World food expert: Population presents challenges

World population is expected to rise from 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Africa will be home to a 2 billion increase, the fastest rate of increase in the world. As world population increases, so does the demand to feed the hungry. Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Food Prize Laureate, spoke Nov. 15 at the […]

Are Electric Cars a Niche? Or Able to Beat Conventionals?

Are electric cars a Niche?  Or just coming into their own?  I’ve been asked that question twice now in the last week in various forms, so thought I’d blog my answer. Electric Drive Transportation Association has the total number of US sales at just under 400,000 this year, or 3.3% market share including hybrids.  Hybrids they […]

King Coal, Alive and Kicking

World Resources InstituteThe lion’s share of new coal plants planned worldwide would be built in China and India. Some 1,200 new coal-fired power plants are being planned across the globe despite concerns about greenhouse gas emissions from such generating stations, the most polluting type, the World Resources Institute estimates. Two-thirds of them would operate in […]

Average cost for Thanksgiving dinner? About $50

For the average American heading to the supermarket to buy Thanksgiving dinner, bringing a $50 bill should do the trick. The average cost of a 10-serving Thanksgiving dinner will cost $49.48 this year, according to a study by the American Farm Bureau Federation, a nonprofit grassroots organization advocating farmer interests. The group relied on 150 […]

Why US Oil Dominance Won’t Lower Gas Prices

Booming oil production could allow the U.S. to become the world’s largest global oil producer by 2020 and help the country become practically energy self-sufficient by 2035, according to a new report. But that alone won’t achieve the dream of so-called energy independence that magically frees American drivers from price shocks at the gasoline pump. […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Descent Into Chaos

There is a growing disconnect between forecasts of prodigious amounts of oil coming out of the Middle East in coming decades and what is likely to happen in the region. The Middle East today is a patchwork of geographical entities known as states. A few, such as Iran, are reasonably coherent and go back hundreds […]

Solving Oil Addiction, State by State

As 43 million people hit the road for Thanksgiving — members of my family among them — I’m reminded again of how dependent we are on gasoline to live our lives. We need it to get to work, to school, to spend holidays with our families. When gas prices spike, all drivers suffer, but in […]

The Great Oil Fallacy

Among the unchallenged verities of U.S. politics, the most universally accepted is that of the crucial strategic and economic significance of oil, and particularly Middle Eastern oil. On the right, the need for oil is seen as justifying an expanded and assertive military posture, as well as the removal of restrictions on domestic drilling.  On […]

Saudi oil burn hits record high in 2012

Saudi Arabia burned record volumes of crude oil over the summer, official government figures show, contrary to its aim of using more gas for power generation to reduce wastage of crude that it could export. During the peak period from early June through September, Saudi Arabia burned an average of 763,250 barrels per day (bpd) […]

World Fish Catch Falls to 90 Million Tons in 2012

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that the world’s wild fish harvest will fall to 90 million tons in 2012, down 2 percent from 2011. This is close to 4 percent below the all-time peak haul of nearly 94 million tons in 1996. The wild fish catch per person has dropped even more […]

The Bright, Shiny Tinderboxes of the Persian Gulf

Touring the luxurious campus of the American University of Sharjah last week, I was yet again struck by what money, especially petrodollars, can buy. Sharjah is an emirate of the United Arab Emirates, located adjacent to Abu Dhabi. Designed by the ruler of Sharjah, Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qassimi, one of the more enlightened of […]

Peak Oil Files – 3 – In High Demand

Peak oil is where oil production rates fall after hitting a peak. Supply will no longer be able to meet demand causing dramatic increases in oil price. This will have a major impact on us and our economies in a world thoroughly dependent on oil. This is the first chapter in an in depth, multi […]

The Sufficiency Economy: Envisioning a Prosperous Way Down

When [we have] obtained those things necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, [our] vacation from humbler toil having commenced. – Henry David Thoreau 1. Introduction If a society does not have some vision of where it wants to be or what it […]

What Happens After the Long Recession?

In this week’s episode of R-Squared Energy TV, I answer a question from a reader about what happens as The Long Recession plays out.

The peak oil crisis: alternative futures

A paper published recently by the IMF gives us some insight into how oil prices and availability might affect the global economy in the next decade. The paper, entitled Oil and the World Economy: Some Possible Futures, starts with the statistic that global oil production grew by 1.8 percent annually from 1981 to 2005, then […]

Peak Oil’s Impact: Relief Efforts

Imagine, if you can, that there is a resource everyone likes to use.  They like to use it for convenience: it lets them go places, have neat things, eat the foods they want no matter what time of year it is…. Now imagine, if you can, that this resource begins to become scarce. Imagine that the […]

Kenya: State of world population

The government is facing a new challenge in the form of a runaway population explosion and pressure is on for the authorities to explore options that include providing mothers with family planning aid. And as NTV’s Brenda Wanga reports, policies on regulating the number of children per couple may not even be enough. http://www.ntv.co.ke

Could ‘economic peak oil’ rival the banking crisis?

Economic peak oil’ could cripple the world’s economies by 2014 according to a UK-based think tank, which recommends governments take urgent action to wean their economies off fossil fuels. In its latest report the New Economics Foundation (nef) argue that the end of cheap oil, and a new age of sustained high oil prices will […]

IEA to Publish Annual Study on Energy Efficiency Trends

The International Energy Agency plans to publish an annual report on energy efficiency, starting next year, to bolster its efforts to promote fuel saving technologies in businesses, buildings and houses. The IEA publishes a report each month on supply and demand in the oil market, and annual studies on other markets. “From next year onwards, […]

Peak Oil? What About Peak Food?

In India, 24 percent of families have foodless days. That means that each week they plan what days they will not eat. In Nigeria, it is 27 percent of families. According to Lester Brown, “food is the new oil.” Lester’s new book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, makes a very […]

Peak Oil’s Impact: Long Gas Lines

  Imagine, if you can, that there is a resource everyone likes to use.  They like to use it for convenience: it lets them go places, have neat things, eat the foods they want no matter what time of year it is…. Now imagine, if you can, that this resource begins to become scarce. Imagine that […]

Applying a Peak Oil Filter to Financial Choices

Applying a Peak Oil Filter to Financial Choices from Peak Moment TV. Like this? Watch the latest episode of Peak Moment TV on Blip! http://blip.tv/peak-moment-tv/watch Peak Moment 222: “If peak oil occurs, it will dominate most everything else that we do, because energy drives everything.” Financial consultant Jim Hansenapos;s peak oil filter doesnapos;t just guide […]

Chatham House notes geopolitical role in oil prices

  Geopolitical worries are keeping prices of crude oil higher than market forces indicate they should be, according to a study published by Chatham House, London. Here are key summary points of the study by Chatham House Senior Research Analyst Paul Stevens and Mathew Hulbert, an energy security specialist at European Energy Review: • The […]

The Real Energy Crisis

Five years ago we got the energy crisis wrong.  Predictions of peak oil and declining sources of petroleum supply convinced many of an impending geologic and strategic crisis:  the world was physically running out of recoverable oil and the remaining sources of significant supply were declining in number and located in politically unstable areas.  This […]

China’s 2020 Blueprint To Ripple Through World

After the Communist Party of China fleshed out the national goal of building a moderately prosperous society, questions of how the country will fare in 2020 and the impact on the world are very intriguing, Xinhua reporters Cheng Yunjie and Wang Zichen wrote in a special report published by the state-run news agency. According to […]

Orlov: Meanwhie in Ireland

Last week I spent three days attending the Kilkenomics conference in sunny Kilkenny, Ireland. About an hour and a half by taxi from the Dublin Airport, Kilkenny is a smallish medieval town on a smallish non-navigable river, its skyline dominated by an impressive, gloomy castle and a few equally gloomy cathedrals of grey stone. Its […]

Our dependence on oil puts a glass ceiling on economic recovery

Why the oil industry today is like banking was in 2006  By StartAgain Download report The era of cheap oil is rapidly coming to an end, ushering in ‘economic peak oil’ – the point at which the cost of incremental supply exceeds the price economies can pay without significantly disrupting economic activity at a given point […]

NYC Employees Hoarding Free Gas For First Responders

As millions of drivers alternate days and run on fumes, CBS 2 has uncovered a disturbing loophole for a privileged few. An exclusive investigation discovered city employees getting free gas — originally meant for first responders. There were cars getting fueled up. A woman was spotted putting two gas cans into her trunk. There were […]

OPEC: Crude may hit $ 155 by 2035

OPEC says that fossil fuels will remain the main energy source in the coming decades with coal’s share growing and oil’s falling. In its annual World Oil Outlook, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries also projects that a barrel of benchmark crude will cost $ 155 by 2035, compared with under $ 100 now. […]

Slower Growth Seen in a Graying World

AS the world grows older in the coming decades, economic growth will slow. That forecast was issued Friday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 34 countries that includes all of the major industrialized nations. “Aging will be a drag on growth in many countries,” said the report, titled “Looking to […]

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