The Hydrogen Hoax

…It certainly sounds great. Hydrogen, after all, is The New Energy Charlatans The idea of hydrogen as the fuel of the future dates back to Jules Verne, and by the 1930s was a staple of science fiction. With the advent of nuclear energy after World War II, technologists expected that atomic power would provide electricity

Global GeoPolitical Realignment and the Decline of the USA as a Superpower

The United States has been defeated in Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable future. […]

Al Gore

LAST month, to the delight of many global-warming skeptics, it was revealed that Al Gore uses 20 times as much electricity and natural gas at his Tennessee house than the national average. Out of curiosity, I put the former vice president A Gore spokeswoman told the press that the former vice president pays extra for […]

Travellers at risk from global warming on Tibet railway

BEIJING (AFP) – Climate change could present a danger to travellers using the new railway to Tibet, according to China’s top meteorologist Saturday. Passengers using the railway which opened last year and connects eastern China to Lhasa may be put at risk by the effect of climbing temperatures, Qing Dahe, head of China’s Meteorological Bureau, […]

Why Hybrids Are Such A Hard Sell

Given all the buzz about hybrids, not to mention the greening of the citizenry, you’d think they would be easy to sell. They’re not. After growing nicely through much of 2006, hybrid sales began to slow early this year. The gasoline-electric vehicles now make up 1.8% of all vehicle sales, says Edmunds.com, down from a […]

Growing energy demand collides with desire to cut pollution levels COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – From the top of a new coal-fired power plant with its 550-foot exhaust stack poking up from the flat western Iowa landscape, MidAmerican Energy Holdings chief executive David L. Sokol peered down at a train looping around a sizable mound of […]

Not-So-Perma Frost

Daniel Fortier spends his summers studying the permafrost on Bylot Island, high in the eastern Canadian Arctic. While hiking there early in the 1999 field season, he distinctly heard the sound of running water yet saw no streams nearby. “I thought to myself, ‘Where is this sound coming from?’” says Fortier. “So, like a good […]

South Africa: Gore Urged to Put Brake on Biofuel Production

An international coalition has appealed to former US vice-president and environmental campaigner Al Gore to take up their concerns about the world’s rapidly developing biofuels industry. They have told him that large-scale biofuel production and new incentives to promote biofuels, based on “energy-crop monocultures”, are having a devastating impact on biodiversity and contributing to global […]

Coal India now digs the world for mines

NEW DELHI: After oil expedition, it’s time for a global coal hunt. The government has decided to acquire coal mines in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa to secure India’s energy needs. “A dedicated group, headed by coal secretary, has been constituted in the ministry of coal to plan for investments in coal mines […]

European renewable energy revenues is expected to double size of market

Increasing awareness about renewable energy and favourable government legislations such as the Directive on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are expected to drive the European renewable energy market. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan European Renewable Energy Market – Investment Analysis and Growth Opportunities shows this market earned E8.89billion in 2005 and estimates this to reach […]

Solar Energy: New power source in Jigawa, Nigeria

Rural areas in Northern Nigeria lack the modern energy sources needed for improvements in health, education, transportation and commercial development. Outside of major cities and towns, there has been very little electrification in this region and what supply there is, is often unreliable. In contrast, Nigeria has an abundance of petroleum-based energy resources and in […]

Chinese lawmaker suggests developing nuclear energy in inland areas

Development of nuclear energy in China’s inland areas is not only feasible but necessary, said a deputy to the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislature of China. “Now China has the ability to solve safety and environmental protection problems in inland areas, where shortage of primary energy and electricity is showing up while people […]

Europe Sets Ambitious Limits on Greenhouse Gases

The European Union approved a compromise agreement on Friday that would make Europe the world’s leader in the fight against climate change but would also allow some of Europe’s most polluting countries to limit their environmental goals. Issuing a challenge to the United States, China and India to match European ambitions in the battle against […]

Kito de Boer: Beyond oil – Reappraising the Gulf States

We believe that the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — today have a unique opportunity to diversify their economies beyond hydrocarbons. If they succeed, it will have far reaching implications for not only their own populations but also the entire global economy.Falling […]

Book review: Oil on the Brain

There’s a lot of stuff we consume while barely pausing to consider where it comes from; it is easy, these days, to be insulated from production. Inquisitive writers profitably explore the knowledge gap: recent work about the life stories of handguns, French fries and Panama hats comes to mind. Tracy Kidder chronicled the creation of […]

China: Offshore oil projects opening up

Foreign giants are gearing up to further tap China’s offshore reserves since the country’s top offshore oil firm opened an unprecedented number of blocks for international collaboration. Liu Gu, a veteran analyst with Shanghai-headquartered Guotai Jun’an Securities Co, pointed out that should both global crude prices and domestic demand increase, traditionally difficult areas will need […]

Peak Oil Passnotes: Markets Don’t Work Any More

If ever there was a moment when the disconnect between stocks and oil was evident, it was during the downturn in the Dow Jones in the last fortnight. While the equity markets took a serious hit, albeit most likely to be a correction – not a crash, oil carried on firming up and hit $62. […]

Industry Testifies Before Congress In Food Vs. Fuel Debate

Testifying before the livestock, dairy and poultry subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee Thursday, members of the poultry and livestock industries warned that consumer food prices will rise if the burden of expensive corn is not alleviated. J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the American Meat Institute, said that Congress should take practical actions […]

ENERGY TAXES, OIL PRICES AND ECONOMIC ILLITERACY

I have had numerous emails challenging my arguments against wasting scarce resources on grossly inefficient alternative energy projects. One of these people wrote that I must be wrong because Alan Wood, economics writer for The Australian’s, also believes that the state should use taxation to discourage the consumption of oil. Just to make sure I […]

Fashioning a future

The days of chic foreign designer labels and cheap imports are numbered. I’ve come over all futurologist. this came on after I bumped into a friend who is a major fashion academic and he told me he had just been at a conference in Miami about “the future of fashion in America”. I didn’t have […]

An Inconvenient Despair

The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell has panned the just released Peak Oil movie, “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.” Noting its depressing no-light at the end of the tunnel undercurrent, Howell concludes: “A movie this grim risks switching off the very minds it seeks to engage.” That’s a shame, but it’s not entirely surprising. After […]

New Presentations by Matthew R. Simmons

Matt Simmons has updated his Web site, adding four more presentations (PDF format). They include: Is The World Supply Of Oil & Gas Peaking? Red Sails in the Sunset: As Energy Twilight Approaches West Coast States Do Simmons & Company International

Snubbing Chavez and Seducing Brazil Are Two Sides of Same Bush Game

George W. Bush’s trip to Latin America this month is the most ambitious attempt to reposition the United States in the region since the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas died in Mar del Plata in November of 2005. The trip, which includes Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia has a dual purpose: to counteract […]

Government can

WASHINGTON – Warning that our continued reliance on imported oil poses an ongoing threat to national security, President George W. Bush signed an executive order in January requiring the federal government to increase alternative fuels use in an aggressive national strategy to reduce oil consumption 20 percent over the next decade. Bush has also initiated […]

Biofuel push draws inventors and investors

Near a cluster of purple petunias in a Thousand Oaks greenhouse sprouts a key weapon in the nation’s ambitious push into biofuels. The plants don’t look like much. They’re just tall, spiky shoots of prairie grass. But these stalks are souped-up samples of switch grass, part of an urgent drive toward a new kind of […]

”Don’t discuss polar bears”: memo to scientists

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday. Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration’s history of muzzling dissent […]

Happy Birthday, Peak Oil

Commemorating the 51th Anniversary of Hubbert’s Seminal Speech Happy Birthday Peak Oil! Commemorating the 51st Anniversary of M. King Hubbert’s Seminal Speech, the Hubbert Tribute site (www.mkinghubbert.com) has released a 1976 video clip of Hubbert speaking about world oil depletion and explaining the concept of peak oil. Several years after his startlingly accurate prediction that […]

New ideas from Germany’s professor of wind energy

Model wind generators ranging from palmtop to man-sized fill the office of Germany’s first and only professor of wind energy, Martin Kuehn, at the University of Stuttgart. One, out of Lego bricks and depicting an offshore wind-park, was made by Kuehn’s young son. Kuehn himself was fascinated as a boy by the power of the […]

Big oil to invest in new sources

Exxon Mobil profits will be spent on projects that produce more oil.Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. said yesterday it will spend some of its record profits on more than 20 new global projects in the next three years, investments expected to add one million oil-equivalent barrels a day to the company’s volumes at peak production. […]

Foreign Oil Companies Agree to Discuss Handover to Venezuela

Venezuela says two major foreign oil companies have agreed to discuss handing over their multibillion-dollar operations to the government in time for a May first deadline. In a statement Thursday, Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA said it has formed transitional committees with U.S. oil corporations ConocoPhillips and Chevron. It said the committees will oversee the […]

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