Energy Policy

Have frackers pushed their luck too far?

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Over the past week, I’ve heard from serious observers of the U.S. shale gas industry — from investment analysts, think-tank scholars and others — that we seem near a tipping point in the heated debate over the companies’ drilling methods: If there is another serious accident or two in which shale gas drillers appear to have polluted a water aquifer, look for significant regulatory curtailment of the industry, as one investment analyst put it.

Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster?

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The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline.

A guide for the perplexed energy policymaker

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If you are an energy policymaker (or layperson interested in energy) and you are NOT perplexed by the last decade, read no further. You have little to gain from what I write below. However, if you are a perplexed energy policymaker (or perplexed layperson interested in energy), please continue and learn why poor quality data, lack of transparency, broad uncertainty and flawed thinking about risk have made it difficult for many experts and the public alike to think sensibly about our energy future.

KunstlerCast: The end of growth

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A two part conversation between Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler. The conversation covers peak oil, financial dysfunction, political convulsions, generational conflict, techno-grandiosity, the fate of industrial agriculture and the suburban living arrangement. Heinberg also reacts to being labeled a “Doomer.”.