US electrical generation – Where we are now

Last week, Hannes Kunz and Nate Hagens put up one post talking about electricity, and they are planning another post in the near future. I thought now might be a good time to put up a few graphs regarding US electricity generation, showing where we are now. Most of the graphs are summaries of data […]

OPEC says oil demand could weaken over next few month

OPEC said September 9 global demand for oil could weaken over the remainder of this year as government stimulus packages are wound down, noting that the slowing economic recovery was already hitting growth in oil consumption. For now, though, the oil producer group expects world oil demand to continue growing at an annual rate of […]

USA Today: As sales fall, is the hybrid car fad over?

USA Today Will it turn out that hybrid cars were just a fad that will go the way of bell-bottom pants? The sales numbers this year seem to point to the possibility. Ford Escape hybrid sales were off 23.7% through the first seven months of the year, Toyota Camry hybrid sales were down 42.5% and […]

As U.S. economy sputters, China’s importance to oil producers grows

(Calgary Herald) ou could sense some angst last week in the United States and Japan when China overtook the latter as the world’s second largest economy. No one who follows the numbers was really surprised, because the momentum to pull China into second place was inevitable, the only question was, when? Surprise was also muted among […]

Reuters: Toyota plans 5 million cumulative hybrid sales by 2015

(Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp said on Wednesday it wants to reach cumulative sales of 5 million hybrid vehicles in the early part of this decade. Toyota, the pioneer in gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, said earlier this month it had sold more than 2.68 million hybrid vehicles globally since it launched the first model in 1997. […]

Saudi Aramco says crude oil may end year higher

Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil and gas producer, said crude prices may end the year as high as $82 a barrel because of demand from China and India. “The prospect is good,” Mohamed Daoudi, head of research and technology at Aramco Overseas Co. B.V., said on Monday in an interview in Stavanger, Norway. “There […]

Rigzone: China Apparent Oil Demand Slows in July

Rigzone China’s “apparent oil demand” (production plus net imports) slowed in July, declining from June’s record high of 36.74 million metric tons (mt) to 35.82 million mt or approximately 8.47 million b/d, according to Platts’ analysis of official data from the People’s Republic of China. July demand is down 5.6 percent from June and is […]

Bloomberg: Hedge Funds Cut Bullish Gasoline Bets by Most Since 2006: Energy Markets

Hedge funds cut bullish bets on gasoline by the most in almost four years as petroleum stockpiles surpassed the highest level since 1990 and the U.S. vacation season drew to an end. Hedge funds and other large speculators reduced wagers on rising prices by 74 percent the week ended Aug. 17, the most since October 2006, […]

The National (UAE): Analysts warn of threat to oil price stability

Tamsin Carlisle Last Updated: August 21. 2010 10:08PM UAE / August 21. 2010 6:08PM GMT The deteriorating global economic outlook and weakening OPEC discipline could force oil prices as low as US$50 per barrel within the next year, analysts say. “We see both lower prices and a tighter range ahead but with increased risks,” Lawrence […]

Bloomberg: Largest Oil Stockpile in 20 Years – Still $70/bbl

Crude oil futures traded near their lowest level in a month on concern that the recovery is not strong enough to whittle down excessive U.S. fuel inventories. Oil dropped after an unexpected increase in applications for unemployment benefits last week was reported by the Labor Department. The U.S. Energy Department report yesterday showed that total […]

Steady State Transportation: Closing the Door on the Dirty Oil Era

by Brent Blackwelder If human civilization is to make the move to a steady state economy that provides prosperity without growth, it must meet people’s basic mobility needs without reliance on fossil fuels. The U.S. requires a revolutionary transformation of its transportation systems, and recent experience with the downsides of oil provides a potent political […]

Will China Cap It’s Oil Demand?

There was an interesting story from PennEnergy yesterday called Economist warns of slowdown in Chinese oil-demand growth— By OGJ editors HOUSTON, Aug. 18 — Ever-increasing Chinese oil-demand growth, a staple of market forecasts, can’t last forever, warns a veteran energy economist. “Everyone counts on China’s demand growth, and all depend on it,” says Fereidun Fesharaki, […]

Dot Earth Blog: Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings

Abstract: In a national online survey, 505 participants reported their perceptions of energy consumption and savings for a variety of household, transportation, and recycling activities. When asked for the most effective strategy they could implement to conserve energy, most participants mentioned curtailment (e.g., turning off lights, driving less) rather than efficiency improvements (e.g., installing more […]

‘Abandon affluence’ — 25 years on

Sunday, August 15, 2010 In his influential 1985 book Abandon Affluence, radical Australian sociologist Ted Trainer made the argument that the capitalist economies of the rich world, and the wasteful consumer culture they spawned, were unsustainable and the ecological limits of capitalist growth were fast approaching. Trainer will speak at the November 5-7 Climate Change Social Change […]

Mark Engler, Paying Oil’s True Cost

I won’t claim it was the first time in all these months, just the first I noticed. On Monday, my hometown paper had no mention of the Gulf of Mexico, BP, or what we’ve come to call its disastrous “spill,” though that word hardly catches the dimensions of what happened. On Tuesday, the catastrophe that […]

Gregor: The Ascent of Middle East Food and Energy Demand

At the EIA’s International Energy Outlook (IEO) presentation this May the issue of future oil exports from OPEC nations came up, and in an interesting way. Readers may be familiar with the phenomenon of declining net exports, from major oil producing nations, as a result of internal demand from growing, domestic populations. The phenomenon was […]

Blog: Boone Pickens’s Plan Full of Hot Air

Jeff Rubin Boone Pickens’s plans to save the United States from its energy dependence on so-called hostile petro-powers is, simply put, full of hot air. The abundance of shale gas in the US will no more free the country’s motorists from dependence on foreign oil than have either the American production of over ten billion […]

IEA: Global oil demand seen rising slightly

Global oil demand will rise 2.2 percent this year and will continue to grow in 2011, thanks to improving economic conditions in Europe and developing countries, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday. In its monthly report on the oil markets, the Paris-based agency said global oil demand this year will reach 86.6 million barrels a […]

U.S. electricity blackouts skyrocketing

Experts on the nation’s electricity system point to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers. During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent — up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota. In […]

Airports handled fewer passengers worldwide in 2009

Air traffic worldwide fell 1.8% last year to 4.8 billion arriving and departing passengers, according to a report last week by the Airports Council International. The decline was more pronounced in North America (down 5.2%) and Europe (down 5.4%). But the emerging markets in the Middle East (up 7.7%), Asia-Pacific (up 4.9%) and Latin America-Caribbean […]

Guardian: Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers

The world’s largest cargo ships are travelling at lower speeds today than sailing clippers such as the Cutty Sark did more than 130 years ago. A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt “slow steaming” to save fuel two years ago. […]

Internal Combustion Engines Are Still 85% Inefficient

You might be surprised to hear, that after all this time, with so many compelling reasons to make vehicles more energy efficient, that the internal combustion engine still only uses 15% of the energy it receives from gasoline. I sure was. A century ago, when the internal combustion engine was invented, climate change and peak […]

When Truth is Unbelievable

By Megan Quinn Bachman As a college junior I frequented a website (www.dieoff.org) where prognosticators observed that with accelerating rates of environmental destruction, overpopulation and fossil fuel depletion, modern civilization was on the verge of collapse. Despite the alarmist tone, these writings were not pseudo-scientific rants, but well-researched articles by eminent authors spelling doom. And […]

How to feed a hungry world

Producing enough food for the world’s population in 2050 will be easy. But doing it at an acceptable cost to the planet will depend on research into everything from high-tech seeds to low-tech farming practices. With the world’s population expected to grow from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion by 2050, a certain Malthusian alarmism […]

Richard Heinberg talks about planning for peak oil

Richard Heinberg, co-editor of The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises, talks about what was behind recent price spikes in oil production and the effect of those spikes on the US economy.

Russia bans grain exports

Russia, the world’s third wheat exporter, Thursday banned grain exports for the next four-and-a-half months due to a record drought that has destroyed millions of hectares (acres) of its land. Wheat futures shot up to new two-year highs on commodities markets after the sudden announcement from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin raised concerns about global grain […]

Peak Oil: How Supply Crunch Can Lead to Lower Prices (for a while!)

There seems to be an on-going debate among peak oilers and many economists as to which came first, the chicken (peak supply flow) or the egg (peak demand). The first is attributed to the classical peak oil theory that when about half of the oil in the ground is pumped out, extraction rates start to […]

Treehugger: Reducing Global Shipping’s Fuel Consumption?

If we’re going to start this great transition off of oil we really need to start thinking hard about how we’re going to move ourselves and our goods around the globe. Part of that is thinking conceptually about it–how to change our habits and usage patterns for long-distance travel. The other part is how technology […]

Scott McGuire, “maniacal” co-creative gardener

When we drove into the long roadway approaching Scott and Kaela McGuire’s new homestead, I was struck by the solo sunflower greeting us like a towering beacon. Scott said it was a volunteer, probably from their previous garden where we’d taped “An Experiment in Backyard Sustainability” in 2006. The McGuire family moved to their new […]

Shale Gas to Help Meet Chinese Future Energy Demand

Wood Mackenzie reported that unconventional gas, particularly shale, will increase significantly to help meet China’s strong gas demand growth. In its recent study, Race for Supply – the Future of China’s Gas Market, domestic unconventional production will account for over a quarter of total gas supply by 2030. However, unconventional gas resources will take a […]

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