The age of the electric car (Ireland)

Can you envisage a time when many of us will be driving the electric car? Some of the cost benefits are obvious in the long term SiliconRepublic

Natural-Gas Price Touches 6½-Year Low

Natural-gas futures touched a 6WSJ

Oil firms bleed from low crude prices (China)

China’s three major oil companies have little to gain from the lower global crude prices, according to industry analysts. The low crude prices could dent the bottom lines of CNOOC and PetroChina this year, while oil refiner Sinopec may see lower production costs, but not better revenue, they said. Officials at the three oil companies […]

Russia to finish first stage of Asia oil pipeline

Russia will next week complete construction of the first stage of a pipeline that will carry oil to Asia and the Pacific, including the 15 million tonnes a year to be supplied to China in exchange for a $25 billion loan. Oil pipeline monopoly Transneft has laid 2,672 km (1,670 miles) of the route, leaving […]

Saudi Arabia's oil refining capacity

The world’s largest oil exporter Saudi Arabia has put on hold plans to expand capacity at its refinery in Ras Tanura. Late last year the kingdom put contracts for two new export refineries under review as it looked to take advantage of the global economic slowdown to cut costs. They are the joint venture 400,000 […]

Producers Test Ways to Draw Hydrates from Alaska's North Slope

For several years scientists have pondered whether vast stores of methane — the main component of natural gas — locked in hydrates on the North Slope and elsewhere in the Arctic could ever be produced. Now the U.S. Department of Energy is working with two Alaska oil and gas producers and a regional municipal government […]

Feds oppose gas terminal in Long Island Sound

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. About the size of the Queen Mary 2, the terminal would be the length of four football fields, about eight stories high and located nine miles off Long Island and 11 miles from the Connecticut coast. After New York Gov. David Paterson ruled against the project last year, Broadwater

Interview with Matt Simmons, Part 2

Question: What are the big differences between the demand drops post-1978 and today? Simmons: They It had been building for 15 years and that wasn

Browner: US needs to be world energy leader again

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change, says the country needs comprehensive legislation to help re-establish itself as the world’s leader in clean energy production and slowing climate change. AP

Crash tests show gasoline savings can risk safety

Buyers choosing the smallest cars for low price and high gas mileage could be endangering themselves and their passengers, says a major auto-safety researcher. In new crash tests, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety rammed three automakers’ smallest cars into their midsize models. Although the small cars had passed other IIHS tests, they flunked in […]

Get Real

Energy will be increasingly expensive It would be a soothing scenario to wake up one day and know that our country is now powered by vast wind and solar farms, putting out ample clean, renewable energy to run our homes, cars and businesses. Unfortunately, that scenario will remain just a distant dream for now, although […]

U.S. gasoline price hits 5-month high

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. average retail gasoline price increased 1.4 cents during the last week to $2.05 a gallon, the highest level in five months, the Energy Department said on Monday. The national price for regular unleaded is still down $1.34 from a year ago, the department’s Energy Information Administration said in its weekly […]

Dramatic natural gas growth seen in unconventional plays

Unconventional sources of natural gas will account for more than half of North American supply by 2020, despite a current industry downturn, according to a new report by a Calgary-based energy consultant. Ziff Energy Group says unconventional plays from shales, coalbed methane and other sources will account for 53 percent of U.S. and Canadian natural […]

Water worries cloud future for U.S. biofuel

Critics argue that precious water resources are being bled dry by ethanol when water shortages are growing ever more dire. Federal mandates encouraging more ethanol production don’t help. Proponents say corn ethanol for transportation fuel is far better for the environment, national security and the economy than oil and the first step toward cleaner fuel […]

Overfishing to wipe out bluefin tuna: WWF

MADRID (Reuters) – Overfishing will wipe out the breeding population of Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the ocean’s largest and fastest predators, in three years unless catches are dramatically reduced, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday. As European fishing fleets prepare to begin the two-month Mediterranean fishing season on Wednesday, WWF said its analysis showed […]

Oil falls below $50 after 4 percent fall on IEA forecast

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil slipped under $50 a barrel on Tuesday, extending its 4.2 percent fall overnight after the International Energy Agency slashed its demand forecast on expectations of another rise in U.S. crude stocks. As trading picks up after the Easter holiday, the market will seek confirmation of the IEA’s bearish forecast this week. […]

Scientists fear worst on global warming

Politicians insist that urgent and widespread action can yet prevent the worst of global warming but the cracks in that argument have been showing for some time. Officially, UK efforts on climate change are in line with a global ambition to limit the temperature rise above pre-industrial levels to below 2C – a threshold the […]

PG&E makes deal for space solar power

Utility to buy orbit-generated electricity from Solaren in 2016, at no risk California’s biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016. San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric said it was seeking […]

Monbiot: We spend millions on smallpox, but nothing on this far greater threat

Our leaders’ approach to risk is unbalanced: huge resources to guard against an extinct disease, and nothing on oil running out Here’s how the British government describes the risk of a smallpox outbreak. “We are currently at alert level O. Smallpox remains eradicated. No credible threat of a smallpox release.” So, in response to this […]

Until all the evidence is in

Nobody actually waits until all the evidence is in. The simple reason is that all the evidence will never be in. For that to occur one would have to know about everything going on in the universe right now and where those things would lead in the future. For Earth-bound residents, perhaps it would be […]

Andy Rooney: Conserve Our Resources

I was reading the other day about what they called “an ice bridge” that is 25 miles long in the Antarctic. This ice bridge – I call it an “iceberg” – broke. It was holding up another iceberg the size of Connecticut. I used to live in Connecticut, so that got my attention. One picture […]

Why Aren't Oil Companies Drilling?

Oil Companies Are Only Exploring One-Third Of U.S. Land They Have Rights To (CBS) It was the battle hymn of the Republican National Convention last summer: “Drill baby, drill.” With gas prices soaring to $4 or more a gallon, the call for off-shore oil drilling in places previously off-limits hit a fever pitch, reports CBS […]

Local residents preparing transition for life after oil

NEWBURYPORT “Peak oil is the point where supply peaks and starts to go down a descent or what they call a terminal decline,” said Robinson, a native of Ireland who relocated years ago and now serves on Newburyport’s 11-member Energy Advisory Committee. “There are 96 countries that are known to have oil and gas resources […]

Sunflower's coal plant wilting?

Economic and environmental complications are forcing reconsideration by an investor utility of a coal plant project in western Kansas that has been blocked several years by political obstacles in Topeka. Sunflower Electric Power Corp. has been fighting for state approval of a 1,400-megawatt coal-fired plant in Holcomb, which would be built with the financial backing […]

Get going with Galloway cattle

As the world supply of fuel, fertiliser and arable crops grows shorter, attention is turning to beef cattle breeds that thrive under extensive systems. The commercial beef industry, both in the UK and across much of the world, has focussed on continental cattle breeds that require significant consumption of cereals, normally demanding considerable inputs of […]

Bill would require new Calif. homes produce energy

If state Assemblywoman Lori Saldana has her way, buyers of California homes built a little more than a decade from now would not have to worry about paying big electricity bills. The homes would produce power themselves. The San Diego Democrat has introduced legislation that would require all homes built starting in about 2020 to […]

Is America's love affair with the "exburbs" over?

GAINESVILLE, Virginia (Reuters) – Jean Bell didn’t plan to take care of her neighbor’s lawn when she moved to this cluster of brick townhouses hard by the freeway. But the house next door has sat vacant for the past year and a half, and the bank that owned it wasn’t keeping it up. So the […]

Attenborough warns on population

The broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become a patron of a group seeking to cut the growth in human population. On joining the Optimum Population Trust, Sir David said growth in human numbers was “frightening”. Sir David has been increasingly vocal about the need to reduce the number of people on Earth to protect wildlife. […]

Impending Skills Shortage In Agricultural Science Puts World Food Supply At Risk

Low numbers of UK students and researchers working in the agricultural sciences mean that we may not have the resources needed to ensure sufficient food-crop production across the globe in the near future. The warning comes from the Royal Society which is conducting a major study exploring how science can enhance global food-crop production. The […]

Malthus and vice

Without growth, there would be no economy as we know it. But modern culture, by and large, doesn’t see that it can exist only in the medium of ceaseless growth and expansion, because a fish doesn’t see the water it swims in. Only today, in the recent, breathless moments of the greatest economic crash since […]

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