Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The mood amongst oil company executives meeting in London this week for the Petroleum Week conference was largely bullish, with global oil demand expected to recover this year as the world economy crawls out of recession. But the production side of the equation is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive…
-Controversy mounts in EU over fall-out from biofuel
-British Airways to fly jets on green fuel made from London’s rubbish by 2014
-BA’s biofuels plans mean a lot of garbage: the problem of “peak waste”
-What’s stopping us getting solar power from deserts?
-Norway plans the world’s most powerful wind turbine
-It’s Green Against Green In Mojave Desert Solar Battle
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has initiated a review of the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for wood heaters. That might seem like a desperately boring bureaucratic project, and in some ways it probably will be, but after all the hand-wringing and endless haggling is over, the result could be fundamental changes to wood heating technology that could shake the foundations of the manufacturers that make it and forever alter the wood heating experience of users.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China’s Growth
-India
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
-America’s Food-To-Fuel Problem
-EU biofuels significantly harming food production in developing countries
-Burn Up the Biosphere and Call It Renewable Energy
-Palm oil deal ‘a threat to the rainforest’
Millions of job losses are pushing the U.S. Senate to consider a Jobs and Energy bill, even though Cap and Trade appears to be on life support. What are Five Key Measures that must be in a new Bill to avoid being a “half-ass..d” effort? (term from Sen. Lindsey Graham descrbing limited climate bill)
Wood is a renewable fuel because young trees grow up to replace those harvested for fuel. That’s a simple enough statement, but there is much more to consider when you look into the details.
Micro-algae have considerable potential for the production of biofuel, but at present the process of producing fuel from algae would appear to be currently uneconomic. If fuel from micro-algae is to be economic the entire algal biomass should be utilised and anaerobic digestion could play an important part in the exploitation of algae to produce algal energy.
-What’s Missing from the New Clean Energy Agenda?
-Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record
-America Is Not Yet Lost
-Seven States of Energy Debt
-The population crash
-Getting connected: Europe’s green energy ‘supergrid’
-Pro-Moscow Yanukovych ‘to win Ukraine election’
Are current corporate-dominated international institutions inadequate to the task of meeting the multiple planetary survival challenges they themselves have helped create?…Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute (postcarbon.org), talks about the factors contributing to the stalemate in the Copenhagen climate summit, the other ‘game ending’ challenges confronting the current economic system, and the bottom-up steps necessary to move to a post-carbon economy.
