What Will Be The Fuel of The Future?

By the middle part of the 21st Century engineers and scientists see a shift to fully electric vehicles. Internal combustion-powered vehicles will be relegated to museums, parades and shows, much like carriages and steam engines are displayed today. Reaching that point will take a number of steps that must, along the way, solve the many […]

Scientists to U.N.: “Tens of billions” needed to combat global warming

An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change usatoday

The New Math of Alternative Energy

Here’s a look at the economics of the various alternative-energy sources — how much they cost now and what developments could make them more competitive. yaleglobal

An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New

Stewart Brand has become a heretic to environmentalism, a movement he helped found, but he doesnhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/earth/27tier.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Greatest Expectations

… With the advent of Peak Oil, dreams of a world free of nuclear energy are fading. But, just like nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament looms over us like a specter. They both wreak havoc with our peace of mind — the first a threat to our existence, the second to our consciences. Meanwhile, the nation’s […]

Sweden restarts nuclear reactors

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Two of three Swedish nuclear reactors shut down this month following minor incidents were restarted this week, the Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) said on Friday. “Ringhals 2 and Forsmark 2 were restarted this week,” SKI spokesman Anders Joerle told AFP. The Ringhals 2 reactor, on the west coast south of Gothenburg, was […]

Kunstler critiques urban planning, oil shortage

Humanities Symposium keynote speaker James Howard Kunstler spoke critically about the nation’s energy sources, and the plan for the future to a packed audience in McManus Theater last Tuesday. This year, the Humanities Symposium theme is “Urban Spaces, Urban Voices,” to connect to the Year of the City initiative. Kunstler’s critiques of urban planning and […]

How global warming goes against the grain

In a cruel twist of fate, most of the hunger likely to result from global warming is expected to be felt by those who haven The scale of agriculture’s vulnerability to global warming was highlighted late last year when the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an umbrella organization representing 15 of the world’s […]

The Oil Drum: Siberian Nights: The East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Oil Pipeline

As the 2008 Russian presidential election approaches, no one is more concerned about Russia’s future policy direction than those that stand to benefit from Russia’s energy largesse. In particular, China and Japan are very anxious about the final routing of the East Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline (VSTO – its Russian acronym), which is […]

Zero Degrees of US Dollar Separation

The last several months have provided a keen lesson in currency defense by a nation which has been written off in many circles as owning a dead and hopeless currency. Some key inter-related feedback loops have been on my radar, each vitally important and changing, which underscore in my viewpoint how major markets are inseparable, […]

Smoke and mirrors

It is difficult to make predictions and one tends to shy away from criticizing other people Track record of the IEA in making forecasts Each year in the July issue of the Monthly Oil Report, the International Energy Agency in Paris (IEA) publishes their first forecast for next year

Canada: Gas shortage fears grow

Roads across Ontario will become parking lots unless something is done to alleviate a growing fuel shortage that has already caused the closure of scores of service stations, a senior executive at the Ontario Trucking Association is warning. As of last night the problem had spilled over into Quebec, with at least 10 stations closing […]

Balancing Act: Reducing Oil Dependence Without Triggering A Global Crisis

Three facts underscore the importance of the debate about the future of oil: oil is a finite resource; oil is one of the major anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide; and the world economy is heavily dependent on oil, especially in the transportation sector. The most important questions are: How do we balance depletion, the environment, […]

Relocalisation – acting locally on global issues

The last time I encountered localism was in the 1990s, when a number of rural towns launched Peak oil is one of those ideas that have spun into mainstream thinking from society

TXU’s emissions U-turn shocks power industry

HOUSTON (MarketWatch) — TXU Corp.’s decision to whittle down plans to build 11 carbon-spewing, coal-fired power plants as part of its buyout deal with private-equity firms sent a chill Monday through both Wall Street and Washington, signaling that utilities can no longer afford to ignore climate change. But with coal becoming too toxic to handle, […]

Brazil increases biodiesel target to 5% by 2010 on rising production potential

State news agency Agencia Brasil announces that the country’s biodiesel production capacity will surpass the 1.3 billion liter per year mark by the middle of this year. This is around 60% above the total needed to reach a target put forward earlier by the government. This target – falling under the country’s new ‘Pro-biodiesel program’ […]

Wishful thinking is no magical energy elixir

Ethanol will not lead to energy independence. If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline in this country, we would need to appropriate all U.S. […]

Kenya: China Selling Off Oil Rights It Got for Free

There was outrage among European oil exploration companies interested in Kenya when it emerged last week that the state-owned National Oil Corporation of China – CNOOC – has quietly put out notices offering to farm out to third parties some of the oil exploration blocks granted to it by President Mwai Kibaki in April last […]

Zambia: Bio-Fuel – Experts Call for Caution

It is envisaged that although bio-fuel cannot completely replace fossil fuels, it can help the Government reduce costs on crude importation if significant quantities are produced within the country. However, the latest minister’s tour of Sherrif Estates in Serenje and Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART) on the Great North road in Lusaka reveals that […]

Pakistan: Oil and gas production declined by 4.8% in H1

The total oil and gas production decreased by 4.8 percent during the first half of current financial year compared with the corresponding period of last year due to a decline in output by some major fields. The oil and gas production totaled at 58.5mnboe in July-December period of 2006-07 against 61.3mnboe oil and gas produced […]

Peak Oil: An Update

After two decades of almost continuous growth, global oil production has been stagnant around 84 million barrels a day for the past two years. This, of course, is exactly consistent with the peak oil hypothesis, which predicts that supply constraints will force up prices, destroying growth in demand. It will be some years before we […]

Biofuels can replace oil

Biofuels and biomass programs are touted as a major solution to the problem of America’s addiction to petroleum by allowing us to grow carbon-neutral fuel domestically. Can fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol offset the huge amount of energy that our economy and lifestyle demands? Some even say it takes more energy to make these […]

Japan and Russia Agree To Increase Energy Relations

Japan and Russia have pledged to strengthen reciprocal relations in oil and natural gas development and increase trade at a ministerial meeting in Tokyo.Japan, which imports 89 percent of its oil from the Middle East, is increasing its reliance on Russian energy assets such as oil, gas and uranium enrichment processes to strengthen its supply […]

Chavez goes forward with Orinoco region plan

President Hugo Chavez ordered by decree on Monday the takeover of oil projects run by foreign oil companies in Venezuela’s Orinoco River region.He said Monday that he has decreed a law to proceed with the nationalizations that will see state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, taking at least a 60 percent stake in […]

A Practical Use for Waste Methane

About 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas are burned off or simply vented at remote oil rigs and refineries that are not connected by pipelines. The practice wastes a precious fuel and pumps methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Technologies for compressing or liquefying natural gas in order to transport it are […]

Nuclear Energy for the Developing World

This new context of markedly cheaper, more easily constructed reactors clearly has the potential to invalidate some long-cherished assumptions–and not just those of antinuclear Western environmentalists, whose claims were that nuclear power would always remain dependent on government subsidies. It’s in this context, for instance, that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deputy-director general Tomihiro Taniguchi […]

Big Ideas for a Greener World

In one of the biggest leaps ahead, ITM Power sees a world without gasoline. With its gray marketing materials and soft-spoken CEO Heathcote, the British outfit didn’t attract much of a crowd at the symposium. But ITM made perhaps the boldest claim of the day businessweek

Big Bets on Oil Drillers

The professionals most familiar with the so-called oil shortage know that there is an estimated 3 trillion barrels under land and sea. That is why they are making their biggest bets on drilling rigs. rigzone

Greenspan Says U.S. Recession Possible

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Monday that the American economy might slip into recession by year-end. He said the U.S. economy has been expanding since 2001 and that there are signs the current economic cycle is coming to an end. cio-today

New Iran nuclear UN resolution to be debated

Representatives from the council’s permanent members of Britain, France, US, Russia and China, as well as Germany, are meeting in the capital after Iran missed a further deadline to stall its nuclear activities last week. viewlondon

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