A nuclear power renaissance? Maybe not.

Laguna Niguel, Calif. (Fortune) — Three new nuclear power plants in the next ten years, max. That was the consensus among the experts attending Tuesday’s morning session on nuclear power at Fortune’s Brainstorm: Green conference. Maybe five, said one lonely voice. Either way, that’s far from the nuclear renaissance we were reading about just a […]

Transitioning Somerville

Many foolish myths are woven through the popular culture that saturates our every waking hour: The future will be richer than the present. This ever-growing wealth will trickle down to uplift the poor. The things we buy will make us as happy as the people in television commercials seem to be, and if they don’t, […]

National parks getting $750 million

National parks got $750 million in federal economic stimulus Wednesday to chip into a to-do list that includes repairing historic buildings, constructing trails and increasing renewable energy use from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to Yosemite in California. “This is probably the most significant investment made in more than a generation,” Secretary of the Interior Ken […]

US Natural Gas Prices: "The Fix is Underway"

“The fix is underway” says Chesapeake Energy in their April Investor Presentation. What they mean is that natural gas prices are going back up this winter. The number of rigs drilling for natural gas is going down. Fewer rigs means fewer new wells and eventually less natural gas and higher prices for consumers. This is […]

Cheap Oil Won't Support Investment

Crude oil futures dipped below $40 per barrel at the beginning of the year, having dropped from record highs over summer 2008. They appear now to have bottomed out, rising to around $50 per barrel from the second half of March. However, optimism remains predicated on an early–third to fourth quarter 2009–recovery in the world […]

ONGC makes 1 billion barrel oil discovery offshore Iran

India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) has discovered a new offshore oil field in the Persian Gulf with reserves of 1 billion barrels of heavy crude, according to National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC).EnergyCurrent

Electric cars: the infrastructure must come first

Bill Powell, at Time Magazine, captured up the mood at the Shanghai Auto Show this week brilliantly when he described Western car executives as “like drowning men grasping the only piece of buoyant driftwood in sight”. China is the only major car market still growing in the world, and it could mean the difference between […]

UN launches report on Iraq's contested Kirkuk

The United Nations handed the Iraqi government a report on Wednesday it hopes will help end decades of deadlock over Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed region that sits on as much as 4 percent of the world’s oil supply. Staffan de Mistura, who heads the U.N. mission in Iraq, presented the report to Iraqi President Jalal […]

API: U.S. Drilling And Oil Demand Slump Further

An estimate from the American Petroleum Institute (API) indicates that first-quarter oil and natural gas drilling activity dipped in the United States to levels not seen since 2004, marking the end of six consecutive years of first-quarter growth. The Washington-based trade group also reported that U.S. demand for oil slumped by more than three percent […]

Chinese demand only hope for oil sector in 2009

China remains the last hope for stimulating oil demand this year, the president of Energy Intelligence (EI), an energy advisor said yesterday. Thomas Wallin said that instead of speculations and stockpiling of crude by the Chinese government, actual demand for crude is essential for providing support to the fluctuating prices. “China remains the only hope […]

Engineers act to secure future gas supply (UK)

As Andrew Hindle, chief executive of Portland Gas explains: “Previously, North Sea gas supplies have been able to flex through peaks and troughs. But as we import more gas because of dwindling North Sea production it will need to be stored to iron out price fluctuations.” Declining production meant Britain became a net importer of […]

Study suggests western ND oil pipeline to Canada

A new study says building a pipeline from northwestern North Dakota to TransCanada Corp.’s new Keystone pipeline in southern Saskatchewan would be the most efficient way to move the region’s oil production. North Dakota officials intend to pitch the $199 million project next week at a regional oil conference in Regina, Saskatchewan, that is expected […]

Building the American clean energy economy

By Steven Chu and Hilda Solis Today, people across the country and around the world will celebrate Earth Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of our natural resources and taking real action to make a difference. For decades, while Americans across the country have worked to make a difference in their […]

Pondering the Fate of an Oil Exporter Squandering One's Inheritance Cheaply

The fate of an oil exporter is to have sold the bulk of one For 25 years the UK exported oil. Roughly from 1980 to 2005. While the UK did enjoy relatively high global prices when the surge of North Sea Oil came on stream in the early 1980

Mexico oil output falls 7.8 pct in Q1

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican oil production fell 7.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009 to 2.667 million barrels per day as output from the aging Cantarell field slid further, state oil company Pemex on Tuesday. Mexico pumped 2.891 million bpd of crude in the first quarter of 2008, according to the energy ministry. […]

The "Flight of the Phoenix" Revisited

The title of this essay is The “Flight of the Phoenix” Revisited. This title is taken from a 1965 movie.(1) For those who have not seen this rather superb effort, it featured a crash landing of a C-82 in the Sahara Desert in the 1950s. This was caused by a severe dust storm that drove […]

U.S. Prices Carbon Dioxide at More Than $13 a Ton in Draft Plan

A proposed law to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would price carbon dioxide permits in a range of $13 to $26 a metric ton by 2015, according to a preliminary government analysis. Permit prices would nearly double if the U.S. banned greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries from selling so-called The agency included the […]

Beyond Fossil Fuels: Eric McAfee on Biofuels

What technical obstacles currently most curtail the growth of biofuels? What are the prospects for overcoming them in the near future and the longer-term? The conversion and commercialization of cellulose inputs into fuel ethanol is a significant technology obstacle to the growth of the ethanol industry as a mainstream fuel. A number of companies are […]

Switch to renewable energy could save £13bn a year

Britain could save up to The International Energy Agency has estimated that with North Sea oil and gas supplies rapidly dwindling, the UK will be importing 80% of its gas needs by 2020. Britain lags behind almost every country in Europe in terms of deployment of renewable energy but is committed to getting 15% of […]

US Energy Policy: Why the World Should Care

Despite current low oil prices, mankind faces one of its biggest challenges to date: a future in which worldwide oil supply will not keep pace with worldwide oil demand. … The result will be periodic economic contractions of increasing severity. Each economic contraction will lead to sharply reduced oil demand (as we are experiencing today) […]

Toyota Prius Gets $1,000 Price Cut in Duel With Honda

(Bloomberg) — Toyota Motor Corp., the world The two hybrids from Japan

Russia unveils new energy pact

Russia unveiled a draft energy pact Tuesday saying energy consumers and producers should share responsibility for the security of gas transit, an apparent rebuff to Europe’s efforts to sideline Russia in sweeping reforms of neighboring Ukraine’s energy sector. President Dmitry Medvedev presented the broad-ranging proposals during a two-day visit to Finland that ended Tuesday, suggesting […]

OPEC, Asia Energy Ministers to Discuss Reviving Oil Spending

(Bloomberg) — Asia OPEC, supplier of about 40 percent of the world

StatoilHydro Touts Russia for Arctic Energy

OSLO — StatoilHydro, the world’s largest offshore oil and gas operator, said Russia had the most promise in the push to explore the Arctic region’s undiscovered reserves. “In the northern territories, it is Russia that distinguishes itself, as it holds a large share of what is estimated to be the resource base in the Arctic […]

Do Worry, Be Happy

Get in fighting shape for the coming storms–psychologically, economically, and environmentally Fifteen of us were gathered in the TV room of a house in Larchmont, our New York City suburb, where we were about to watch a documentary about the imminent, anarchic demise of the suburbs. “I assume you Back in 2005, the documentary The […]

Now, if Obama would just buy us all Priuses …

…Of the 12 million barrels of oil we import daily, the 6 million barrels we get from OPEC members are the most geopolitically dubious. That oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is refined into about 83 million gallons, or roughly one-fifth of our daily gas consumption of 390 million gallons, according to […]

Bill Ford: Detroit needs predictability

A higher gas tax would lend stability to prices at the pump and enable automakers to plan better, says Ford’s chairman. Laguna Niguel, Calif. (Fortune) — What does Bill Ford, CEO of the only Detroit Three automaker not likely to file for Chapter 11 anytime soon, have in common with power-company CEOs David Crane of […]

Too Big to Fail: Ecological Ignorance and Economic Collapse

“Too big to fail.” It’s been the mantra of our economic meltdown. Although meant to emphasize the overwhelming importance of this bank or that corporation, the phrase also unwittingly expresses a shared delusion that may be at the root of our current crises — both economic and ecological. In nature, nothing is too big to […]

New bug wiping out our cassava plants

Uganda The occurrence of this bug has dealt a blow to hopes that had dawned when scientists at Makerere University

US urges food output boost to avert unrest

The US agriculture secretary has warned that unless countries take immediate steps to sharply boost agricultural productivity and food output and reduce hunger, the world risks fresh social instability. In an interview with the Financial Times, Tom Vilsack indicated that food security and global stability were tied, in a sign that Washington’s worries about the […]

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