Energy efficiency to shine in 2010

Solar and wind power may get the headlines and attention, but green-tech experts say 2010 will be dominated by energy efficiency, the mundane but critical process of cutting the amount of gas and electricity that homes and offices use. Energy Secretary Steven Chu regularly describes himself as an “energy-efficiency nut.” Sixteen states, including California and […]

GM to make electric motors in U.S.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors announced Tuesday that it intends to become the first major automaker to design and manufacture electric motors for cars in the United States. Electric motors are used in gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles as well as fully electric-powered vehicles. The first GM electric motors will be used in the next generation […]

Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Marketplace

It’s time to connect the headlines between persistent unemployment in the United States and growing food insecurity. The next Obama stimulus package should focus on how local food can address both simultaneously. A study done two years ago found that a 20% shift of retail food spending in Detroit redirected to locally grown foods would […]

A short history of peak oil preparation

Frankly, when I first learned about peak oil, I was a bit freaked out. But after time, a little too much wine, a lot of research, and some productive action, I recovered, and went on to slowly change my attitude, expectations, and lifestyle to accommodate a radically different reality from the one I previously knew. […]

Energy Guru Brings Good News to Davos

All the world loves a bringer of good news, so energy guru Daniel Yergin should by all rights be guaranteed a warm welcome at Davos this week. Governments may be buckling under debt loads, paper currencies hurtling toward their traditional terminal value of zero, but at least the world is not running out of energy […]

Storing Energy as Ice?

The Southern California Public Power Authority The system effectively stores electricity made the night before, when generators are sitting idle, and then uses it to reduce electricity demand on hot afternoons, when the generating system is maxed out. The coalition has signed on for 53 megawatts of storage, to be scattered around on rooftops in […]

Sites to Refuel Electric Cars Gain a Big Dose of Funds

Better Place, the closely watched start-up that hopes to create vast networks of charge spots to power electric cars, is set to receive a vote of confidence on Monday, in the form of $350 million in new venture capital. Although Better Place will most likely require billions more in financing, this investment is an important […]

Courts as Battlefields in Climate Fights

Tiny Kivalina, Alaska, does not have a hotel, a restaurant or a movie theater. But it has a very big lawsuit that might affect the way the nation deals with climate change. Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village of 400 perched on a barrier island north of the Arctic Circle, is accusing two dozen fuel and […]

January 2010 US Natural Gas Update

Natural gas prices continue their recovery. Cold weather has caused high levels of space heating that have resulted in reduced gas storage inventories. Henry Hub spot prices have recovered from their September $2.18 low to an average price of $5.56/MMbtu in the week ending January 22, 2010 (Figure 1). The average daily spot price for […]

IEA to Meet CFTC, OPEC, Banks on Curbing Speculation

(Bloomberg) — The International Energy Agency will meet OPEC, banks and U.S. and U.K. regulators in Tokyo next month to discuss limiting energy-price speculation. IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said today he has asked U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, officials of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, and bank executives including Lawrence Eagles, […]

Jeff Rubin – The electric car: Turn out the lights

Will technology leapfrog depletion and save drivers from the cost of triple-digit oil? Every auto producer in the world has an electric car in the works; General Motors, of course, will start producing its Volt later this year. But in actuality, the car of the future is really a throwback to the past. In 1899, […]

Care Farming

A new paradigm for social health care with positive benefits for the entire community. The Japanese visionary and environmentalist Masanobu Fukuoka once stated that Three fundamental ingredients make care farming so successful: the connection with Nature, the connection with other people and the connection with meaningful work and a healthy daily structure. People experiencing mental […]

Wind-energy industry lost factory jobs despite stimulus

Federal stimulus money rescued the U.S. wind-power industry from what could have been a disastrous 2009, but it still lost sought-after manufacturing jobs, a trade group reported Tuesday. Nationwide, the wind-power industry employs about 85,000 people Early last year, the association had expected wind-power development to drop 50% in year-end levels compared with 2008, given […]

New Computer Model Shows Nuclear Fission

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) announce the development of a new computer algorithm that allows for them to visualize the reactions that go on inside a nuclear reactor in finer detail than ever before. The neutron transport code UNIC, which is still under development at ANL, will provide […]

Richard Heinberg: Peak Coal and Blackout (book review)

Richard Heinberg is an important figure in the world of those interested in the energy crisis and its consequences, and one of the rare few, along with James Kunstler, to have had their work at least partially translated into French. A member of the Post Carbon Institute, he is the author of Party Richard Heinberg […]

Can we future-proof against another financial crisis?

The 42-page study The report sets out alternative approaches to understanding what really happened and recommends a different approach to risk. It highlights what it calls the collective

US Must Transition to Clean Power by 2012 or Miss the Chance

If the US was smart, we would be funding a massive switch to renewable energy now, while we still can. By 2012 we could be out of luck. China is sitting on the only currently mined sources of many of the rare earth minerals needed to build electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines. Reasonably […]

Iran Runs Military Nuclear Office, Intel Report Alleges

An intelligence document being studied by diplomats in Israel and Western powers alleges that a secret Iranian office is charged with overseeing military elements of the nation’s nuclear program, Der Spiegel reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 25). The United States and its allies have expressed concern that Iran could tap its uranium enrichment program to […]

Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy

(Bloomberg) — The earthquake that killed more than 150,000 people in Haiti this month may have left clues to petroleum reservoirs that could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere

30% Wind Power Feasible, New U.S. Study Finds

A new U.S. Department of Energy study concludes that up to 30 percent of the eastern and Midwestern United States could technically power itself with wind energy, the most optimistic government projection produced so far. A 2008 analysis of wind speeds, infrastructure capacity, and government regulations estimated that the United States could generate 20 percent […]

The Ozone Hole Is Mending. Now for the

That the hole in Earth

Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?

Global currency replacing all paper currencies, limiting manufacturing, food production and people movement Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps thinking too small. On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and the economic system upon which they […]

U.S. Geothermal Energy Capacity Expected to Triple in 5 Years

(Bloomberg) — Electricity-generation capacity from geothermal energy in the U.S. is expected to triple within five years, buoyed by government stimulus spending, the Geothermal Energy Association said. More than 6,400 megawatts of geothermal capacity is under development to add to 3,153 megawatts that Geothermal energy, renewable power that taps underground heat and steam, is being […]

Dubai Helps Iran Evade Sanctions as Smugglers Ignore U.S. Laws

(Bloomberg) — On a sweltering mid-October evening, horns blare as pickup trucks at Dubai Creek wharf jockey to deliver cargo bound for Iran. Televisions, cartons of toothpaste, car parts, refrigerators and DVD players stretch for about a mile on the dock along the murky waterway that snakes to the Persian Gulf. Years before the world […]

World's glaciers continue to melt at historic rates

Latest figures show the world’s glaciers are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century Glaciers across the globe are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) said today. The announcement of the latest […]

Energy Legislation in 2010

On 01/14/2010 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a speech before the Geothermal Energy Association, repeated his intention to move a comprehensive energy and climate bill this spring, presumably after a It would create a Clean Energy Development Administration, create a 30 million barrel petroleum product reserve, establish.. OilPrice.com

The Food System and Resilience

For something as critical as food, it is common sense that society should design for resilience. Reliability in food production in the face of change requires a system capable of rapid evolution. Resilience is therefore a core principle of sustainability. Unfortunately, our daily bread relies on a food system that is not resilient. As I […]

Clueless about oil prices

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Two very different views on where oil prices are going by the year’s end are emerging – one says $60 or lower, the other $100 or higher, and there’s little consensus as to which is right. The bulls say stronger global economic growth and low interest rates will lead to higher […]

What Could You Live Without?

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.

Report: Hackers spied on US oil companies

Washington – Three major US oil companies came under cyber attacks that may have come from hackers in China, the Christian Science Monitor newspaper reported Monday. Sensitive bid data on oil discoveries by Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips were the target of the attack, the newspaper said citing documents and sources familiar with the investigation. […]

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