Robert Rapier

Doing Due Diligence

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To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel — ethanol, diesel, pyrolysis oil, mixed alcohols — at very low cost. Or they say they can produce renewable electricity at a price competitive with coal.

The layperson reads the news release and is curious: “Is this real?”

The time machine of the 1960s

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Last year, I gave a talk in a meeting in Parma, Italy. I had prepared a presentation on crude oil but, when I arrived there, I saw that my audience was mainly composed of young students, probably not very interested in statistics about oil. So, I had to change subject and tone and the idea of speaking about a “Time Machine” came to my mind.

Lyttelton New Zealand faces the earthquake

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The Lyttelton community in New Zealand was at the epicentre of the recent earthquake that has devastated much of Christchurch. At this time, we have been blessed that just two in our community have died as a result of the earthquake. Rocks have been falling from the hills. Our people are OK, but the adrenalin is pumping – it feels like what it must be like to be in a war zone.

‘Fracking’ comes to Europe, sparking rising controversy

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As concerns grow in the U.S. about the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract natural gas from shale, companies have set their sights on Europe and its abundant reserves of this “unconventional” gas. But from Britain to Poland, critics warn of the potentially high environmental cost of this looming energy boom.

Frozen Assets

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Southwestern Michigan caught winter’s blast last week. It’s not nice to lose power in the coldest month of the year, especially when you’re sick of snow, ice, heavy coats and that frozen bleakness that makes you feel as though winter will never end. It’s been 35 years since I’ve had to live through a long power outage but this one gave me an opportunity to consider some new meaning in the value of energy and its effect on life both at home and in my community.

Nasty, messy things that make you late for dinner: Energy, environment, reality

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I had been mulling over precisely how to frame this piece for a while, when I read Erik Lindberg’s “This Is a Peak Oil Story.” which admirably gets at the essential point that I’ve been wanting to make – that our collective crisis comes to all of us at different times and different ways than we imagined, and that exemptions are only rarely granted.

Oil versus light: Jeremy Leggett

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This civilization uses oil for its blood. Almost everything we make, buy, and use has oil in it’s food chain. You know that. Never mind that we are bleeding carbon into the sky and the ocean, or the developing climate shift. Even if oil was lily white, we are still running out of the cheap stuff – that we need for a global economy feeding billions of humans. And we are determined to drive right off that cliff, without a Plan B.