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Particle emissions into Earth’s atmosphere affect both human health and the climate. So we should limit them, right? For health reasons, yes, we should indeed do that; but, paradoxically, limiting such emissions would cause global warming to increase

Particle Energy Climate Change Health

It has been evident for years that Europe needs an energy system that can cut dependence on fossil fuels, bring down future energy costs, and fight climate change. But the Fukushima accident in Japan one year ago underscored the need for an energy source that will fill the gap left by declining nuclear power. Many ask: is renewable energy up to the task?

Illustration by Paul Lachine
In the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said that now is the time for the renewables sector to “prove itself as a scalable, affordable, and secure energy source….I believe that is going to happen.”

Nuclear Energy Green Energy Climate Science

In short, the answer to whether renewable energy can fill the gap left by declining nuclear power is yes. Europe does not need nuclear power to meet its future energy needs.

Renewable Energy Nuclear Wind Green Energy

Gasoline is significantly undertaxed in the United States — in two senses. The federal 18.4 cent-per-gallon gas tax is the main source for the Federal Highway Trust Fund, but it hasn’t been raised in two decades, starving U.S. infrastructure. Also, the gas tax is set too low to offset the negative side effects for society — economists call them “externalities” — associated with gasoline consumption.

Gasoline Energy Economics Tax Climate Change

Access to trees and wildlife and cleaner air in Connecticut was great, but for the climate, it's dense and efficient Manhattan — where cars are optional and living space is much tighter — that does less damage per capita.

Green Energy Energy Urban Country

Nuclear Energy Japan Disaster

Energy Oil Coal Green Energy United States

Republicans may think that they are making an important political statement about being anti-government, but in reality they are making a strong statement about being anti-innovation, anti-jobs and, ultimately, anti-growth.

Politics Innovation Energy Green Technology

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream speech” is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an “I have a nightmare” speech instead.

In the absence of a bold vision and a reconsideration of the problem, environmental leaders are effectively giving the “I have a nightmare” speech, not just in our press interviews but also in the way that we make our proposals. The world’s most effective leaders are not issue-identified but rather vision and value-identified. These leaders distinguish themselves by inspiring hope against fear, love against injustice, and power against powerlessness.

A positive, transformative vision doesn’t just inspire, it also creates the cognitive space for assumptions to be challenged and new ideas to surface.

Climate Change Climate Science Tar Sand Energy Public Relations

Energy Market Carbon Trade Governance Climate Change Economy Data

Is energy our friend or our enemy? In their personal lives, most people regard energy as an essential friend. It powers our computers, warms our homes in the winter, fuels our cars and planes, and provides a necessary input to produce virtually everything we use. Modern life would be inconceivable without the friendly side of energy.

But in recent decades, energy has also become an enemy. Presidents have lamented our “addiction to oil,” we have gone to war to protect oil fields from hostile powers, and air pollution from fossil fuels kills tens of thousands of people every year. Perhaps most worrisome, the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide threatens to change the earth’s climate in ways that are unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

The two faces of energy are the primary reason why energy policy is so controversial and tangled. We need national policies that address the enemies of pollution and global warming. But because energy is such a large part of consumer budgets and so central to our advanced economies, people are reluctant to allow energy prices to reflect the true social costs of energy consumption. We see this tradeoff play out in energy and environmental policy year in and year out.

Energy Policy Politics Climate Science

Last week I noted the projected increase in "fuel poverty" in the United Kingdom and speculated that such a trend might have political consequences. The UK coalition government and their creative policy analysts have come up with a solution for this difficult situation -- they are proposing to redefine "fuel poverty" in a manner that shows it to be decreasing, not increasing (see figure above from the FT). 

Voila, problem solved!

Statistics Operationalization Resaerch Fuel Energy Climate Science

Google uses enough energy to continuously power 200,000 homes.

Google's many data centers around the world burn through 260 million watts—one quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant—the New York Times reports. The company had been cagey about revealing energy usage stats in the past, probably because it didn't want to reveal to competitors how quickly its data centers were growing. It's no longer a secret that Google needs a crazy amount of data centers to keep things running smoothly.

Google Energy Data Cost Resources

A lot has been written about the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster for the future of nuclear power.  Much of the discussion has focused on the high-profile cases of Germany and of course Japan.  But overall, it seems that the aggregate effects of the disaster on the global prospects for nuclear power are pretty small. 

Nuclear Energy

With the current one-way grid, electricity flows from power plants to consumers nonstop like plumbing with no valves. You can cut off the flow to personal devices by unplugging them from outlets, but the electricity keeps flowing to your house even if you don’t need because the grid has no storage system.
The smart grid, on the other hand, is revolutionary in its ability to a) transfer electricity in multiple directions and b) store energy for convenient access. In place of traditional transformers, the smart grid, known as the “energy internet,” uses semiconductor transformers that can relay digital information in both directions like internet routers.

Energy Clean Technology Green Energy

The U.S. is in the midst of an energy revolution, and we don't mean solar panels or wind turbines. A new gusher of natural gas from shale has the potential to transform U.S. energy production—that is, unless politicians, greens and the industry mess it up.

Only a decade ago Texas oil engineers hit upon the idea of combining two established technologies to release natural gas trapped in shale formations. Horizontal drilling—in which wells turn sideways after a certain depth—opens up big new production areas. Producers then use a 60-year-old technique called hydraulic fracturing—in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into the well at high pressure—to loosen the shale and release gas (and increasingly, oil).

Energy Green Energy Shale Fracking Climate Science Environment

The same reporter for the NYT that wrote the February 27th, 2011 hit piece falsely suggesting Pennsylvania's drinking waters were poisoned with radionuclides is back at it. He has another NYT front page, sunday story attacking shale gas as a ponzi scheme and the industry as filled with Enrons.   He just about calls for FBI raids.

The piece is already rocketing around facebook sites and the internet.

Reader beware.  This reporter puts sensationalism ahead of fairness or truth. Pennsylvania's drinking waters are not poisoned with radionuclides, as substantial testing has verified, and the reading public should drink from this journalistic cup with great caution.

Could anyone imagine more sensationalistic narratives than Radiation, Ponzi, and Enron?

Consistent with this reporter's method, today's article uses often anonymous statements to paint a sensational narrative and leaves out or underplays critical information that is inconvenient to establishing the credibility of the dominant anti-gas narrative.

Journalism Energy Activism Bias

Administrator's Note: This email was sent to all Chesapeake employees from CEO Aubrey McClendon, in response to a Sunday New York Times piece by Ian Urbina entitled "Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush."
 
FW: CHK's response to 6.26.11 NYT article on shale gas
 
From: Aubrey McClendon
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2011 8:37 PM
To: All Employees
 
Dear CHK Employees:  By now many of you may have read or heard about a story in today’s New York Times (NYT) that questioned the productive capacity and economic quality of U.S. natural gas shale reserves, as well as energy reserve accounting practices used by E&P companies, including Chesapeake.  The story is misleading, at best, and is the latest in a series of articles produced by this publication that obviously have an anti-industry bias.  We know for a fact that today’s NYT story is the handiwork of the same group of environmental activists who have been the driving force behind the NYT’s ongoing series of negative articles about the use of fracking and its importance to the US natural gas supply growth revolution – which is changing the future of our nation for the better in multiple areas.  It is not clear to me exactly what these environmental activists are seeking to offer as their alternative energy plan, but most that I have talked to continue to naively presume that our great country need only rely on wind and solar energy to meet our current and future energy needs. They always seem to forget that wind and solar produce less than 2% of America electricity today and are completely non-economic without ongoing government and ratepayer subsidies.

Journalism Energy Activism Bias

The Economist puts the BP report into the context of the US government's stupefying (or should I say, stupid-ifying) decision to limit collection of energy data:
That more energy is being used than ever before is a welcome sign of economic growth after a sharp downturn. That it is being used less efficiently than before, and producing record levels of carbon dioxide, is harder to welcome. A small mercy, though, is that there are numbers like BP’s available with which to perceive such unwelcome truths. Since the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, which would become BP a few years later, first put together its annual review 60 years ago—six typewritten pages, one graph, for internal use only—they have grown into a widely valued tool for economists and energy strategists in a field where reliable compendia of facts are rare, and growing rarer. In April the United States government announced that it would stop gathering the data on which various domestic energy indicators are based, reduce efforts to assure data quality in some others and cease publication of its International Energy Statistics. It is hard to see how, if such numbers have any value at all, that doesn’t represent a false economy.
Data is important to policy analysis.

Data Policy Energy Governmentality Climate Change Carbon Emission

We have plenty of alternative technologies available at our disposal that could help make oil-dependence a thing of the past. Electric cars. High speed rail. Renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Sugar cane ethanol. The list goes on.
And yet, oil demand continues to boom worldwide, especially in China and other fast-developing nations. So what, collectively, has been our response? To produce more oil. This recent NY Times article details the expanding oil demand, and details how the United States plans to meet it — by drilling even more heavily offshore, digging deeper into shale oil onshore, and experimenting with tar sands oil, which creates even more pollution during the extraction and refinement process than the normal stuff.

Oil Energy Green Energy Capitalism Economy