Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Bright and Dark Sides of the Smart Grid

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As I was catching up on email that accumulated during my travels last week, I ran across two items highlighting the contrast between the shi...
Friday, September 24, 2010

Is Gasoline Too Cheap?

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It's an article of faith among many observers of the oil industry that gasoline is too cheap in the US. Environmentalists and economists...
Monday, September 20, 2010

Green Jobs and a Renewable Electricity Standard

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With a full-blown climate bill off the table at least for this year, a coalition of renewable energy project developers, trade associations,...
Friday, September 17, 2010

Fuel Economy Gold Standard

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I've long been fascinated by the X-Prize approach of providing substantial (but not astronomical) incentives for key breakthroughs: priv...
Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Avoiding Commoditization

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It's no secret that it's tough to make money in a commodity business. However, that's precisely what most renewable energy compa...
Monday, September 13, 2010

Post-Stimulus Transition for Renewable Energy

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One of the largest uncertainties affecting the US renewable energy sector is how it will make the transition from the special subsidies prov...
Friday, September 10, 2010

Climate-Proofing Infrastructure

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Even in an election year, it's hard to make infrastructure repair sound glamorous. Perhaps that helps explain why the latest annual repo...
Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Diesel Hybrids Arrive

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Regular readers know I'm a fan of diesel cars, having test-driven some terrific models at recent car shows, as well as renting them on p...
Friday, September 03, 2010

Oil Rig Rorschach Test

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Yesterday's fire on Mariner Energy's Vermilion 380 production platform in the Gulf of Mexico thankfully resulted in neither loss of ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Grading Cars on the Curve

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By now you may have seen some prototypes of the new-car fuel economy stickers on which the EPA is seeking public comment. The versions that ...
Monday, August 30, 2010

Germany's Nuclear Bridge

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Since I've been taking potshots at German energy policy recently , I was pleased to see that it appears the country's government is ...
Friday, August 27, 2010

The Pitfalls of Feed-In Tariffs

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I recently ran across a story indicating that regulators in Arizona are considering implementing a feed-in tariff (FIT) for solar power in t...
4 comments:
Thursday, August 26, 2010

Looking Back to Look Ahead

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Last week the Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy released its Annual Energy Review for 2009. Although it doesn't o...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

FutureGen Switches Tracks

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The standard knock on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is that it hasn't been tested and proven on an industrial scale. That's...
Friday, August 20, 2010

Oil Plumes and the Fate of the Spill

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I'm as reluctant to insert myself into the debate over what happened to all the oil that leaked from BP's Macondo well between Apr...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Scaling the Energy Transition

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The August 13 issue of Science , the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), devotes a special section to...
Monday, August 16, 2010

China's Leverage on Renewable Energy Increases

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Last month's announcement that China was cutting its export quota for rare earth elements by 72% for the second half of 2010 didn't ...
Thursday, August 12, 2010

By Executive Order

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I recently ran across a mention in the New York Times of a new study suggesting a variety of energy and climate measures the administration ...