Energy Policy

Energy déjà vu: Obama must break with failed U.S. policies

by

Despite soaring rhetoric and some promising proposals, President Obama is repeating the same mistakes that have doomed U.S. energy policy to failure for 40 years. Until Obama and Congress finally put a true price on the fossil fuels America consumes, the U.S. will continue its addiction to foreign oil and domestic coal.

Assessing the energy implications of political intervention

by

People in power seem to be waking up to the importance of oil and talking about it in public in ways that they never have before. But this raises some questions: Do they (or we) have any idea about the likely impacts of different interventions proposed to deal with energy problems? and how can the energy implications of different interventions be assessed?

In this essay I aim to answer these questions with reference to a paper published in Energy Policy titled “The energy implications of replacing car trips with bicycle trips in Sheffield, UK”.

Surprise, surprise! Iraq war was about oil

by

Documentary evidence has emerged showing that Great Britain’s Lords and Ladies lied about how big oil companies, like BP, lusted after Iraqi oil in the months leading up to the attack on Iraq.

Oil researcher Greg Muttitt’s new book Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq presents that evidence. After a five-year struggle, he obtained more than 1,000 official documents which — how to say this — do not reflect well on the peerage, the captains of the oil industry, and the government of Tony Blair.

Man Bites Dog: CNBC runs programs that acknowledge fossil fuel resource limits

by

I was surprised that CNBC (I sometimes think that the first “C” stands for Cornucopian*) just ran two programs that seriously talked about resource limits, Sprawling from Grace on Wednesday and Fuel on Thursday.

Of the two, I think that Sprawling from Grace was a lot better, but having said that, it seemed to me to be largely a remake of End of Suburbia, and in fact Jim Kunstler was prominently featured in both. But Sprawling was on CNBC, while End of Suburbia was not.

ODAC Newsletter – Apr 22

by

Confusion around the true extent of the spare oil production capacity of Saudi Arabia increased this week following a statement by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi that his country had reduced production in March by 800,000 barrels–this despite the loss of 1 million barrels/day of production from Libya. Al Naimi went on to claim that global markets are currently oversupplied.

Energy dysfunction – April 21

by

– Oil sands investments by state-owned bank ‘not sound’, say UK greens
– Multinational fossil fuel firms use ‘biased’ study in massive lobbying push for gas
– Really Unpopular Complicated Expensive Technological Solutions For A Nonexistent Problem
– The Big Grab: 9-part series on the economic threats to Canadians posed by the Alberta oil sands