Biofuel trade disadvantages poor nations-report

A combination of rich nation import controls and excessive pricing power among too few western importers is disadvantaging biofuels producers in developing countries, a London-based research institute said.Developing countries are the biggest producers of biofuels that are currently competitive with oil, because they have lower costs and their biofuels have a higher energy content than […]

Roscoe Bartlett: Man on a Mission

“Thirty-three of the 45 oil producing countries have already peaked and I think the others will follow shortly,” he told me, adding that the United States peaked in 1970. He pointed to both the “Hirsch Report and the US Army Corps of Engineers report foresee a global world oil production peak occurring on or around […]

Shell plans for oilsands bonanza

Shell Canada Ltd., the target of a buyout by its European parent, said Wednesday it plans to eventually boost oilsands production to 770,000 barrels a day as the integrated oil and gas company recorded a drop in annual profits. canada

UN says Iran is planning next step in uranium enrichment

Iran plans to start installing thousands of centrifuges in an underground facility next month, U.N. officials said Friday. Such a move would pave the way to large-scale uranium enrichment, a potential way of making nuclear weapons. iht

Peak Oil Passnotes: Oil at $35? It’s Being Said

So one analyst this week, who shall remain unnamed here, was talking about $35 crude on technical grounds. Well, that may turn out just to be the other side of the peak oil coin, expecting the price to keep falling. resourceinvestor

Renewable energy could deliver 50% of the world’s energy needs by 2050, report c

A new report by the European Renewable Energy Council and Greenpeace International has outlined a global energy strategy to cut global CO2 emissions by almost 50% over the next 43 years, with the end result to see renewable energies delivering 70% of global electricity supply and 65% of global heat supply by 2050. energy-business-review

Tesla Motors Opens Michigan Tech Center

Tesla Motors, manufacturers of high performance, zero emission electric vehicles, has opened its Michigan Technical Center in Rochester Hills. The 19,240 square-foot facility will focus on R&D for future Tesla products to follow the introduction later this year of the Roadster, starting with a four-door electric sports sedan to be built by the Silicon Valley-based […]

Proton Power says first fuel-cell powered ship to sail in 2008

Proton Power Systems, a German developer of hydrogen fuel-cell technology, said it expects the world’s first fuel-cell powered ship to operate from the middle of 2008. bbj

A Boost for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Research

The development of hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles, the ultimate green dream in transportation energy, is another step closer. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have identified a new variation of a familiar platinum-nickel alloy that is far and away the most active oxygen-reducing catalyst ever […]

Carnegie Mellon engineers devise new process to improve energy efficiency of eth

Carnegie Mellon University Chemical Engineers have devised a new process that can improve the efficiency of ethanol production, a major component in making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply. Carnegie Mellon researchers have used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants […]

A Tour of the Energy Future

My breakthrough session turned out to be a guided tour of the future, held in the little basement fonduestube of a 137-year-old hotel. MIT had organized a dinner featuring three of its scientists and their alternative energy technologies, and you knew it was a hot ticket when you walked in the door. The grotto held […]

Energy Independence?

A Serious Plan Requires Taxes, ANWR and Nukes Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem. The result? […]

What’s next in energy: Vinod Khosla

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is putting his bet on cellulosic ethanol. Here’s his answers to five questions about the future of energy. NEW YORK (Fortune) — You got on the ethanol bandwagon early. What’s on tap for 2007? This will be the year of cellulosic ethanol – fuel made from grasses, wood chips, and other […]

The Oil Drum: The Ten Fundamental Principles of Net Energy

This is a guest post from Cutler Cleveland. Theoildrum.com previously highlighted Dr. Clevelands work on the Energy Return from Wind. Todays post is Professor Clevelands latest installment on net energy analysis at the Encyclopedia of Earth, which I have reformatted to theoildrum. The Encyclopedia of Earth, where Prof. Cleveland is an editor/director, has made amazing […]

Is globalisation retreating?

…Another factor unraveling the globalist project is its obsession with economic growth. Indeed, unending growth is the centerpiece of globalization, the mainspring of its legitimacy. While a recent World Bank report continues to extol rapid growth as the key to expanding the global middle class, global warming, peak oil, and other environmental events are making […]

Author to discuss sustainability issues affecting Hawai’i

David Korten, author of the best seller “When Corporations Rule the World,” will this week share his views on how global warming, oil prices and worldwide environmental issues affect Hawai’i. Korten, a veteran of development work in Asia, Africa and Latin America and Harvard Business School professor, will meet with community groups, politicians and religious […]

The Crunchy Mystique

You wouldn’t expect a cultural conservative to quote Henry Miller in referring to certain aspects of modern existence as “the air conditioned nightmare.” But then, challenging your expectations is one thing this book will likely do. As a sustainability activist there were many times when I turned the pages and nodded my head in strong […]

Does nuclear power now make financial sense?

On Sept. 16, 1954, in a speech to a group of science writers, Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, then head of the agency now known as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made a bold prediction. The potential for peaceful uses of nuclear energy was so great, he said, that electricity produced by nuclear power plants would one […]

Twenty Billion – a Drop in the Barrel for Renewable Energy

Last week, by nearly a 100-vote margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to do what OPEC has been unable to: defend a higher price for oil. Although oil was just at a 19-month low, I Big Oil has admitted that it didn

Energy Research on a Shoestring

GOLDEN, Colo. The hopes for this neglected lab brightened a bit just over a year ago when President Bush made the first presidential call on the lab since Mr. Carter and spelled out a vision for the not-too-distant future in which solar and wind power would help run every American home and cars would operate […]

The age of technological revolution is 100 years dead

I rise each morning, shave with soap and razor, don clothes of cotton and wool, read a paper, drink a coffee heated by gas or electricity and go to work with the aid of petrol and an internal combustion engine. At a centrally heated office I type on a Qwerty keyboard; I might later visit […]

China Says Major Shift on Dollar Policy Coming

Some very worrisome news came out of China this Saturday Considering that the bulk of China’s reserves are in U.S. dollars, it should send tremors about the future of the greenback. The dollar has been reeling in recent years. A shift by China out of dollars

Long Beach energy project halted

The city cancels plans for a liquefied natural gas terminal. Many had voiced safety concerns. After four years of scrutiny, Long Beach officials Monday pulled the plug on a controversial energy project that promised an abundant new source of clean-burning liquefied natural gas for California but posed insurmountable safety concerns. In a unanimous vote, the […]

World oil production could delay its peak ‘way ahead into the future’

Peak oil production in the Middle East’s Arabian/Persian Gulf region could be delayed if oil companies would invest more heavily in drilling and extraction technologies and push to explore new sites. So says Muawia Barazangi, professor of geological sciences in the College of Engineering’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He gave his estimates of […]

Cambodia’s coming energy bonanza

If the United Nations, World Bank and Harvard University are to be believed, Cambodia is poised to become a major new global energy exporter, with a fossil-fuel windfall that promises to double the country’s current gross domestic product (GDP) and potentially lift millions of Cambodians out of poverty. US oil giant Chevron has indicated a […]

IEA Says Oil Costs Too Much; EU Official `Happy’ With Prices

The International Energy Agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol, said current oil prices of more than $50 a barrel are too high, at about five times the average cost of production. The European Union’s senior energy official, Andris Piebalgs, said he approved of the current prices.Shell Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer said at the […]

Ethanol fires hope for China’s poor Guangxi

Something is afoot in China’s top sugar-growing region of Guangxi.Now, hope runs high in China for Guangxi’s about 30 million farmers to jump on the biofuel fever. Beijing has begun encouraging ethanol made from non-grain crops, such as cassava — known also as tapioca — the region’s other main crop.Beijing wants Guangxi — roughly the […]

Indian-Based NGO Harnesses Biofuel From Sweet Sorghum

Indian-based non-governmental organization, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, on Wednesday presented to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo sweet sorghum as an alternative source of biofuel.Sweet sorghum is similar to grain sorghum with sugar-rich stalks. Being a water-use efficient crop, sweet sorghum has the potential to be a good alternative feedstock for ethanol production, […]

Greece: Farmers seek biofuel funding

Farmers said yesterday they will need more European Union subsidies if they are to begin the cultivation of plants that generate biofuels and decrease Greece’s dependence on polluting fossil fuels. “For the cultivation of bio fuel-producing plants in Greece to be viable, subsidies must be much higher than the 4.5 euros per 10th of a […]

Rethinking Alternative Energy

Cold Fusion, initially “discovered” in 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, was heavily publicized and announced amid much hype and fanfare. The excitement quickly died down however, primarily due to problems many scientists had replicating the experiments as well as the exaggerated manner in which it was announced.In 2000 however, renowned author Sir Arthur […]

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