Vinod Khosla’s Marshall Plan for rural India

The daily drumbeat of biofuel headlines has made Vinod Khosla — co-founder of Sun Microsystems, former Kleiner-Perkins venture capitalist, and ethanol evangelist/entrepreneur extraordinaire — a hard man to ignore of late. But Khosla’s massive bet on renewable energy as the answer to climate change and peak oil (and big profits) may not even be his […]

Are Saudis waging an oil-price war on Iran?

Oil traders and others believe that the Saudi decision to let the price of oil tumble has more to do with Iran than economics. Their belief has been reinforced in recent days as the Saudi oil minister has steadfastly refused calls for a special meeting of OPEC and announced that the nation is going to […]

Heady days for the ethanol industry

The Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry’s major lobbyist, works out of cramped offices that it shares with a lawyer near Capitol Hill. Pictures of ethanol-manufacturing plants from its 61 board members hang everywhere. “We’re about to run out of wall space,” said Bob Dinneen, the association’s president. The association may have only six staff […]

Australia should lead the energy revolution

Australia is at the forefront of the devastating impact of climate change and must undergo an energy revolution to survive, says Australian scientist and author Tim Flannery.To avert biological disaster, Flannery’s suggestions are radical: the coal industry should be shunted aside, traditional methods of producing power junked, and a desert metropolis established and placed at […]

Support for Ending German Nuclear Power Wanes – Glos

Support for Germany’s programme to phase out nuclear energy is waning, Economy Minister Michael Glos said on Tuesday amid a heated national debate on the policy. The argument centres on whether the country’s five-year-old legislation, aimed at closing all reactors by the early 2020s, should be reviewed now that protecting the climate and safeguarding energy […]

EU gets cold feet on capping car emissions

A Commission proposal on reducing cars’ carbon-dioxide releases has been delayed because commissioners are unable to agree on whether targets should be binding for manufacturers. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has refused to fold to pressure from the automotive industry and from fellow Commissioner Guenter Verheugen on plans, due on 24 January 2007, to make European […]

Biofueled Global Warming

In West Africa the biggest new cause of deforestation in many regions is to grow biofuel. The land rush to establish biofuel plantations in developing nations is one of the most intense the world has ever seen. Literally millions of square miles could be turned into biofuel plantations in the tropics, and the impact this […]

Minister wants debate on biofuel ethics

The rapid global expansion in biofuel production from agricultural feedstocks means that the world will soon need to start debating the ethics of burning food crops, according to Swedish farm minister Eskil Erlandsson. The minister told Swedish farmers’ magazine ATL that it could soon become an ethical issue whether it was justifiable to produce biofuels […]

Global environment fund gives money to dirty fuel

The world’s biggest fund for environmental projects is investing for the first time in a non-renewable, polluting fuel — coal — in what it says is a new pragmatic approach to the energy needs of the developing world. The Global Environment Facility, managed by the World Bank and United Nations agencies, said on Tuesday it […]

Contradictions seen in alternative energy plan

President Bush’s proposals to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years include more specific and ambitious new goals than in previous White House statements, but they also appear to rely on assumptions about energy markets, politics and technology that some experts say are debatable, and include some apparent contradictions.For one, Bush’s proposal to […]

Debunking Iran’s nuclear myth makers

The fact is that after some three years of intrusive inspections, the IAEA has discovered no smoking gun and in its various reports, including the September 2006 report, it has admitted that “to date there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities were related to a nuclear-weapons program”. But don’t tell […]

Belarus to demand Russia pay rent for land under gas, oil pipes

Belarus will demand that Russia pay rent for land under pipelines that it uses to pump its oil and gas to Europe, the country’s president said at a government meeting Tuesday. The ex-Soviet state tried to instate a transit levy on Russian oil passing through its territory at the beginning of the year, in retaliation […]

The Oil Drum: The Energy Content of the State of the Union

It was interesting to see the inclusion of biodiesel to a greater extent that I recall seeing emphasized before. The MSM had foretold the increase in emphasis on ethanol, 35 billion gallons a year is some 2.28 million barrels a day or somewhere around 10%, and it would appear that the intent is to mandate […]

The tipping point

Will January 2007 prove to be a tipping point for U.S. climate-change policy? Already this month we’ve seen a barrage of high-profile activity — and President Bush hasn’t even given his State of the Union address yet. First there was a rapid-fire succession of four major climate-change bills proposed in the Senate, all of which […]

Drilling for geothermal power

Yesterday, MIT released an expert panel’s report (PDF) evaluating the potential use of geothermal energy within the US. Typically, geothermal energy has involved extracting hot water from geologically active areas (such as geyser fields) and using it to provide heat or generate electricity. arstechnica

Russia promotes oil and gas cooperation with Middle East

LUKoil is already carrying out the country’s largest gas project, in the north of the Rub al-Khali desert. inform

ARSC Hydrogen Formulator May Trigger ”Hydrogen Economy”

Ben Schafer, CTO of Hydra Fuel Cell Corp., speaking on The Bill Chippas Show, (www.billchippasshow.com) said that currently the cost of producing a kilogram of hydrogen was around $7 to $8. Using this new technology, the cost of producing hydrogen could drop below $2 per kg, which is the DOE threshold to make hydrogen competitive […]

Vattenfall May Begin to Sell Gas to German Households

Vattenfall AB, the Nordic region’s biggest utility, may start selling natural gas directly to German households and businesses for the first time, after returning to the European wholesale market following a three-year absence. “We’re looking into the market to see what opportunities there are,” Steffen Herrmann, a spokesman for Vattenfall Europe AG, the German arm […]

Kirkuk’s time-bomb could explode at any time

The oil-rich city of Kirkuk, some 290km north of the capital, Baghdad, was long considered a microcosm of Iraq with its diversity of ethnic and religious groups. With Turkomen, Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arabs living together in peace, it was a melting pot of the various communities that reflected Iraq’s demographic makeup. However, the government […]

The business of climate change

FOR a country that is often cast as evil incarnate when it comes to the environment, America has amassed an impressive array of green credentials of late. Even the National Football League plans to offset the greenhouse gases generated by this year economist

State of the Union Preview: Twenty in Ten

Among the many policy initiatives President Bush will propose in his 2007 State of the Union Address tonight is the goal of reducing US gasoline usage by 20% in the next 10 years greencarcongress

Ford Introduces Edge with HySeries Fuel-Cell Plug-in Series Hybrid Drive

At the Washington, D.C. Auto Show, Ford is introducing a real-world version of the new HySeries fuel cell plug-in series hybrid drive that made its debut two weeks ago in the Ford Airstream concept at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. greencarcongress

U.S. wind power seen growing by a quarter in 2007

Wind power generation in the United States will grow 26 percent in 2007, after increasing by 27 percent in 2006, the American Wind Energy Association said on Tuesday. yahoo

Bush to call for 20 percent cut in gasoline use

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, will propose a plan to cut U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent while bolstering inventory in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Republican sources say. The president’s plan to cut gasoline use includes tightening fuel economy standards on automakers and relying on alternative energy sources, […]

Local woman targeting ‘peak oil’ crisis

Last June, when Kelley O’Connor first heard the term “peak oil,” she knew she had to do something. Now, she is starting a group to teach folks how to learn to be more self-sustaining and less energydependent. Peak oil refers to the time when demand for oil will outstrip the supply. Some believe that when […]

Cheated by the Heat

BALTIMORE, MD – The weekly trip to your local gas station may be costing you more than you think. In fact, so-called “hot gas” is costing consumers like you and I billions of dollars every year. Is this just an oversight, or a scheme devised by gas stations to milk consumers of more money? Hot […]

Energy Prizes Re-energized

As President Bush prepares a renewed “State of the Union” push to break America’s addiction to oil, lawmakers and industry types are redoubling efforts to create multimillion-dollar prizes for automotive energy alternatives. Like Bush’s own Advanced Energy Initiative, which was announced during last year’s State of the Union address, the prize initiatives made some progress […]

Getting hydrogen cars to live up to their hype

Engineers puzzle over how to mass-produce inexpensive electric batteries The Ford Edge gliding along the George Washington Memorial Parkway doesn’t have spinning rims or a booming sound system. The bling in this SUV is the technology. The vehicle runs almost silently. It needs no gas and releases no polluting exhaust. The HySeries Edge, which is […]

TOD: The Future of (Natural) Gas from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin?

The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is one of the major gas-producing areas of North America. It supplies about a quarter of all gas used by the US and Canada, and 98% of Canadian production. Current production is 450 million cubic metres a day. To put this into perspective, this volume is close to half […]

27th annual Eco-Farm Conference starts Wednesday

For every calorie of food produced by agriculture, 10 calories of fossil fuel is burned. It’s an expensive habit the United States is going to have to change as the supply of oil and gas dwindles and the prices continue to skyrocket, according to Richard Heinberg, a noted author and professor from Santa Rosa. He’s […]

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