Clean energy today: All bluster or the real deal?

Green is the new black–from Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley. But the lovefest with clean technology still has plenty of detractors who say that it’s all just posturing, wishful thinking, or, worse, misguided. Let’s pull together a few threads from Friday morning’s river of green tech news and see whether it adds up to anything. […]

Bangladesh oil company sees nearly one billion dollars loss

Bangladesh’s state-owned oil company will post a record net loss of nearly one billion dollars in the current fiscal year due to sky-rocketing global crude oil prices, its chairman said on Saturday. The Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC), the nation’s monopoly oil importer and distributor, sells fuel at prices set by the government that do not […]

OPEC: ‘No More Oil!’

(Note: this is a speculative scenario, not a news report) OPEC released a statement early today announcing to the world they will no longer provide oil to the world. Venezuela echoed that sentiment by releasing a similar statement shortly there after. Reaction around the world has been staggering. The President of the United States (as […]

A Sustainable Futures Fund for a Fuel and Climate Emergency

Readers of TOD are well aware of the oil supply threat and its implications for society. Recent reports such as Similarly, more and more people are aware of the potential for dramatic climate change, though few are perhaps fully across the critical nature of our current circumstance… TOD:ANZ

Canada: Running out of gas

Refinery problems cause fuel shortage across Western Canada EDMONTON — A mysterious problem at Imperial Oil’s Strathcona County refinery continued yesterday, choking off gas supply to Esso stations across Western Canada for the second day in a row. In addition to several local service stations, fuel shortages have also been reported at Esso stations in […]

High coal price may cost you

Soaring costs paid by utilities to generate power could mean higher monthly electric bills An upward trend in coal prices could mean higher electricity bills for consumers. The cash price for coal that utilities burn to generate electricity exceeded $101 per ton this week at a West Virginia mine served by Norfolk Southern Railway. The […]

A win-win-win solution

What should we do with the carbon we produce when we burn fossil fuels? Some experts say we should fight climate change by putting the carbon back underground, whence it came. In late January, a blue-ribbon panel recommended that Canadian governments spend $2-billion to begin deploying carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). This technology injects […]

Life after oil

A new novel depicts one town In Kunstler

CT: Lawmakers push for clean energy department

HARTFORD – A group of lawmakers, including state Rep. Terry Backer, D-Stratford, yesterday called for the creation of a new Department of Clean Energy to help the state reduce its dependence on oil. “The days of plentiful, cheap oil are drawing to an end,” Backer told reporters during an afternoon news conference. “It isn’t a […]

Oil rally may be economy’s undoing

NEW YORK – Preoccupied the last few months with shrinking credit and a slumping economy, Wall Street has all but ignored the relentless rise in oil prices that has taken a barrel of crude to a once-unthinkable $106. But the market may not be able to look the other way much longer “Investors are just […]

Climate Watchers Place Own Big Bet On Alaska’s Thaw

Every winter since 1917, people in Nenana, a village 55 miles southwest of Fairbanks, have wagered on the exact moment that the ice breaks up on the nearby Tanana River. For the 450 townsfolk, the annual Alaska ice lottery, called the Nenana Ice Classic, is a financial lifeline that offers some their year’s only employment. […]

Biodiesel producers could shutter without state subsidies

Pennsylvania biodiesel producers said without help from the state they could go belly-up by the end of this month. The companies are urging the Legislature to pass a bill to increase the amount of subsidies per biodiesel gallon produced. Without that boost, many of the state’s producers could go out of business in less than […]

US dumping of biofuels will ruin us, says UK firm

The US is flooding Europe with subsidised biofuels that threaten to destroy Europe’s domestic refining market, the head of the biofuel company D1 Oils warned yesterday as its shares lost a third of their value. Admitting that some 35 jobs could be lost as a result of the cheap imports, Elliott Mannis, chief executive, said: […]

Iran gas: China waits as India wavers

hina is emerging as a potential partner in the proposed multi-billion dollar, 2,700-kilometer gas pipeline originally intended to link Iran, Pakistan and India. Washington, at odds with Iran because of its perceived pursuit of nuclear weapons, has been hostile to the US$7.5 billion IPI pipeline and has urged India, considered a new strategic South Asian […]

Venezuela’s coal moves may cut exports-analysts

Coal exports from Venezuela this year could fall because of government moves to take greater control of the industry, U.S. analysts and traders said Friday. The cut in Venezuela’s premium grade coal exports would come as the world runs short of coal, prices skyrocket and buyers scramble for supply.Venezuela has replaced marketing and mine management […]

Daylight saving time uses more energy, not less

Matthew J. Kotchen, a professor of environmental economics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and Laura E. Grant, a doctoral student in the same field, studied the effects of daylight saving in Indiana, where some counties used it and others did not. The states changed the law two years ago so that all […]

Norway’s oil capital seeks new image for post-petroleum era

Long considered the oil capital of Norway, the small southwestern town of Stavanger has begun hunting for a new image that will keep the money flowing in even after the oil wells dry up. “We really have to take advantage of the wealth we have in this town now to give us more legs to […]

Surprise Friday: Matthew Simmons

…Following is a summary of the main points made by Simmons during his interview with the Fast Money traders. You What about the Canadian oil sands? Won

Peak Oil Passnotes: Knock-Through

We have long talked about the various impacts of higher oil and energy costs. The way that inflated energy prices knock-through into other commodities, for example by hiking transportation and extraction costs, is one of them. From commodities they then knock through into your pocket, maybe making you feel poorer, or if you bet on […]

The Gold In Automotive Green

For decades Forbes has chronicled the auto industry’s efforts to build cleaner machines. Big ideas, crackpot schemes, furious debates between industry types and environmentalists–we’ve seen it all. But the elusive “green car” isn’t a topic that leaves us jaded. No, there’s opportunity here for an industry to reinvent itself. In the process, entrepreneurs, companies, and […]

‘When Will Peak Oil Strike’

Peak Oil has been the subject of debate for many years and has largely been ignored by industry optimists but has continually worried many industry experts. The big question has it seems, finally been answered with new projections placing the point of peak oil occurring within the next 10 years. The Renewable Energy Centre.co.uk today […]

Dependence on Russian gas worries some

BRUSSELS – A month after Russia cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine for the first time in 2006, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the European Union Two years later, rumors of a common European energy policy are again circling Brussels. Russia rattled the European Union this week when it cut Ukrainian shipments by […]

Climate change a new factor in global tensions: EU

BRUSSELS (AFP) – The risks of climate change have turned from a threat to reality impacting the conflict in Darfur, migration from flood-prone Bangladesh and hopes for stability in the Middle East, according to a new EU report. From Africa to Asia, and from pole to pole, climate change has become “a threat multiplier which […]

PERSONAL SURVIVAL IN A WORLD GONE MAD

Carolyn Baker Reviews “Path Through Infinity’s Rainbow” …In this review, I’d like to share how the book skillfully does this along with my experience of immersing myself in the pages of its sobering information and compassionate wisdom. Dedicated to his wife and partner, Ramona, her presence enhances the book with several stories which provide a […]

New ’super-spike’ might mean $200 a barrel oil

Goldman’s projections foretell persistent turbulence in energy prices NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — With $100-a-barrel here for now, Goldman Sachs says $200 a barrel could be a reality in the not-too-distant future in the case of a “major disruption.” Goldman on Friday also boosted by $10 the low end of its 2008-2012 projected range for crude […]

Oil Analyst Says Renewables Get Competitive

Those who believe that oil is running out have a special scorn for prominent oil industry consultant and analyst Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Yergin, who wrote The Prize, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book that stands as the definitive history of the oil industry, has often dismissed concerns that the world is at […]

The Elephant In The Room

…As we all know, but are sometimes reluctant to contemplate, oil is a finite, non-renewable resource. This automatically means that its use is not sustainable. Oil and Natural Gas are finite! There may be arguments over how much oil/gas there was/is but, regardless of what that number is they are finite, absolute. If the use […]

Stagflation Redux

It may not seem as bad as in the 1970s. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be painful. It’s like a bad ’70s flashback. Oil at $100 per barrel, and now stagflation. The unhappy coincidence of sluggish growth and rising inflation, stagflation is economic poison. (Read my colleague Robert Samuelson’s excellent primer on it) It […]

$100 oil hurts, just like a recession

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — All of those people that believe high oil prices will hurt the economy may be onto something. Back in October, when oil prices were near $90 a barrel and the economy was still humming along economists said high oil prices shouldn’t cut into economic growth – despite widespread public opinion to […]

U.S. missteps in Mideast weaken influence with OPEC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. missteps in the Middle East have estranged Washington from some long-time allies in the region and made OPEC suppliers less inclined to rescue the top consumer from record oil prices that are battering an already-fragile American economy. Tempers flared this week at the White House after OPEC rejected U.S. calls to […]

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