Energy Policy

ODAC Newsletter – May 13

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Oil demand appears to finally be responding to high oil prices, most significantly in the US where petrol prices have hit $4/gallon. The IEA cut its 2011 demand forecast by 190,000 barrels/day on news of increased US stockpiles and reduced consumption, and prices dropped back from recent highs to around $110/barrel for Brent…

How to discourage energy conservation

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I got serious about cutting gas heating costs after losing my job as a research scientist last year, but now I’m paying more for each unit of natural gas delivered to my house. This was odd, so I had to look a little deeper. After some investigation I found that we are paying a lot more for each hundred cubic feet (CCF) of natural gas than our neighbors because we use so much less than they do. I’m being penalized for conserving gas, so my local gas utility is working against me.

How the Michael Lewis school of revisionism informs the gas debate

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The shale gas industry might brush up on its John Lennon (“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”). Alerted numerous times of fast-coming federal regulation unless it goes transparent and begins to police itself, the industry’s hard-liners have dug in under the assumption that — as has befallen so many other seemingly inevitable business reforms — this one too will die of its own accord.

Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century? – Foreword to new report

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A detailed new energy report argues that the natural gas industry has propagated dangerously false claims about natural gas production supply, cost and environmental impact. The report, "Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century" is authored by leading geoscientist and Post Carbon Institute Fellow J. David Hughes.

Public resources, private resources

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I’ve met a lot of people who lived all or much of their lives with very little power, and seen their homes, and I have ample visual evidence that often life can be quite graciously lived with little or no gas, electricity, and other inputs. The critical difference between a life lived graciously with little, and one without is the realm of how resources – whether land or fossil fuels or whatever – are used collectively. Thus, I’d like to propose what I think is an important and useful distinction – between public use of energy and resources and private use of energy resources. The former, I would argue, is essential to maintaining a good life, the latter is not.

Tetsunari Iida on the renewable future of Japan

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It is clear that moving towards renewables is about more than simply adding more wind turbines and solar panels, but rather it is about a significant system re-think. For instance, one important measure would be to make the national power grid independent from the ten major electricity supply companies. That way anyone can set up their own electricity supply company and the current monopolistic structures would give way to a more diverse system.

Midday with Dan Rodricks Power Ahead: Coal

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Hour two, on day two, of Midday’s special series Power Ahead continues looking at fossil fuels. The focus of this hour is coal. Our guests this hour are Richard Heinberg, author and senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute., Don Shields, executive director, Center for Energy, University of Pittsburgh, Roger Bezdek, clean coal and energy security advocate and Mike Moore, president, Maryland Coal Association.

Will the UK abandon its climate targets?

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The evidence of this fight at the very heart of government makes it clear that climate change emerges from a structural problem within the capitalist economic system, as green economists have long argued. Both sides in this current spat are right: we must have CO2 emissions, but we cannot have CO2 emissions. The only was to resolve this apparent impasse is to ditch the 19th-century economic paradigm we are still suffering for the ideas of green economics that Caroline Lucas has called ‘the economic paradigm for the 21st century’.