Paradise paved? World’s cities to expand by more than twice the size of Texas by 2030

Cities worldwide are on track to expand by nearly 580,000 square miles – more than twice the size of Texas – in less than 20 years, according to experts at a major international science conference. Yale University professor Karen Seto said the North American suburb had “gone global, and car-dependent urban developments are more and […]

Oil Price Bubble vs. Demand Destruction and Decline

The ongoing bubble in global oil prices is fighting for its life against declining demand across the developed world — and the threat of a near to intermediate-term collapse in demand from emerging nations such as India and China. Fundweb: Decline in Demand Occurring First in Developed World …a volatile mix of factors is in […]

Peak oil is real and will stunt any economic recovery

As the bio on his Deep Green blog offers: Rex Weyler was a director of the original Greenpeace Foundation, the editor of the organisation’s first newsletter, and a co-founder of Greenpeace International in 1979. He was a photographer and reporter on the early Greenpeace whale and seal campaigns, and has written one of the best […]

The Industrial Food System Depends To Its Peril On Cheap Oil

With a gallon of gasoline in America now averaging almost $4.00, the topic of oil dependence is timely. Cheap oil and other fossil fuels have helped create the modern American economy, and to a lesser extent, the economies of other industrialized cultures around the world.  Big industry totally depends on them.  Naturally, this includes the food industry. Let’s […]

Grid Resiliency Is Required for Improved Grid Reliability

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) co-chairs of the recent Smart Grid study titled “The Future of the Electric Grid”  just visited Silicon Valley to discuss their report with investors and entrepreneurs.   If you haven’t read the study, I recommend it because it’s an interesting read.  The study co-chairs, John Kassakian and Richard Schmalensee, cover the […]

Fleet Operators Increasingly Turn to Natural Gas Power

In increasing numbers, major U.S. contract freight carriers are deploying heavy-duty natural gas-powered trucks to support their customers’ supply chain transport requirements. Clean Energy Fuels Corp. CLNE +2.19% , North America’s leading supplier of natural gas fuel for transportation, contracts with carrier fleet operators to provide compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG) […]

How Peak Oil Will Shatter Cities Like Merriam, Kansas

Most people reading this would probably find Merriam, Kansas, very familiar. Not because they’ve been there, but because it’s a lot like home. Merriam is usually described as a suburb of Kansas City, Kans.—a small town that grew into a residential center for people who worked in the much larger city nearby. Yet the mental […]

Why Saudi and American bluffing won’t lower oil prices (Hint: It doesn’t work when people know you’re bluffing)

If you have the power and the desire to bring down oil prices, the best way to proceed is to start bringing them down. The easiest and fastest method would be to make more supplies available to the world market and keep adding until you reach your target price. The less you say about what […]

What goes up…

Years ago, £1 was enough to buy a portion of chips and a can of pop for lunch, not to mention a bar of chocolate on the way home from school. For older kids, it was also enough to buy two litres of petrol for a clapped out hatchback. No more. As crude oil again hits $125 […]

peak oil is about price, not supply

Heading down to Washington to speak at the Association for Peak Oil-USA‘s Truth in Energy conference on Nov. 2, I sense a general malaise within the peak oil movement. The pequists, as they have become known, appear to be on the defensive these days as they once again roll back their dating of the dreaded […]

What US Energy Independence Would Take

The New York Times has a big story on moves toward US oil independence: Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the […]

A Natural Gas Reality Check

While T.Boone talks sense and gets to vent his frustration regularly on air, the sad reality is that although the obstacles for substitution to NatGas are not insurmountable, as Michael Cembalest notes we do not get the sense that an NGV fleet is imminent, even with very high gasoline prices. The best shale gas plays […]

Crude Oil Prices And The ‘Peak Oil’ Environment

Peak Oil can be defined at least 4 ways but one way is simple: Peak Oil is when supplies and stocks are tight enough, relative to demand, to make price slides short and price hikes long, until and unless the economy tilts into recession or by policy decision in response to a dysfunctional and parasitic […]

The Age of Cheap Oil Has Ended

While motorists feel the pain of the recent ascent of the oil price to near record levels, the underlying reality of rising oil prices has profound implications right across society. Barring an unprecedented oil discovery, the world will never again see the return of cheap oil. Oil prices will certainly never return to the levels […]

Trust in China’s Economic Stability Misplaced

If China’s economy stumbles even a tiny bit, the repercussions on world commodity markets could prove extreme. For the last few years, China has provided the biggest boost to global demand for commodities — including crude oil. Many analysts have expressed concern about the long-term sustainability of China’s current growth model. But well connected investment […]

As Cars Are Kept Longer, 200,000 Is New 100,000

HOW far can a modern car really go? Given the increasing age of vehicles on American roads, we may be on the verge of finding out. As a stubborn recession made drivers wary of new purchases for several years, the average age of vehicles on the road in the United States stretched to a record […]

The Impact on U.S. Consumers of Every 1¢ Increase in Gas Prices: $1 billion

The average price of gas in the U.S. topped $4.01 per gallon on March 15, the highest level in almost a year and up 15 percent from mid-December. The rise was due, in part, to an improving economy and also to growing demand due to worries of an oil supply disruption in the Middle East […]

Saudis preparing for oil demand to peak

A top Saudi energy official expressed serious concern Monday that world oil demand could peak in the next decade and said his country was preparing for that eventuality by diversifying its economic base. Mohammed al-Sabban, lead climate talks negotiator, said the country, with the world’s largest proven reserves of conventional crude, is working to become […]

An eerie winter

Last week’s summerlike weather provided an exclamation point on the end of the fourth warmest winter in the lower 48 states. Back in late December and early January as the winter was unfolding, I thought to myself that somehow we needed eerie music piped into the sky to give people some clue about how they […]

Food security in a hungry world

International community’s biggest challenge is producing enough nutritional food, delivering it to the hungry. Climate change, water shortages, higher energy prices, crop diseases and a rapidly expanding population. These are all factors that are making it increasingly difficult and risky for farmers and governments to ensure the world has enough to eat. World agriculture production […]

Pakistan: Gas, fuel shortage creates mass outages

Electricity shortfall rose on Thursday beyond 6,000 megawatt (MW) that is almost 50 per cent of total 13,000MW demand in the country, thus necessitating a 10 to 14 hours loadshedding throughout the country. According to the Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO), urban feeders suffered more than 10 hours of loadshedding while in rural feeders, there […]

Yergin: What’s Behind Rising Gas Prices?

As in the 2008 presidential election—remember the chants of “Drill, baby, drill!”—rising oil and gasoline prices have become an issue in 2012. But election-year politics aside, the forces driving up prices at the pump are very different today than they were four years ago. In 2008, it was primarily the surge in oil consumption in […]

Up to half of world’s food goes to waste

Experts gathering this week at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summitin Chicago said an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the food produced globally goes to waste. Reuters reports that on average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds of food each month which adds up to $396 in lost groceries a year, according to the […]

A New Global Economic & Energy Narrative

Internet technology and renewable energies are merging to create a powerful new infrastructure. Jeremy Rifkin explains how the five pillars of a third energy-communications revolution will create the foundations for the next great wave of economic growth * Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up […]

Peak oil is real and will stunt any economic recovery

During the last century, society squandered 500 million years of captured sunlight on drag races, traffic jams, private jets and overheated office buildings – warns campaign group Oil company cheerleaders proclaiming huge supplies of oil are dead wrong. Peak oil is as real as rain, and it is here now. Not 2050. Not 2020. Now. […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Surging Gasoline

With the EU’s debt crisis and the Iranian confrontation relatively quiescent, attention has turned to the incessant increase in U.S. gasoline prices. The Capitol Hill gas station, where at least some members of Congress fill up, is currently selling regular for $4.49 a gallon. If you prefer to do business at the Watergate Exxon it […]

Chevron CEO sees pricey oil destroying demand

Chevron Corp Chief Executive John Watson sees demand for oil being destroyed in the United States as a result of higher gasoline prices and an underperforming U.S. economy. “We’re seeing that right now,” he said. “If you look at the peak in U.S. oil consumption it was about 21 million barrels a day as little […]

How to Solve The Oil Dilemma

Robert Bryce talks about the necessity to find a way to solve the oil dilemma. He talks about the importance of price in this solving this dilemma. Also in this video he talks about what the governmental involvement. Well, price matters. We see that today, consumers are buying and they are not buying. The trend […]

Has the Global Economy Become Less Vulnerable to Oil Price Shocks?

This paper examines the impact of oil price changes on global economic growth.  Unlike some of the recent studies, this paper finds that oil price rises have had significant negative impacts on world economic growth.  A time-series analysis of the data from 1971 to 2010 finds that an increase in real oil price by 10 […]

What About Wood Heating

A series of columns on home design and home heating with a view to energy efficiency would not be complete without a discussion of the potential wood has for heating our homes. Mary and I heat our home with wood. We like it. It helps us maintain our connection with the earth that supports us. […]

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