gas prices
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Hybrid production costs may drop two-thirds within 10 years
Bloomberg reports: Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and other carmakers may cut production costs for hybrid systems by 67 percent over the next decade as shipments rise and companies gain experience, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Gasoline-electric systems on average will cost $1,919 each in 2018, compared with an estimated $5,869 this year […]
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Senate race in North Carolina finds both candidates slinging oil
Another race where energy issues have been top fare this year is the North Carolina race, where Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole is defending her seat against Democratic challenger Kay Hagan. It’s a race where both candidates have accused the other of being in the pocket of Big Oil, and the crude has been flying for […]
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Brooks Brothers rioter turns attention to energy this election season
This post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI’s kind permission. —– An advocacy group run by a political operative with oil industry ties (and a famous photo-op history) is spearheading a late advertising blitz to sway Senate races, spending more than $650,000 […]
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Will we see $3 gasoline before $5?
A: It certainly looks that way. When I first posed this question in August, I began my answer: A: "Who knows?" and "It doesn’t really matter." Much higher gasoline prices that are sustained for a long, long time are now inevitable. The fundamentals in the oil market are that we are in the beginning stages […]
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Economic downturn and falling oil push green off the priority list, yet again
I keep saying this, possibly to the point of tedium, but I really want to drive it home: as long as going green is viewed as an expensive and vaguely altruistic undertaking, it will never be a top priority. Evidence is everywhere right now. After several years of ceaseless focus on climate and pop culture […]
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A price on carbon will not tackle transportation pollution
A new study [PDF, via WSJ] from the Congressional Budget Office “discovers” something I guess I kind of thought was common knowledge: realistically, no price on carbon will ever be high enough to substantially curtail driving in the U.S. Even $200/ton carbon — wildly outside the range of anything Americans will accept — would only […]
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As GM goes …
GM stock is down 30 percent today — the lowest GM stock price since 1950. Ford dropped by almost a quarter before a slight uptick — lowest since 1983. S&P may downgrade their credit rating (again). Witness: Stocks, which had opened higher, dived into the close, with the S&P 500 index ending down 7.6 per […]
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Ignoring efficiency, conventional wisdom holds that climate action will raise energy costs
It’s worth closely reading this Avery Palmer piece in CQ Politics: "The price of being green." It puts the frame around American energy/environmental politics in particularly crystalline terms. To wit: environmentalists want to raise the cost of energy while everyone else wants to lower it. Or more specifically: in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, […]
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July sees another sharp drop in U.S. driving
July saw another sharp drop in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) according to the Federal Highway Administration’s monthly report on “Traffic Volume Trends.” Lost in all the news about the financial meltdown and the election is the report that Americans drove 3.6 percent less, or 9.6 billion miles fewer, in July 2008 than July 2007. Okay, […]
