July 9, 2008
CNN Money has an article up on congressional efforts to address rising gas prices and open up more areas to oil drilling: Congress has been debating four main issues: limiting the role of speculators, increasing domestic oil drilling, taxing Big Oil to fund renewables, and capping greenhouse gas emissions. The most likely scenario is one...
July 9, 2008
The Interior Department released a proposed rule this week that would allow alternative energy projects that generate power from wind, solar, wind, and wave energy to be located in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.
July 8, 2008
The New York Times has a story in the Sunday edition about the dreaded $100 fill-up, calling it a “new financial milestone” for some car owners. Clearly prices at the pump are digging into family budgets and energy prices are certainly newsworthy. But this story leads with a profile of Bryan Carisone (a heating and...
July 8, 2008
The Renewable Fuels Agency (a U.K. group) released the so-called Gallagher review on July 7, a report assessing the “indirect effects” of greater biofuels production. The report was requested by the British government. Ed Gallagher, chair of the Renewable Fuels Agency, laid out the report’s conclusions: At this stage...
July 8, 2008
A report from Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), “The Truth About Biofuels,” argues against reliance on liquid biofuels, concluding that 1) “there are drawbacks as well as advantages” to liquid fuels, 2) the limitations of corn-based ethanol have become clearer, and 3) second-generation biofuels...
July 8, 2008
Record oil prices are leading energy companies and American consumers to support oil and natural gas exploration off the Florida coast. Even politicians who were wary of the political risks of supporting drilling are jumping on the bandwagon. According to the Associated Press: In Florida, movement was underway even before President Bush...
July 7, 2008
Former Bill Clinton campaign advisor Ron Klain predicts in the New York Times that “If gas is still more than $4 a gallon on Election Day, there is no way a Republican will continue to control the White House.” The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that says it’s Democrats who “are in a vise this summer, pinned...
July 5, 2008
The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced this week that it will resume accepting applications for solar development on public lands. The decision comes after a month-long halt to the agency’s solar program after critics raised concerns about the environmental and economic impacts on six western states (Arizona,...
July 3, 2008
The Wall Street Journal looks at landowners who are picking up cash in exchange for granting production companies the right to drill on their property. Some companies are targeting landowners in economically depressed areas, who find the leasing payments hard to refuse despite concerns about the impact of drilling (namely, water supplies...
July 3, 2008
The New York Times reports on the weather’s impact on crops grown for fuel. The piece takes a look, of course, at the recent floods in the Midwest that may devastate some farmers’ yields. Crops, it turns out, are as vulnerable as oil rigs during a Gulf hurricane. Some of the corn wiped out this year was headed to refineries...