Energy

Major Berkeley Conference on Climate and Energy

Today and tomorrow, Berkeley is hosting a major conference featuring leading scientists, engineers, and policy analysts.  The keynote speakers include: Ralph Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences Chris Field, Co-chair, IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Arun Majumdar, Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, DOE A live webcast is available here.

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Chilly in Baltimore: Energy Efficiency and Wind Power

I heard an interesting story on NPR today about “district cooling” in which a company in Baltimore uses ice to produce chilled water, which is transported to a number of building in the city for supplemental cooling.  What really struck me as cool about this (sorry about the pun) is the fact that this system …

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Berkeley Law/CLEE Publish White Paper on Efforts to Suspend California’s AB 32

Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) has today published, “California at the Crossroads: Proposition 23, AB 32 and Climate Change.” This white paper is intended to provide an objective, non-partisan analysis of California Proposition 23, an initiative measure that will appear on California’s November 2nd general election ballot. If enacted, Proposition …

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Breaking News: Oil Rig Explosion

The Washington Post reports that a non-producing rig in 2500 feet of water has exploded off the Louisiana Coast. More details at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090202590.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

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The Nano Road to Energy Efficiency

Science Daily reports: Researchers at Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered a new way to apply nanostructure coatings to make heat transfer far more efficient, with important potential applications to high tech devices as well as the conventional heating and cooling industry. These coatings can remove heat four times faster …

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Indirect Land Use Change and Biofuels

Biofuels are a promising way to reduce carbon emissions, but they have a potential side-effect: indirect land use change (ILUC).  ILUC is more serious for some fuels than others, but it’s a possibility with any biofuel except perhaps algae grown in tanks in the desert. The logic of ILUC seems undeniable: because demand for food …

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New Energy Publications from the National Academy of Sciences

Assessment of Technologies for Improving Light Duty Vehicle Fuel Economy estimates the potential fuel savings and costs for three types of engines: spark-ignition gasoline, compression-ignition diesel, and hybrid.  Adapting the full combination of improved technologies in medium and large cars and pickup trucks with spark-ignition engines could reduce fuel consumption by 29 percent at an …

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Natural Gas from Shale: The Next Energy Boom? The New Climate Solution?

Steve Levine has an interesting article in TNR touting shale gas as the Next Big Thing in the energy world. He predicts falling oil prices (as low as $30/barrel) and geopolitical dislocations.  He does observe, however, that there are some unresolved environmental issues.  Some of those issues are addressed in a programmatic EIS that’s available …

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The Offshore Oil Drilling Debate–Revisited (Again)

Earlier this month, the Sacramento Bee published an interesting point-counterpoint debate over the wisdom of re-commencing offshore oil drilling in the U.S., with a particular focus on California and the West Coast.   Arguing in favor of the proposition was U.C. Santa Barbara Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies Eric R.A.N.  Smith, who maintained that …

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Future Oil Prices

The Energy Information Agency at DOE has some really interesting projections of future oil use and prices.  According to the EIA, in their baseline scenario, “the price of light sweet crude oil in the United States (in real 2007 dollars) rises from $61 per barrel in 2009 to $110 per barrel in 2015 and $130 …

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