Chinese Oil Pipeline Burns, Thousands Evacuated

A leaking oil pipeline caught fire in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian, forcing the evacuation of nearly 20,000 residents, a government oil company said Tuesday. The pipeline was damaged by construction work at about 6:30 p.m. on Monday, allowing oil to flow into a sewage pipe, where it caught fire, China National Petroleum […]

US Supreme Court opens the “BACT” door for EPA on CO2, but it could swing two ways

The US Supreme Court last week rejected the methodology the Environmental Protection Agency used to implement its first-ever regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, but did lay out a path the agency can follow to achieve the same end by using the Clean Air Act’s the “Best Available Control Technology,” or BACT, provisions. And although the […]

Oil Price Shocks Aren’t As Harmful As They Used To Be

Oil is a critical source of energy. In the past, a major oil price shock meant devastation for economic growth. “Our obsession with oil prices comes with good reason,” writes Morgan Stanley economist Ellen Zentner. “Abrupt and sharp increases in oil prices have played a key role in precipitating recessions in 1973-75, 1980-81, 1990-91, 2001 […]

Why Transition is all about politics

The Transition movement sometimes claims to be apolitical, but I think that politics can be defined as any issue in which there is a conflict of resources, and a decision to be made on how to allocate them. Although Transition isn’t party political, it’s a global social movement that seeks to create massive social and […]

Ailing Shale Gas Returns Force a ‘Drilling Treadmill’

After studying production data from 65,000 wells from 31 different unconventional shale rock formations in 2012, David Hughes predicted big trouble ahead for North America’s unconventional hydrocarbon revolution. The prominent geologist, who has studied Canada’s energy resources for four decades, warned that shale gas and tight oil operations shared four big challenges: escalating capital costs, […]

Turning Fuel into Food

In The Energy Basis of Food Security and The Energy Cost of Food I explore how energy is used throughout modern industrial food systems, noting in particular how incredibly energy intensive these systems are. A common criticism I receive regarding these analyses is that I’m comparing input and output energies that, despite both being measured in calories, are so different […]

You can’t build a future on finite energy sources

Every few years we are informed that we are approaching ‘peak oil’ – the point at which maximum petroleum extraction is reached. And then new sources are found in previously unexplored areas like Greenland and the Artic, or as if by magic the new extractive technique of fracking appears to offer some relief. So, ‘panic […]

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