Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
-
Robert Hirsch suggests ‘keeping relatively quiet’ in near-term about peak oil
The WSJ blog reprints an incredibly dumb “You can’t handle the truth!” memo from uber-peaker Robert Hirsch. Yes, the author of the seminal 2005 study [PDF] funded by the Bush Energy Department on “Peaking of World Oil Production” has written a memo “To The Peak Oil Community,” recommending that group “minimize its effort to awaken […]
-
Western lands opened to oil-shale development
The Bush administration on Monday cleared the way for tens of thousands of acres in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to be used for oil-shale development, publishing final rules governing how federal land will be leased for extraction of the expensive, pollute-y, only recently un-banned fuel source. Companies tapping into oil shale will have to pay […]
-
The trouble with clean-energy tax credits
Round about the time I got out of college, I (like seemingly everyone else) got a Leatherman — the Swiss Army knife cum pliers cum screwdriver that fit in your pocket. Since I was finally out of the dormitories and in my own apartment, it was handy to have a tool to assemble the odd […]
-
BLM opens land near Alaska’s Bristol Bay to development
Some 2 million acres near Alaska’s Bristol Bay will be opened to development for the first time under a plan released Friday by the Bureau of Land Management. The agency’s decision to throw the door open for mining and drilling in the area, which is home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run, is opposed […]
-
Upstream carbon prices will not substantially change downstream carbon-emitting behavior
With apologies to Little Milton. Good news: With the incoming Obama administration, we are finally going to get some sort of a greenhouse gas (GHG) bill. Bad news: We are still having an inane, economically uninformed conversation about GHG policy. Many of the ideas that pass for Serious GHG Policy are silly, not because they […]
-
A concentrated solar BACT for new coal?
I recently listed a bunch of Best Available Control Technologies (BACT) for limiting CO2 emissions from new coal plants, following the landmark ruling by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board. But a leading expert on solar thermal baseload power points out that I left out one potential control technology. Under the auspices of the Electric Power […]
-
Q: Does Dingell-Boucher have meaningful auctioning of CO2 permits before 2026?
A: No. The Dingell-Boucher climate bill has been criticized by many for having weak targets over the next two decades (see here). And even moderate Senators have doubts about using offsets as a major cost-containment strategy: "The emissions don’t have to be actually reduced," [Bingaman] said. "Instead, everyone can buy offsets that turn out not […]
-
Coal stocks drop in wake of EPA Bonanza decision
A friend wrote and suggested that I check the stock prices for coal companies in the wake of Thursday’s EPA decision. Well looky here! As of Friday: Peabody Energy Corp Change: 2.40 (8.14%) Arch Coal Inc Change: 2.22 (12.28%) Duke Energy CorpChange: 0.47 (2.92%) Couldn’t happen to a nicer industry.
-
Not investment advice
According to the DOE (see this excellent powerpoint [PDF] by the DOE Solar America program), U.S. electricity demand will grow by 386 terrawatt hours by 2015. According to the EPA, those new electrons won’t come from coal. And there’s no way nukes could come on-line fast enough, even if they got their way. Where are […]
-
The British love Obama too, and hope he’ll inspire climate action
First things first: We love Barack Obama here in Britain, maybe almost as much as you do. Possibly there are disappointed Republican sympathizers in the U.K., but I haven’t met any, and relief at the retreat of Sarah Palin as political force is almost palpable. Across much of Northern Europe we liked Obama so much […]
