U.S. corn for ethanol to rise, growth to slow: USDA

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. corn used to produce ethanol will increase in 2009/10, but beyond that, growth is forecast to slow with demand mirroring changes in gasoline consumption, the Agriculture Department said on Thursday. USDA projected 4.2 billion bushels of corn will be used to produce ethanol in 2009/10, an increase from 3.6 billion bushels […]

Byron King: What

02/11/09 Pittsburgh, PA Last year What a difference a year makes. By about March last year, the price of oil began to spike upward. Eventually, in July 2008, it reached $147 per barrel. And then the price broke. Oil prices slid down into the $100s by Labor Day. Between late September and late December, prices […]

Biofuel from forestry waste is close – UPM-Kymmene

MUNICH, Feb 12 (Reuters) – New types of green fuels produced using waste from forestry may be among the first new generation biofuels to start production, an executive from Finnish forestry and paper group UPM-Kymmene (UPM1V.HE)said on Thursday. UPM was planning to expand into biofuel production and was currently conducting trials to produce biodiesel, bioethanol […]

South Carolina regulators OK nuclear power project

WILMINGTON, N.C., Feb 12 (Reuters) – South Carolina regulators have unanimously approved a request by the state’s largest utility, South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G), to join with a state-owned utility to build two nuclear reactors. The South Carolina Public Service Commission vote on Wednesday gave South Carolina Electric & Gas the right to begin […]

Coal ash spill cleanup could cost $825 million

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – It could cost as much as $825 million to clean up a river and a rural neighborhood after a massive spill of coal ash sludge from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant, the utility’s chief executive said Thursday. President and CEO Tom Kilgore told the TVA board of directors that the nation’s […]

Blowin’ in the Wind: Turbines Take Off

Spain Profits From Wind Power; Advocates Say U.S. Will Too Wind power has been billed as one of those fantastic green technologies destined to wean us off of oil and other fossil fuels — except that in the U.S. it still provides just a tiny percentage of our energy needs. But a storm has been […]

Model sees severe climate change impact by 2050

LONDON (Reuters) – Current efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions will do little to ease damaging climate change, according to a report issued Friday that predicts Greenland’s ice sheets will start melting by 2050. A computer model calculated that if carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow at the current rate over the next 40 years, […]

Fish seen shifting 125 miles by 2050 due to warming

OSLO (Reuters) – Global warming will push fish stocks more than 200 km (125 miles) toward the poles by mid-century in a dislocation of ocean life, a study of more than 1,000 marine species projected. Tropical nations were likely to suffer most as commercial fish stocks swam north or south to escape warming waters, the […]

U.S. oil refinery delays may spur supply crunch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The stage is being set for a fuel supply crunch in the United States once the economy rebounds now that refiners have pushed back more than $10 billion worth of upgrades they had on the drawing board. Pressured by the oil price collapse and the economic malaise, companies have also either […]

U.S. crude drops 5.5 percent on supply glut

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. oil prices fell 5.5 percent on Thursday to settle at the lowest point in nearly two months, dragged down by swelling crude stocks in the United States and concerns over the health of the global economy. U.S. crude dropped $1.96 to settle at $33.98 a barrel, the lowest since December […]

Rooting for higher oil prices

The price of oil has sunk even as gold edges higher. That shows fear about the economy…so an eventual boost in crude prices might signal a return to health. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gold is getting close to $1000 an ounce again even as oil prices continue to fall. Plunging oil prices are not really […]

Citgo announces layoffs in Venezuela amid crisis

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. says it’s laying off 75 employees because of the world economic crisis. The company says it’s restructuring to better adapt to the economic downturn. Citgo says 2 percent of its 3,762 employees will be offered special severance packages. In a Wednesday statement announcing the layoffs, Citgo denied reports […]

CERA – Cheap oil slows race to tap Arctic supplies

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The collapse of oil prices has slowed efforts to tap vast crude oil and natural gas supplies that lie under the Arctic Ocean but countries like Russia, Canada and Norway are still vying for a potential bounty of energy riches trapped there. The potential payoff is huge – the U.S. Geological Survey […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Economic Rebound

A few years ago, peak oil was relatively easy to understand. At some point in the future, and estimates varied as to exactly when, oil production was going to start declining due to a combination of geologic and geopolitical factors, prices were going to rise precipitously and a massive civilization-wrenching paradigm shift would start as […]

Missing Mexican island fuels mystery

Lawmakers in Mexico are trying to determine the whereabouts of island central to the country’s oil claims, which appears literally to have dropped off the map about 10 years ago. Bermeja island in the Gulf of Mexico — a strategic marker defining US and Mexican maritime and subsea rights — has disappeared along with documents […]

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UK plans efficiency retrofits for all homes

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain proposed on Thursday new long-term efficiency and other low-carbon re-fits to 7 million homes by 2020, the cost of which which energy companies would pay for and pass on to all consumers. Under the proposed scheme, open for consultation from Thursday, any household could apply for a loan from an energy […]

Stern: Spend billions on green investments now to reverse economic downturn

Leading economists Lord Stern, the former Treasury economist and now chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: “With billions about to be spent by governments on energy, buildings and transport, it is vital that these public investments do not lock us for many more decades into a costly and […]

Ethanol, Just Recently a Savior, Is Struggling

Barely a year after Congress enacted an energy law meant to foster a huge national enterprise capable of converting plants and agricultural wastes into automotive fuel, the goals lawmakers set for the ethanol industry are in serious jeopardy. As recently as last summer, plants that make ethanol from corn were sprouting across the Midwest. But […]

Peak Oil Fears Are Not Translating Into Higher Oil Prices

…And here comes the fringe peak oil crowd warning of doom and gloom when it comes to that myth of infinite growth. In fact, the crowd can even now prove that cheap oil production has likely peaked in all but three countries in the world: Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The immediate assumption is that […]

Goods dwindle as oil drops in Venezuela

If you want beans, pasta or milk, you’re out of luck at the El Barquero Supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela. “Lentils, grains Such is life in President Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, where the country’s fortunes have largely traced the price of oil

Lester Brown: The Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

In some countries social order has already begun to break down in the face of soaring food prices and spreading hunger. Could the worldwide food crisis portend the collapse of global civilization? One of the toughest things for us to do is to anticipate discontinuity. Whether on a personal level or on a global economic […]

Obama ‘must act now’ on climate

The planet will be in “huge trouble” unless Barack Obama makes strides in tackling climate change, says a leading scientist. Prof James McCarthy spoke on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which he heads. The US president has just four years to save the planet, […]

Calif., N.J. utilities unveil solar power plans

Solar thermal plants could provide electricity to 845,000 homes Two major utilities in California and New Jersey this week announced plans to vastly ramp up solar power. The deals come as Congress wraps up economic stimulus legislation that includes provisions to free up credit for renewable energy companies. Both plans require approval from state agencies, […]

Coal industry to Obama: Friend or foe?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Obama appears committed to developing clean coal technology and his administration might not be as opposed to the fossil fuel as the industry feared, analysts and mining experts say. Coal producers, blamed by environmentalists for causing global warming through carbon emissions, were wary of a new administration pledging to advance […]

Ocean advocates slam expanded U.S. offshore drilling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ocean advocates from Hollywood to North Carolina’s fragile beaches on Wednesday assailed a proposed expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling along the entire U.S. East Coast and four parts of California. “Ecosystems are disrupted top to bottom by the short and long term effects of oil,” Ted Danson, actor and founder […]

Congress seen backing renewables standard

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There is enough support in Congress to pass legislation requiring utilities to generate a portion of their electricity supplies from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said on Tuesday. The committee held a hearing on draft legislation that would set a […]

U.S. sees OPEC’s 2009 oil exports back over $400 billion

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The prospect for higher crude oil prices later in the year will boost OPEC’s oil export revenues above $400 billion for 2009, the U.S. government’s top energy forecasting agency said on Wednesday. The U.S. Energy Information Administration revised up its estimate for OPEC’s oil export earnings for this year to $402 billion, […]

World oil use in 2009 to fall by most since 1982: IEA

LONDON (Reuters) – World oil demand will contract this year by the most since 1982 due to extreme weakness in the global economy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. The Paris-based agency also said supply will be lower than previously expected this year, risking a new price surge when demand recovers which could […]

Water Efficiency Key to Saving Energy, Expert Says

In regions where pumping and distributing water requires significant electricity use, policies that lead to reduced water consumption could address climate change more efficiently than requiring businesses and households to use less energy, according to water expert Peter Gleick. “Some of the cheapest greenhouse gas emission reductions available seem to be not energy-efficiency programs, but […]

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