next big thing": a new global growth wave along the [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 10:23am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Half a Loaf

  When I wrote Monday's posting mentioning the impending conflict between the government's requirement to increase the volume of biofuels blended into gasoline and the current approved maximum ethanol blending limit of 10%, I was unaware that the EPA was about to issue a response to the industry group that [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 11:04am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Unrealistic Goals

  A couple of stories over the long weekend highlighted growing disconnects between major elements of energy and environmental policy and what is actually possible in the real world. The first concerns China's gambit that committing to a carbon-intensity target that could be met with initiatives already under way might be [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 1:15pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Counting Our Energy Blessings

  Thanksgiving is a perfect time to reflect on the many energy blessings the US enjoys. While we tend to focus on our problems, which seem numerous and overwhelming at times, there are a number of positives we should also recognize. Here's a short list of them to contemplate over tomorrow's' [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 11:08am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Do Leaked Emails Undermine the Scientific Consensus?

  For the last couple of days I've been ruminating about what to say concerning the emails and other data apparently leaked by hackers who penetrated the computer systems at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Centre Climate Research Unit, one of the major global sources of climate' [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:53pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Energy Principles

  My critique of a proposal for expanded tax credits to promote the electrification of transportation prompted some interesting comments. It also got me thinking again about an underlying problem that leads to the kind of scramble for government favor and largess that is exemplified by such efforts and by [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:43am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Paying the Bill for Electric Vehicles

  Perhaps it's merely a sign of the times, when a billion is the new million and firms in many industries have found it easier to get capital from the government than from bankers, bondholders and shareholders, but the price tag implicit in the recommendations of a new cross-industry group formed [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 11:57am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Indexing Crude Prices

  Although oil trading hasn't been my primary focus for many years, the recent announcement by Saudi Aramco that it is switching its price mechanism for oil delivered to the US caught my attention. Instead of basing its formula for deliveries here on the price of West Texas Intermediate crude' [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 1:30pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Green Power or Green Jobs

  Until now I've avoided the debate over a proposed wind project in Texas involving Chinese investors, federal renewable energy stimulus grants and wind turbines from China, mainly because I didn't think I had anything salient to add to the unpleasant mix of protectionism and second-guessing that was unfolding. This [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 2:01pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Way We Drive Now

  My posting of October 29th examined two of the ways we risk under-counting the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from favored energy technologies such as biofuels and electric vehicles, with potentially serious consequences. Well, it turns out that the same joint proposal by the EPA and Department of Transportation establishing [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 11:33am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Cheap Oil

  When the US invaded Ba'athist Iraq, many ascribed that action to a desire to seize the country's vast oil reserves and develop them on terms favorable to us, presumably to keep the days of cheap oil rolling on. After six years of oil prices far above their pre-war level, [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 11:43am EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• "Carbon Debt"

  A new term has entered our lexicon without much fanfare, but that is about to change. When the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meets next month in Copenhagen, we will hear a lot more about "carbon debt" and the obligation [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 1:17pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• A Clunkers Look-back

  Somehow I missed last week's minor tempest concerning this summer's Cash for Clunkers program (CFC.) It apparently started when auto industry publisher Edmunds, Inc. issued a report indicating that the effective cost to the government of the incremental sales stimulated by the program averaged roughly $24,000, rather than the [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 2:19pm EST
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Counting All the Carbon

  An editorial in this morning's Wall St. Journal reminded me that I had intended to update my readers on the latest installment in the ongoing saga concerning the global land-use impact of biofuels. The Journal's comments referred to a paper in the latest issue of Science entitled, "Fixing" [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 3:12pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Missing the Point on Energy and Jobs

  Two emails I received yesterday delivered press releases from two organizations with very different agendas, both emphasizing the impact of energy on jobs. With US unemployment showing little response to the economic stimulus, the rebounding stock market, or the "green shoots" appearing in some sectors, it's understandable that companies, groups' [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 11:19am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Sequestration and Education

  Yesterday afternoon I began scrutinizing the Senate climate bill, S.1733, widely referred to as the Kerry-Boxer bill. Like the Waxman-Markey bill that the House passed in June, the scope of Kerry-Boxer goes far beyond the establishment of an economy-wide cap & trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, [...]
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  Posted: October 23, 2009, 1:45pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Weak Dollar

  Oil prices have trended upward recently, spurring renewed speculation that only speculation could account for such a shift in the face of relatively weak fundamentals of supply and demand. It's certainly true that inventories of crude oil and refined products remain high, while demand is still' [...]
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  Posted: October 21, 2009, 12:45pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• "Feeding Frenzy"

  An article in today's New York Times offers more detail on the manner in which Congressional climate legislation has fractured the energy industry into competing groups of haves and have-nots, based on how companies and sectors were treated under the Waxman-Markey bill and their hopes for receiving a' [...]
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  Posted: October 19, 2009, 11:36am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Regulating EV Recharging

  A feature on the New York Times website tipped me off to a debate that's brewing in California concerning whether and how the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) should regulate facilities and firms that will recharge the electric vehicles expected to dot California's roads within a few years. From' [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2009, 1:58pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Necessity of "All of the Above"

  I've devoted a lot of space in this blog to explaining why we need all of the energy choices currently available to us, including energy efficiency, in order for our economy to have the energy it needs to grow. Although we can't drill our way to energy independence, as some [...]
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  Posted: October 13, 2009, 12:19pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Meme Watch: Peak Demand

  To whatever degree the oil price spike of 2007-8 was driven by speculation, the latter was riding on a wave of concern about Peak Oil, which anticipates an imminent decline in maximum global oil production. For the moment, the weak global economy has eased such worries, though they have hardly [...]
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  Posted: October 09, 2009, 11:20am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Setting Ethanol Free

  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued its report assessing the impact of the production and use of biofuels in the US. Among its recommendations was a call for the Congress to reassess whether corn ethanol still needs the support of a $0.45 per gallon blenders' credit, when its' [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2009, 1:36pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Gasoline Stimulus Update

  Although it doesn't appear among the statistics that economists and market participants routinely track to assess our recovery from what some have been calling the Great Recession, a quick check on the status of the "gasoline stimulus" I described in June seems in order. Year-to-date, the retail price of' [...]
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  Posted: October 05, 2009, 2:30pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• No Good Choices

  I find myself in a foul mood concerning climate change, after a week that has seen US choices for managing our greenhouse gas emissions narrow to a trio of unappealing options. The long-awaited draft of a Senate bill on climate change issued by the Environment and Pubic Works [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2009, 11:59am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Resolving Iran Oil-Price Risk

  It hasn't been easy keeping up with all the recent developments related to Iran's nuclear program, which still looms as a large, unresolved risk embedded in the global price of oil--though you would never know it from the behavior of oil markets in the week since Iran's hidden nuclear' [...]
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  Posted: September 30, 2009, 11:29am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Wake-Up Call

  In his column in Sunday's New York Times, Tom Friedman highlighted the growth of renewable energy in China and proposed that it represented "The New Sputnik"--referring to the wake-up call this country received when the Soviet Union orbited the world's first satellite in 1957. As is so often the [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2009, 11:49am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Misguided Incentives

  Today's Wall St. Journal includes an interesting article on the emerging controversy concerning Germany's subsidies for solar power and their unintended consequences for that country's solar industry. It seems that solar incentives there have been so generous that they have discouraged German solar manufacturers from focusing on becoming competitive,' [...]
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  Posted: September 25, 2009, 11:51am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Technology and Critical Thinking

  The other day I read a story in my local paper concerning a new technology for converting waste plastic into synthetic oil. The prototype "Envion Oil Generator" had been temporarily deployed at a solid-waste facility in Montgomery County, MD, and its owners were touting its benefits to the Washington [...]
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  Posted: September 21, 2009, 11:00am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Overproducing US Oil?

  Tuesday morning I dialed into an API media teleconference concerning the administration's latest proposals on energy taxation and access. During the call API's President, Jack Gerard, mentioned the recent Congressional testimony of a Treasury Dept. official who suggested that current policies were promoting "overproduction of US oil and gas." That [...]
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  Posted: September 17, 2009, 11:34am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Mega Gas Project

  I took some pride in Chevron's announcement earlier this week that it and its partners would proceed with construction of the Gorgon LNG plant in Australia. That's partly due to my vicarious interest in this project as a Chevron shareholder, but mainly from my peripheral involvement in the early [...]
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  Posted: September 16, 2009, 11:46am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Fuel Cell Trains

  I often use my gym time to catch up on interesting podcasts, and NPR's excellent Science Friday series is one of my favorite sources. I just caught up with a recent segment on the development of hydrogen-powered trains, which seem like a particularly clever use of a promising' [...]
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  Posted: September 14, 2009, 11:44am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Sun or the Atom

  It looks like we might finally see a solar power installation built on a large enough scale to enable meaningful comparisons between it and our current largest low-emission energy source, nuclear power. Tuesday's announcement by First Solar, Inc. that it had negotiated a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese' [...]
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  Posted: September 10, 2009, 11:21am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Cap & Trade, Gas Prices and Uncertainty

  Over the weekend a New York Times editorial critical of the energy industry for trying to stir up opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate bill prompted some further thought on the potential impact of the legislation on gasoline prices. The Times appears to accept the government's analysis suggesting' [...]
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  Posted: September 08, 2009, 11:45am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• What Does Tiber Tell Us?

  Like many bloggers this week, I've been thinking about the implications of BP's big, new oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. Some analysts suggest that the Tiber field might contain as much as 3-4 billion barrels of oil, though much of it might never be recovered. The Wall [...]
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  Posted: September 04, 2009, 11:17am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Can Solar Compete?

  I'm still catching up on articles I missed during my recent vacation. A pair of them from MIT's Technology Review caught my attention, because they seemed to contradict each other. In this month's briefing on low-carbon electricity technologies, TR concluded that while the cost of solar power has declined' [...]
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  Posted: September 02, 2009, 11:01am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• 150 Years of Oil

  As I noted in my first posting of the month, August 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the first commercial oil well. Edwin Drake's well in Titusville, PA hit "paydirt" on August 27, 1859, and the world has never been the same since, though it took decades for [...]
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  Posted: August 31, 2009, 1:49pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Demise of MPG

  Even before the advent of partially- or fully-electric cars, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the old fuel economy metric of miles per gallon isn't as useful for measuring energy consumption in vehicles as when it was first codified in the original Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard in the 1970s.' [...]
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  Posted: August 28, 2009, 11:33am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Deficits, Dollars, and the Price of Energy

  The latest revision to the forecasted federal deficit has implications beyond the sustainability of current government spending. Reading a pair of high-profile, skeptical assessments of Peak Oil in the context of a $9 trillion deficit projection for the next decade, it occurred to me that the most [...]
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  Posted: August 26, 2009, 12:54pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• US Refineries Under Cap & Trade

  A new study confirms my previous suspicions that the allocation of free emission allowances in the Waxman-Markey climate bill would disproportionately disadvantage the US oil sector, with serious consequences for our energy security. In particular, it quantifies the impact on the refining sector, which was chosen by the bill's' [...]
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  Posted: August 24, 2009, 12:45pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Climate vs. Security?

  In the last few years I've watched perceptions of US energy security and climate change, the two main drivers of energy policy, converge gradually toward a general sense that smart climate policy will be good for energy security, and vice versa. There's even a growing understanding that a stable climate' [...]
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  Posted: August 21, 2009, 1:30pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Climate-Industrial Complex

  An emailed link I received the other day led to a fascinating article featuring a truly eyebrow-raising statistic. According to the Center for Public Integrity the number of companies and groups now lobbying the US Congress on the subject of climate change has passed the 1,000 mark with [...]
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  Posted: August 12, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Influence of "Peak Oil"

  An article in the Washington Post this weekend, together with a must-read interview in The Independent, a paper I used to read regularly when I lived in London, reminded me of an observation I made several years ago concerning the similarities between Peak Oil and Y2K. Having spent [...]
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  Posted: August 10, 2009, 1:32pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Plug and Pay

  Yesterday's photo-op at an Indiana RV factory for the purpose of announcing more federal assistance for the electric vehicle industry came just a few days after Nissan debuted its Leaf electric car, which might become the first mass-market EV in the world. Cars powered by batteries alone or [...]
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  Posted: August 06, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Clunkers 1, Critics 0

  I have to admit to being somewhat bemused at the apparent success of the "Cash for Clunkers" scheme, which burned through its initial $1 billion of funding so rapidly that Congress is still scrambling to find more money for it before leaving town. Although the final version of [...]
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  Posted: August 04, 2009, 4:30pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• "Over a Barrel" - Part II

  Picking up where I left off in Friday's posting addressing the issues raised by ABC's recent "Over a Barrel" report, concerning what Americans ought to know about oil, let's turn to the products that we get from it. Over the course of a century and a half of [...]
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  Posted: August 03, 2009, 12:01pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• "Over a Barrel" - Part I

  I finally caught up with last Friday's broadcast of an ABC News special entitled, "Over a Barrel: The Truth About Oil." The subtitle gives a strong hint at the tone of the piece, though Charles Gibson and his crew did a reasonable job of lining up some talking heads [...]
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  Posted: July 31, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Speculation and Physical Oil Prices

  The story above the fold on the front page of this morning's Wall St. Journal suggested that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is about to issue a report tying last year's oil price spike to speculation by non-industry participants in the oil futures, options and swaps markets. This [...]
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  Posted: July 28, 2009, 1:57pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Cooler Cars in California

  I was just perusing the month-old press release for the new regulation from California's Air Resources Board requiring car makers and auto repair shops to reduce the amount of infrared light that windshields and other car glazing allow into a car's interior, beginning in 2012. On the surface [...]
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  Posted: July 27, 2009, 1:54pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Big Algae?

  In spare moments during the last week I've been mulling over the implications of ExxonMobil's announcement of a very large investment in research and development on producing biofuels from algae, in collaboration with a leading biotech firm, Synthetic Genomics, Inc. While the reported figure of $600 million wouldn't [...]
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  Posted: July 23, 2009, 1:34pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• How Much Per Gallon?

  A book I recently received from a publisher makes an interesting contrast with last Friday's posting on how many cars our current oil production might eventually support. Its title of "$20 Per Gallon" demands attention, though the book proves to be less of an argument for how we' [...]
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  Posted: July 21, 2009, 11:43am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Going Farther on Oil

  As I was perusing my UC Davis alumni magazine last night I ran across a short article mentioning a new book from a professor, Dan Sperling, who directs Davis's well-regarded Institute of Transportation Studies. I know him slightly from his participation as in invited expert in a scenario workshop' [...]
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  Posted: July 16, 2009, 4:54pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Apollo, Forty Years Later

  I couldn't let the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing pass by without comment, and not just because of what that event meant to a space-obsessed 11-year-old in 1969. Aside from numerous calls for an Apollo program for energy, or the periodic allusions to energy and climate change as' [...]
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  Posted: July 15, 2009, 11:39am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Wrong Flex-Fuel

  An article in today's Wall St. Journal highlighted another of the more obscure provisions of the mammoth climate bill recently passed by the House of Representatives. The section in question relates to the "Open Fuel Standard", which would authorize the Secretary of Transportation to require auto makers' [...]
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  Posted: July 13, 2009, 10:15am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Biodiesel from Sugar Cane

  I was intrigued by a story in yesterday's MIT Technology Today concerning a company that is applying biotechnology to convert Brazilian sugar cane to diesel, instead of ethanol. Amyris apparently intends to buy existing mills and convert them to produce hydrocarbons instead of alcohol. It has started up' [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 11:55am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Speculation Witch Hunt?

  This morning's financial press was riveted by the prospect of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) imposing tough new regulations on energy markets. Speculation has been widely blamed for the run-up in oil prices since early spring--as well as for last year's roller-coaster up to $145 per [...]
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  Posted: July 08, 2009, 12:22pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Forgotten Renewable

  An editorial in the New York Times last week highlighted a topic I've been meaning to comment on for some time, the gradual demise of our oldest and still largest source of renewable energy: hydroelectric dams. Along with lauding plans to remove several West Coast dams in order to' [...]
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  Posted: July 06, 2009, 11:57am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• An Energy Bill for the Other 92%

  Now that the Waxman-Markey Bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009--all 1428 pages of it--has been narrowly passed by the House of Representatives, its fate rests in the hands of the US Senate, a body that has spurned a long series of cap & [...]
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  Posted: July 01, 2009, 11:38am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• The Gasoline Stimulus

  US gasoline prices have attracted a fair amount of attention recently, as they climbed from a national average of just over $2.00 per gallon in mid-April to $2.69 last week. Much of that increase came just before Memorial Day, which historically signals the start of the driving season and [...]
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  Posted: June 29, 2009, 9:50am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To Cap and Trade

  How much of an unappetizing jumble can you put into a dog's breakfast, before the dog refuses to eat it? That is the question that the authors of the Waxman-Markey "climate bill" appear intent on testing, before it goes to an expected vote of the entire House of [...]
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  Posted: June 25, 2009, 10:45am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Sustainable Energy

  I just ran a quick search on Google Trends to check my hunch that the phrase "sustainable energy" has become a lot more common, lately. That seems to be the case, at least based on the volume of news references tracked by Google. While I would regard a greater [...]
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  Posted: June 23, 2009, 12:03pm EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Cash for Guzzlers Enacted

  Yesterday the Senate passed this year's war funding bill, to which had been added the "cash for gas guzzlers" provisions that I described in early May. The bill should be signed by President Obama shortly and become law, just in time to help car dealers--including some who are' [...]
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  Posted: June 19, 2009, 11:39am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Food vs. Fuel and Ethanol Bankruptcies

  A couple of weeks ago an editorial in the Wall St. Journal called attention to a study by the Congressional Budget Office entitled, "The Impact of Ethanol Use on Food Prices and Greenhouse Gas Emissions." I finally found time to read the report and was surprised that, in [...]
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  Posted: June 17, 2009, 11:17am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Iran's Election

  Oil markets seem unfazed by the unrest in Iran, in the aftermath of that country's Presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, remain firmly in control, and there's no reason to expect that the ongoing demonstrations against perceived election fraud constitute a threat to' [...]
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  Posted: June 15, 2009, 10:47am EDT
  by Geoffrey Styles

• Toward a Low-Emission Electricity Standard

  McDermott International, Inc. announced yesterday that its Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary will begin marketing a 125 MW small-scale nuclear power plant design. Their press release also indicated that the company has a letter of intent from the Tennessee Valley Authority and a group of municipal utilities to use this [...]
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  Posted: June 11, 2009, 11:30am EDT
  

• Is Oil Shock 2.5 Imminent?

  The rebound of oil prices has been getting a good deal of attention, lately, though we haven't yet reached the point at which, like much of last year, the daily closing price of WTI is reported on every evening news broadcast. I've even seen the dreaded "s-word" bandied about, implying [...]
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  Posted: June 09, 2009, 11:58am EDT
  

• Shale Gas and Climate Change

  In Wednesday's posting on the likely consequences of the latest version of greenhouse gas (GHG) cap & trade legislation, I hinted at an important option for electricity suppliers to reduce their emissions promptly. Today I'd like to elaborate on it. Although the power sector accounts for the largest share [...]
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  Posted: June 04, 2009, 2:49pm EDT
  

• A De Facto Gasoline Tax?

  Between various consulting projects and a spot of vacation, I've struggled to keep up with the evolution of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, officially H.R. 2454, the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009". Reading through the bill's 932 pages was out of the question, though I hope [...]
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  Posted: June 03, 2009, 9:37am EDT
  

• Reliving Bankruptcy

  As GM files for bankruptcy today, I can't help thinking about my own experience with corporate bankruptcy 22 years ago. The Chapter 11 filing of Texaco, Inc. in 1987 still ranks among the top five non-financial corporate bankruptcies in the US. After adjusting for inflation and the' [...]
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  Posted: June 01, 2009, 11:32am EDT
  

• Sequester Oil Instead of CO2?

  I've been following developments in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) for more than a decade, so I was intrigued to run across a novel suggestion for an entirely different approach, involving the "sequestration" of undeveloped oil instead of the CO2 emitted by power plants and other industrial facilities. Even' [...]
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  Posted: May 28, 2009, 11:33am EDT
  

• The Green Lawnmower

  I have a new, unexpected hobby: mowing the lawn. For our first few years here in Virginia we opted to have a lawn service cut our grass, so my wife and I could focus on other things, including establishing our respective businesses in a new location. When the economy and [...]
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  Posted: May 26, 2009, 10:26am EDT
  

• CAFE Convergence

  I would be badly remiss if I didn't comment on yesterday's announcement by President Obama of a comprehensive framework for vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions. While I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as one Congressman, who compared it to solving the "energy and" [...]
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  Posted: May 20, 2009, 11:18am EDT
  

• How Many Miracles?

  Over the weekend I was catching up on articles, and one from Technology Review last week caught my attention. It was a brief interview with the new Secretary of Energy, Dr. Chu, covering nuclear power and fuel cells. In the back half, Secretary Chu explained why the [...]
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  Posted: May 18, 2009, 12:46pm EDT
  

• Auto Restructuring Implications

  An article in this week's Economist does a good job of explaining the global nature of the restructuring of the automobile industry, and in particular the role that Fiat wishes to play in aligning with the weakest US carmaker, Chrysler, and GM's ailing European arm, centered on Adam [...]
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  Posted: May 15, 2009, 12:33pm EDT
  

• The Non-Tax Tax

  When President Obama campaigned in 2007 and 2008, cap & trade was the centerpiece of his strategy on climate change. The latest iteration of cap & trade legislation is being developed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, within the broader Waxman-Markey Bill. After numerous hearings and comments, the [...]
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  Posted: May 13, 2009, 11:50am EDT
  

• Offshore Wind Potential

  Last month the Interior Department issued its framework for developing the offshore wind potential of the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS.) In a speech on Earth Day Interior Secretary Salazar highlighted the enormous opportunity that offshore wind represents, tapping a perpetually renewable resource to provide large increments of [...]
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  Posted: May 11, 2009, 12:26pm EDT
  

• A Very Incomplete Story

  I've watched CBS's "60 Minutes" periodically since I was a teenager. Over the decades they've aired fascinating character studies and uncovered dirt in high and low places. But there's one style of reporting that I'd be surprised if they haven't patented by now, because it's so effective at getting viewers' [...]
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  Posted: May 08, 2009, 11:26am EDT
  

• Cash for Guzzlers

  Congress appears to be moving closer to providing financial incentives for Americans to trade in older cars for more efficient new models. There are good reasons to support such a measure--and a few caveats--though the longer it takes to implement, the less relevant its benefits might seem. That argues [...]
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  Posted: May 06, 2009, 11:49am EDT
  

• Setting Green Power Goals

  Much of the attention on the pending climate legislation in Congress has focused on its inclusion of the latest effort to establish a national cap and trading system for greenhouse gas emissions. However, a quick review of the table of contents of the Waxman-Markey Bill reveals a host of [...]
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  Posted: May 04, 2009, 1:26pm EDT
  

• Is the Energy Crisis Over?

  A quick check of Google Trends this morning confirmed my gut feeling that, other than from government officials, references to an ongoing energy crisis have fallen significantly in the last year. Google's statistics show that searches on this phrase have fallen back to about where they were in 2004' [...]
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  Posted: May 01, 2009, 9:28am EDT
  

• Cap & Trade: No Free Lunch

  One thing I still miss about living in the New York metro area is receiving the Times on my front doorstep every morning. So instead of pouncing on Tom Friedman's latest column the morning it's published, I often don't see it for a couple of days, until I run across' [...]
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  Posted: April 28, 2009, 11:50am EDT
  

• Dangerous Delusions

  If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that it's not my practice to single out individual officials or politicians for particular praise or criticism, preferring an even-handed and scrupulously non-partisan approach. So it is with some reluctance that I feel compelled to share my considerable [...]
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  Posted: April 24, 2009, 11:04am EDT
  

• The Water Behind Ethanol

  US ethanol producers didn't need more bad news. Despite federal and state blending subsidies and a steadily increasing federal mandate for the use of their product, the US ethanol industry has been suffering badly from low margins in the wake of last year's oil-price collapse. A number of companies, [...]
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  Posted: April 23, 2009, 12:44pm EDT
  

• Time to Choose

  Last week's finding by the US Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse gas emissions "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations" should not have come as a surprise. It has been virtually inevitable since the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA two years ago,' [...]
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  Posted: April 20, 2009, 1:46pm EDT
  

• Paying $300 for Oil

  Predicting the future price of oil has always been something of a sucker bet. Although the fundamentals of the moment are relatively transparent, they are subject to interpretation, and future fundamentals--and thus prices--are affected by diverse and daunting uncertainties. I've seen oil-price forecasts ranging from $20 to $200 per barrel,' [...]
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  Posted: April 17, 2009, 12:54pm EDT
  

• China's Oil Strategy

  I was intrigued by a couple of items I ran across in the morning papers concerning China's pursuit of new oil sources. The Chinese National Petroleum Corp. is apparently in talks with the Venezuelan state oil company, PdVSA, and Total for a heavy oil producing and upgrading concession in' [...]
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  Posted: April 15, 2009, 11:47am EDT
  

• Fuel of the Past?

  Today's Wall St. Journal features a front-page article sounding the death-knell for the growth of US gasoline demand. The combination of recession, stricter fuel economy standards, and the hangover from last year's high gas prices, together with growing biofuels consumption, appears to herald a peak in gasoline sales. The [...]
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  Posted: April 13, 2009, 1:35pm EDT
  

• The Candy Bar Diet

  After becoming increasingly frustrated with insubstantial US network evening news shows, larded with equal helpings of “pessimism porn” and “feel good” stories, my wife and I recently switched back to BBC America. Last night’s news included a clever segment called, “The Ethical Man Reborn in the USA.” This featured [...]
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  Posted: April 10, 2009, 10:59am EDT
  

• Hybrid Choices

  Having just returned from a brief family vacation, I spent much of the last few days driving. That afforded much time to ponder the mix of cars on our roads and the product-line choices the administration may soon be imposing as it attempts to restructure the ailing US auto industry. [...]
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  Posted: April 08, 2009, 1:07pm EDT
  

• Zombie Project?

  A year ago, the FutureGen partnership to build a prototype low-emissions coal power plant incorporating gasification and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology looked dead in the water. Now, according to Technology Review, it may be on the verge of revival. A cynic would point out that [...]
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  Posted: April 03, 2009, 10:47am EDT
  

• Perfect Energy

  The recent start-up of the latest large-scale nuclear fusion experiment, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was greeted with the customary mix of fanfare and skepticism that has accompanied the quest for practical fusion power for as long as I have followed it, [...]
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  Posted: April 01, 2009, 10:33am EDT
  

• The Wrong Enemy

  While reading an article on oil company taxation in the Wall Street Journal, I ran across a quote from Treasury Secretary Geithner that crystallized my growing impression that the administration has misinterpreted its own mantra on energy and is training its "friend or foe" radar on the wrong enemy. [...]
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  Posted: March 27, 2009, 11:03am EDT
  

• It's the Economy

  Yesterday afternoon I attended a panel discussion in the Capitol building, featuring one Senator, two Members of the House of Representatives, the new CEO of API and two senior journalists from Newsweek, which hosted the event. The discussion covered a wide array of energy topics, including offshore drilling, taxation, [...]
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  Posted: March 25, 2009, 1:01pm EDT
  

• Assessing Trade-Offs

  Today's posting serves in lieu of a letter to the editors of the New York Times, in response to the misleading comparisons drawn in today's editorial concerning the "Lessons of the Exxon Valdez." The editorial characterizes oil development as "an inherently risky, dirty business — especially so in the" [...]
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  Posted: March 23, 2009, 12:29pm EDT
  

• Rebound or Dead Cat?

  US light sweet crude oil closed above $50 per barrel yesterday for the first time since late November. The financial press appears to attribute this mainly to the weakening of the dollar and inflationary expectations triggered by the Federal Reserve's decision to purchase over a trillion dollars of' [...]
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  Posted: March 20, 2009, 11:29am EDT
  

• Zero Emissions?

  The other day I ran across reports of a curious event, in which the Attorney General of the state of Vermont convinced Entergy, which owns or operates 11 of the nation's 104 active nuclear power plants, to back away from characterizing nuclear power as having zero emissions.' [...]
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  Posted: March 18, 2009, 12:30pm EDT
  

• Building the Low-Emissions Future

  Last week The Economist published a detailed assessment of the state of play for capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and factories. Although it skirted the assertion of many environmentalists that "clean coal" is inherently an oxymoron, the article's tone was generally skeptical concerning the' [...]
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  Posted: March 16, 2009, 11:39am EDT
  

• Mark to Market

  The practice of requiring banks and other businesses to mark their investments to market has drawn increasing criticism in the last several weeks from pundits and high-profile investors who would like to see it at least relaxed, if not rescinded. When I traded commodities in Texaco's international oil' [...]
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  Posted: March 13, 2009, 11:17am EDT
  

• Storing Sunlight

  An article in MIT's Technology Review on a new liquid battery technology got me rethinking an assumption I've been making for some time concerning the synergy between renewable energy and better batteries. The article's author makes a similar assumption, suggesting that with bigger, cheaper batteries, electricity from solar power' [...]
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  Posted: March 11, 2009, 10:45am EDT
  

• The End of the World As We Know It?

  The opinion section of the Sunday New York Times made for sobering reading this weekend. While the Times has hardly been a bastion of economic optimism of late, three op-eds stood out for their shared sense that we might be on the brink of truly wrenching change. Tom Friedman [...]
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  Posted: March 09, 2009, 1:02pm EDT
  

• Raising A Hidden Tax

  Since the administration has apparently ruled out an increase in the gasoline tax to cover declining Highway Trust Fund revenues, it's surprising that it appears to be giving serious consideration to a proposal that would raise a hidden tax on gasoline. This is even more perplexing, when you' [...]
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  Posted: March 06, 2009, 12:22pm EST