Energy

Exxon Valdez: 20 Years Later – Lessons Learned

Today commemorates a sad and calamitous event in American environmental history: the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The key facts of that ecological disaster, recounted in yesterday’s New York Times, are by now well-known: the spill of 11 million gallons of crude oil into near-shore ocean waters, …

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Got oil?

According to research compiled by the staff at The Oil Drum, we may have hit peak oil production in 2008. Many experts predicted that peak oil would happen sometime around now, although perhaps not for another decade or so. If this research is correct, then we should expect a corresponding decrease in the supply of …

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Renewable Energy and Economic Stimulus: Better Luck This Time Around

The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, better known as the economic stimulus package, throws 11 billion dollars at infrastructure development to support renewable energy, particularly improvement and expansion of transmission grids.  It’s characterized as a win-win scenario, getting people back to work while smoothing the way for substantially less carbon-intensive energy generation.  That’s quite a …

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Failing to “Do the Math”

Remember that DOE canceled the demonstration project for carbon sequestration in Matton, Illinois because of cost over-runs.  It turns out that they screwed up the numbers, according to GAO.  Now that DOE has a Nobel prize winner at the helm, maybe its math skills will improve.

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Van Jones to CEQ

Another potentially great Obama appointment today to CEQ — a White House entity that might as well stand for Climate and Energy Questions these days.  This from Greenwire: Author and activist Van Jones will serve as a special White House adviser for “green” jobs, enterprise and innovation. Jones, 40, will work within the Council on Environmental …

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Obama on Transportation, Land Use and Energy Use

Stunning news from the White House: we actually have a US president who understands the connection between land use patterns and energy use. Obama’s stimulus bill was weak on spending for transit projects (as opposed to highway projects). But that was because it was a bill about jobs, and more highway projects just happened to …

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A Glimpse Inside the Stimulus Bill

Although the stimuls bill passed last week, there still doesn’t seem to be a lot of detailed information about its exact provisions.   It does appear, however, that the final legislation has considerable benefits for clean energy, as CNN details

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Goodbye CCELP, Hello CLEE

Three years ago, the U.C. Berkeley Law School launched a new research center devoted to environmental law and policy: the California Center for Environmental Law & Policy (CCELP).  From its inception, CCELP has worked on a variety of energy matters.  However, since 2006 the intersection of energy and environmental policy has become both more obvious …

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On the International Renewable Energy Agency

Steve’s post on the proposed International Renewable Energy Agency raises an important question: why do it this way?  It would seem to me that if one really wanted to make a difference here. you would try to integrate renewable energy issues (and perhaps mandates) into the one international organization that really matters: the World Trade …

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Barack Obama: America’s #1 Liberal

…if you follow Robert Frost and define a liberal as a man “who is too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” He lets Daschle go today after allegedly fully backing him yesterday. More to the point for this weblog, in the Senate, he completely checks out on the fight over transit funding, …

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