Energy Policy

Oil spills — there’s no free lunch

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Here we go again. The tragic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent oil spill has stirred up the usual offshore drilling debate in the United States. Apparently, the Halliburton people had just finished completing the well when something went terribly wrong. Such incidents are relatively rare, and it’s not known what the (over) reaction will be yet.

Peak oil, prices, and supplies – Apr 29

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-Peak at the polls
-Saudi Arabia global oil exports to wane post-2010
-Drilling and spilling for all the oil that’s left
-Gulf oil spill ‘five times’ larger than estimated
-Flight disruptions in Europe a Foretaste for Period of Oil Decline
-The Imminent Crash Of Oil Supply: Be Afraid
-Peak oil predictions

BBC on the impact of biofuels on Paraguay’s ecology and farmers

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Everyone should listen to this BBC report on the “price of biofuels.” It digs into a key question: what does Europe’s appetite for biodiesel mean for people and ecosystems in the countries that produce the feedstocks?

Officials wake up to peak oil, part 2

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In the first part of this series, I reviewed a series of reports from March supporting the peak oil view, and warning that world oil production very well may go into terminal decline by 2015 or sooner…On March 25 the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) joined the officially worried, with a report in French newspaper Le Monde titled “Washington considers a decline of world oil production as of 2011.”

Cochabamba postscript: lessons, reflections, and the road to Cancun

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The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC, for its Spanish acronym) ended on Thursday in Cochabamba and every airport I’ve stopped in (more than a few now) has been filled with people heading home with new energy, new direction, and excitement to get back to work. But before the movement moves on I want to share some last reflections that we’ll be taking forward.

Renewables out of the bottle

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Renewables have been growing as inside a bottle so far; a bottle made of disbelief, red tape and not enough financing. It is time for a little satori in renewable energy. Renewables can hold on their own with new and more efficient technologies, in particular the CdTe thin film version which may have an EROEI of 40. With such EROEIs, we can start thinking of renewable energy as abundant and cheap.