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Green power a new clean mantra in Silicon Valley
David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
Like any industry worth its lobbyists, Silicon Valley pushes hard for the legislation it wants.
And this year, it wants a new federal energy law. A climate change law, too.
The valley has thrown its considerable clout behind legislation that would increase America’s reliance on renewable power and provide tax breaks for new energy technologies. The tech industry has been pushing for a national system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and funnel more federal money into energy research.
Energy legislation used to be the domain of lobbyists from Big Oil and Big Coal, not tech. But the valley now has a vested interest in the outcome.
Startups throughout the Bay Area are designing new kinds of fuel, more efficient solar cells, better windmills – even electric cars. Government policies on energy and global warming could make a big difference in how fast the green tech industry grows and whether some of its innovations ever leave the lab. Federal legislation, tech leaders say, could help new ideas compete against the fossil fuels that are slowly warming the globe.
“It’s going to level the playing field and give new technologies a fighting chance against technologies that have been around 100 years,” said Betsy Mullins, vice president of government and political affairs at TechNet, a public policy and lobbying group for the tech industry. “For many of them, that could be the difference in getting to the mass market.”
(9 October 2007)
Freudenthal calls for energy innovation
Dustin Bleizeffer, Star-Tribune (Wyoming)
TETON VILLAGE –The U.S. must launch a massive research and development effort to spur the kind of innovation needed to resolve the seemingly competing demand for energy and the need to address man’s contribution to global warming.
And Wyoming, with an abundance of both carbon-based and renewable energy, is the perfect proving ground for such an effort, according to Gov. Dave Freudenthal.
“What we need is a program parallel to putting a man on the moon,” said Freudenthal.
…Freudenthal addressed a crowd of about 200 here on Monday night to kickoff the “Finding the Balance: Energy and Climate” summit sponsored by the University of Wyoming.
In recent years, Wyoming has invested in a new School of Energy at the University of Wyoming. It activated the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute. It’s spearheaded efforts to revitalize energy delivery systems through the Wyoming Pipeline Authority and Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. As the current chairman of the Western Governors’ Association, Freudenthal pledged to keep energy and environment at the top of the group’s agenda.
Yet those efforts, and similar efforts among other states, are not enough to prepare the country for the inevitable rising cost of energy, according to Freudenthal.
Freudenthal said that at the federal level, Democrats seem to talk a tough game, but won’t commit to a realistic game plan; one that fosters energy development as well as energy conservation. And Republicans, Freudenthal said, still pretend the issue doesn’t exist.
(9 October 2007)
Even CATO libertarians say energy deregulation does not work
Jerome a Paris, European Tribune
In an Op-Ed that was published in the Wall Street Journal last month (and is available in full to non-subscribers on CATO’s website) two CATO economists specialised in deregulation and energy markets provide a breath of fresh air in the debates on energy.
Their point is to criticize the poorly thought out deregulation in various US States over the past 15 years, and they explain clearly how energy markets work (something which is rare enough in the mainstream media), and what the consequences of various bits of deregulation are on market behavior and thus on electricity prices.
Their conclusions are so unexpected that other libertarians felt compelled to criticize them violently (and the authors felt the need to defend their libertarian credentials… Follow me below the fold for the gory details.
(7 October 2007)
Also posted at The Oil Drum.
The Finance Round-Up: October 9th 2007
Stoneleigh, The Oil Drum: Canada
With frozen ABCP (asset-backed commercial paper) apparently about to spawn a litigation nightmare in Canada, huge bank writedowns in the US and Europe, bank closures, a lack of interbank lending, large-scale ARM readjustments, exploding credit card debt, a growing surge in foreclosures, and homebuilders further depressing real estate prices by selling off their inventory for whatever they can get, one could be forgiven for wondering why global stock markets seem so unconcerned.
Some aggressive speculators – cushioned by the moral hazard of central bank liquidity injections – may be prepared to throw caution to the wind in overextending the trend, but others are waiting in the wings, well placed, through bets in the derivatives market, to profit from its eventual reversal. In a market at the peak of a mania, where rampant speculation drives volatility for short-term gain, arguably the best place to be is out of the game.
(9 October 2007)
Finance headlines and excerpts.
