Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Why the United States is doomed to be an energy outlaw
David Victor, Newsweek
… It is extremely unlikely that Washington will ever supply a coherent energy policy, regardless of who takes the White House in November. That’s because serious policies to change energy patterns require a broad effort across many disconnected government agencies and political groups. Higher energy efficiency for buildings and appliances, a major energy use area, requires new federal and state standards. Higher efficiency for vehicles requires federal mandates that always meet stiff opposition in Detroit. … And so on.
Whenever the public seizes on energy issues, the cabal of Washington energy experts imagines that these problems can be solved with a new comprehensive energy strategy, backed by a grand new political coalition. … This coalition, alas, never lasts long enough to accomplish much.
… Europe is in danger of contracting the same affliction. … The rising powers in Asia are also finding that they, like America, have a hard time developing and applying strategic energy policies.
… All this means that the underlying forces that are causing high demand for energy (and high prices) and emitting greenhouse gases will be hard to alter. The effort to solve global warming might change this pessimistic iron rule of energy policy, because the environmental community that is the core of the coalition in support of global warming policy is becoming much stronger and has shown staying power. For the moment, however, that is a hypothesis to be proved.
David G. Victor is a professor at Stanford Law School and directs the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Program on Energy & Sustainable Development; he is also adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
(3 March 2008)
“Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.” – Samuel Johnson.
Britain seeks loophole in Green Energy targets
John Vidal, Guardian
Britain is seeking to change the rules governing renewable energy targets to make it easier for the UK to fulfil its commitment to promote clean energy, the Guardian has learned.
At present, only 3% of the UK’s power comes from renewable energy, but ministers have agreed to increase this fivefold within 12 years. To help reach this goal, the government has started lobbying the EU over the way the target is calculated.
At a closed session of the energy council of ministers this month, the business minister, Lady Vadera, proposed that British investments in renewable energy anywhere in the world should count as part of UK’s effort.
…This week’s state visit by President Sarkozy confirmed that the powerful French nuclear industry will be encouraged to develop at least four but possibly more nuclear power stations in Britain.
Industry recognises that nuclear power and renewables in Britain are mutually exclusive because they both need government support as well as the same national grid infrastructure to distribute electricity. Last week Carlo de Riva, chief executive of French state-owned nuclear company EDF, said British backing for renewables, would undermine nuclear power.
“If you provide incentives for renewables … that will displace the incentives built into the carbon market. In effect, carbon gets cheaper. And if carbon gets cheaper, you depress the returns for all the other low-carbon technologies. [like nuclear power].”
(29 March 2008)
Contributor DLC writes:
Not since Westinghouse paid the late dictator Marcos $50m for building consent has the nuclear lobby seemed so brazen.
Here the CEO of the French nuclear builder EDF has declared the reason why it is now central to the nuclear lobby’s interests to hinder any significant construction of sustainable energy facilities.
As has long been obvious to proponents of sustainable energy, the nuclear lobby cannot, in practical terms, afford even moderate demonstration-scale sustainable energy facilities to be built.
If we had for instance a fleet of Offshore Wave Energy vessels beside our Atlantic coasts, and Coppice Biomass stations dispersed through our hill country, and Geothermal Energy stations set on our best sites, why would we even be discussing Nuclear Power ?
As it is, it seems a black irony that we are still without significant sustainable energy supply just as Peak Oil starts to fragments the investor confidence underpinning the global financial system, meaning that few if any new nukes will get built, regardless of the reach of their corrupt lobbying.
Demands for crackdown on biofuels scam
Terry Macalister, The Guardian
US ‘splash and dash’ loophole undermines climate change fight
—
The EU is being urged to take action to stop a biofuel trading scam that exploits US agricultural subsidies and undermines the fight against global warming.
Up to 10% of biofuel exports from the US to Europe are believed to be part of the rogue scheme reaping big profits for agricultural trading firms.
The “splash and dash” scam involves shipping biodiesel from Europe to the US where a dash of fuel is added, allowing traders to claim 11p a litre of US subsidy for the entire cargo. It is then shipped back and sold below domestic prices, undercutting Europe’s biofuel industry.
The trade is not illegal, but flouts the spirit of producing green fuel by transporting it needlessly across the Atlantic at a time when campaigners are voicing concern about emissions from global shipping.
(1 April 2008)
Congress has big questions for Big Oil
H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press
Big Oil is once again being called on the carpet. Senior executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies were to appear before a congressional committee Tuesday where they were likely to find frustrated lawmakers in no mood for small talk.
“These companies are defending billions of federal subsidies … while reaping over a hundred billion dollars in profits in just the last year alone,” complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., in previewing the hearing.
The lawmakers were scheduled to hear from top executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., BP America Inc., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, which together earned about $123 billion last year because of soaring oil and gasoline prices.
(1 Apr 2008)
American West Heating Nearly Twice As Fast As Rest Of World, New Analysis Shows
Natural Resources Defense Council. via ScienceDaily
The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation’s fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest’s largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions.
… The NRDC-RMCO report, “Warming in the West,” analyzed temperature data from Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The report is available online at www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/west/contents.asp.
(30 March 2008)
