Energy Policy

The Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis back again

by

To minimal serious coverage in the media and on the internet, the Nord Stream was inaugurated in Lubmin on Germany’s Baltic Coast on Nov. 8 in the presence of Pres. Medvedev of Russia and the prime ministers of Germany, France, and the Netherlands, plus the director of Gazprom, Russia’s gas exporter, and the European Union’s Energy Commissioner. This is a geopolitical game-changer.

What is Nord Stream? Very simply, it is a gas pipeline that has been laid in the Baltic Sea, going from Vyborg near St. Petersburg in Russia to Lubmin near the Polish border in Germany without passing through any other country. From Germany, it can proceed to France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Great Britain, and other eager buyers of Russia’s gas.

Is global warming an election issue after all?

by

Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in — and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change.

The pipeline decision was a true upset. Everyone — and I mean everyone who “knew” how these things work — seemed certain that the president would approve it.

Commentary: The 2011 ASPO-USA Conference: Truth in Energy, Truth in Community

by

Media types are fond of saying that if an event doesn’t get covered, it didn’t happen. But this conference definitely happened. And what is created was a general assembly of a community, one that shows tremendous promise as a model for cross-sector collaboration. This kind of collaboration is desperately needed if we are to have anything resembling a soft landing as we head down the fossil carbon mountain.

Throwing out the master’s tools and building a better house

by

This movement is winning. It’s winning by being broad and inclusive, by emphasizing what we have in common and bridging differences between the homeless, the poor, those in freefall, the fiscally thriving but outraged, between generations, races and nationalities and between longtime activists and never-demonstrated-before newcomers. It’s winning by keeping its eyes on the prize, which is economic justice and direct democracy, and by living out that direct democracy through assemblies and other means right now.

World headed for irreversible climate change — IEA

by

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Canadian Gas Exports Threaten Energy Security

by

Natural gas has been hyped of late as a way to reduce carbon emissions and reliance on oil and coal in business-as-usual growth scenarios. Much of this speculation rests on new technology to produce gas from previously inaccessible shale reservoirs.

Governing politicians in British Columbia have been particularly receptive to the perceived gold mine that could result from developing shale gas in northeast British Columbia and constructing the Pacific Trail Pipeline so that gas may be exported to Asia via a new terminal in Kitimat. Does this make sense considering the longer term interests of Canadians?