As oil prices dip, industry faces questions about summer supplies Oil prices dipped from a nearly nine-month high today, and everyone's atwitter over what the summer will hold. The industry is beset by turmoil, with hostage-takings in Nigeria and turf battles in Gaza the latest contributors to price and supply instabilities. In addition, the U.S. biofuels push is leading Big Oil to cut back on refinery-expansion plans. U.S. motorists used 143 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006, and had been expected to demand 161 billion gallons by 2017 -- a scenario that saw Big Oil planning a 10 percent boost …

Tech companies go for the green This week, a consortium led by big tech kahunas Google and Intel kicked off an effort to reduce the power use of the approximately 250 million personal computers and servers manufactured each year. Participants that signed on to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative -- including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Yahoo! -- have agreed to halve new machines' electricity use by 2010. While costs may go up by $20 or so per computer, machines will also be more reliable and quieter, and consumers will quickly make up the difference in electricity savings …

The investment firm Goldman Sachs has released an environmental policy framework (PDF) and invested billions of dollars in clean energy and research into environmentally-friendly markets, a stark contrast with the inaction of our own government. In their environmental policy framework, Goldman Sachs recognizes climate change and its threat to financial markets and general livelihood. Consequently, they advocate limiting emissions, participate in Europe’s carbon market, and have agreed to voluntarily report and cut their own emissions by 7 percent by 2012. You can find their progress in their 2006 Year-End Report (PDF), which includes the partnerships they have forged, research papers …

Honda is ditching the Accord Hybrid because it discovered that ... are you sitting down? ... people who buy hybrids like good gas mileage.

The G8 wants to "decouple economic growth from energy use." Is that possible? That's the central question of out times, I guess. Walden Belloon thinks not: The only effective response to climate change is to radically reduce economic growth rates and consumption levels, particularly in the North, and in the very near future. The climate change section of the G8 declaration is a long and all-too-transparent exercise to get around this reality.

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The Big Three automakers might just dodge the bullet again. Amazing.

I've run across these shows in the past couple days, and thought fellow Gristmill readers might like to hear them too. The first is Science Friday's "Hour One" from last week. There is a segment on carbon sequestration, which I have yet to form an opinion on, and also one on generating hydrogen. The second, which I'm actually listening to as we speak, is about the economic benefits of "going green." Apparently being environmentally conscious is a smart business move! Go figure. The podcast comes from a series called "TED Talks" and the show can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall at a top-level corporate meeting just to see what really goes on behind closed doors? Consider this nifty PowerPoint presentation your ticket in. It turns out chlorine companies talk about Oceana in their meetings as much as Oceana talks about them. The Chlorine Institute held a meeting a few months back where one of the companies gave a formal presentation about being "In the 'Crosshairs' of an Environmental NGO." Their presentation looks an awful lot like our presentations -- outlining all of our tactics to stop seafood contamination, which …

So I'm a sucker. I can't walk by a newsstand where a magazine features a pair of innocent green cotyledons sprouting from a bed of industrial factories. It's this week's issue of The Economist, and what's inside the "Cleaning Up" issue is as alluring as the cover. Although I've only just skimmed, the articles look promising, and they're all freely available online. Here's the rundown: "Cleaning up: How business is starting to tackle climate change, and how governments need to help" "Everybody's green now: How America's big businesses got environmentalism" "Trading thin air: The carbon market is working, but not …