News

It’s amazing to watch the transformation of an entrepreneur into rent seeker Business Week (4/19/11) reports: Google Inc. has invested another $100 million in a clean energy project. The funding for the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon brings Google’s total clean energy investments to more than $350 million and represents the company’s latest attempt to support reliable new ways to power its expanding data centers…Data centers, or server farms, are notorious power hogs. And Google has many of them. The simple act of typing in a Google search taps into Google’s computing resources — and the grid that supplies energy to those machines…Google also invested last year in a project to line the sea floor off the East Coast with electrical cables to send power from offshore wind farms back onto land. Building capacity is one of the major costs of clean energy projects. Google has also invested in solar energy.

Now serving Columbia. I wonder what number the U.S. pulled? CNS News (4/19/11) reports: The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, is now planning a $2.84-billion loan for a massive project to expand and upgrade an oil refinery–in Cartagena, Colombia…The money would go to Reficar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecopetrol, the Colombian national oil company…“This is part of a $5.18 billion refinery and upgrade project in Cartagena, Colombia supplying petroleum products to the domestic and export markets,” the Export-Import Bank said in a statement…The U.S. government-controlled bank says the $2.84-billion in financing it plans to undertake will be the second largest project it has ever done. The largest was $3 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea.

Double stamp, no take-backs: UK solar companies cry foul in court saying the government promised subsidies and they need that money in order to stay in business Bloomberg (4/19/11) reports: Low Carbon Solar U.K. Ltd., Element Power Ltd. and eight other companies and people asked a British court to review U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne’s decision to reexamine solar subsidies…The government in March said it may cut subsidies for bigger solar projects by as much as 72 percent after announcing a comprehensive review in February of feed-in tariffs, or guaranteed prices paid for electricity from renewables. The ministry Huhne leads wants to prevent large solar farms from taking money earmarked for rooftop installations…The companies said today in an e-mailed statement that the government had set “clear expectations” that a first review wouldn’t take place until 2012, with subsidies changing in 2013. They also said the Department of Energy and Climate Change never said what the trigger would be for an early review…“In pulling back on a commitment to support solar energy, the government will cause the abandonment of hundreds of community-scale schemes,” said Mark Shorrock, chief executive of Low Carbon Solar. “The cost of not getting this right now, aside from the government meeting its climate change targets, include the creation of new jobs, a diversified income for farmers and landowners, reduced energy costs for businesses and the provision of more secure and reliable energy for the U.K.

Global Warming’s new celebrity spokesman, Charles Manson, chastises us for not putting “the trees back that we’ve butchered.” Daily Mail (4/18/11) reports: Crazed cult leader Charles Manson has broken a 20-year silence in a prison interview coinciding with the 40th anniversary of his conviction for the gruesome Sharon Tate murders – to speak out about global warming…The infamous killer, who started championing environmental causes from behind bars, bemoaned the ‘bad things’ being done to environment in a rambling phone interview from his Californian jail cell…’Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere…’If we don’t change that as rapidly as I’m speaking to you now, if we don’t put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we’ve butchered, if we don’t go to war against the problem…’ he added, trailing off.

Possible ice breaker for Secretaries Salazar and Clinton, “Name all the areas of the world you’ve shut down for energy production” The Hill (4/19/11) reports: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are both slated to attend the May 12 meeting of the intergovernmental Arctic Council in Greenland, Salazar told reporters Monday…“One of the items we will be discussing in that forum will be how we move forward with oil-and-gas development,” Salazar said at a press conference on drilling…The intergovernmental council is made up of nations that border the Arctic Circle including Russia, the U.S., Greenland, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It’s designed to enhance cooperation and coordination among Arctic states…Salazar’s actions and comments on Arctic development will be closely watched amid uncertainty about the extent to which Interior will allow oil-and-gas drilling in a fragile region believed to hold massive energy resources…Royal Dutch Shell has for years been seeking federal permission to develop billions of dollars worth of leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska’s northern coast, and other companies are also planning exploration. Multiple bills on Capitol Hill are aimed at expediting development in the region.

The unstoppable can-do American spirit collides with the immoveable U.S. Government — Shell expects to drill in Alaska in 2012 Wall Street Journal (4/15/11) reports: Royal Dutch Shell PLC expects to start drilling in Alaska’s Arctic waters in the summer of next year and have in place an oil-containment system specifically designed for the area ready at the same time, the head of the company’s U.S. operations said Friday…”Our aspiration is to drill in the 2012 season,” Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. unit of the Anglo-Dutch giant, told Dow Jones Newswires in a interview. “We are hopeful, but also cautions.”..Shell still has to obtain a number of permits from the federal government in order to go ahead with its $3.5 billion investment to drill in the state’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Shell’s plans have been delayed by environmental lawsuits and permit issues on top of calls for better spill prevention and containment capabilities following BP PLC’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year…Mr. Odum said the company will wait until about September to see the amount of progress in the permitting process before making a final decision to start deploying the system needed to drill next summer. “It takes about six months to build up the capacity you need to start the program,” Mr. Odum said. “This is a very significant resource for the country, which is worth pursuing, and we are focused on getting it done.”..Shell is planning to have in place an oil-containment system specifically designed to work in the cold-climate conditions of the Arctic by the time drilling starts, Mr. Odum said.

Good news is that Government Motors is going to sell a Volt. The bad news is that it’s replacing the one that burned down a garage Fox News (4/15/11) reports: Fire officials suspect an electric hybrid car may have sparked an overnight blaze in a garage in Barkhamsted on Center Hill Road…. Officials said they can’t rule out that the couple’s brand new Chevy Volt hybrid had something to do with the blaze…Homeowner Storm Connors and his wife, Dee, said they awoke to the sound of a smoke alarm around 4 a.m. The couple said they have lived in the home for nearly 40 years. They built it and raised their children there, so when the flames took over their attached garage Thursday morning, burning it down to its beams, the couple started to panic. They said they were worried they were going to lose their home and the memories inside…”I walked outside and looked in the garage door and it was flaming,” Dee Connors said. “I grabbed a pocketbook so I’d have a cellphone and a driver’s license and a jacket and a pair of slacks. I had no shoes, my feet were freezing.”

Instead of listening to kids who are supported by their parents, the President should be listening to American workers who are feeling the pocketbook squeeze at the pump The Hill (4/17/11) reports:  A dozen climate change activists expecting a discussion with White House staffers got a surprise meeting with the president himself…A dozen young climate change activists expecting a discussion with White House staffers Friday instead got a meeting with President Obama himself…The surprise meeting came hours ahead of the April 15-18 Power Shift 2011 conference, which is slated to include criticism of a White House that some activists allege has not been aggressive enough on climate change…“We went thinking we would meet with senior staff and in walked Barack Obama,” said Courtney Hight, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition that organized the conference, which opened Friday night…“Young people got to sit down at a table in the West Wing and have a meeting with the president and share what our priorities are and talk about solutions, and we talked about the impact of fossil fuels in our communities, and how they can wreak havoc,” Hight said onstage at the conference of largely collegiate activists.

This man has swagger Wall Street Journal (4/16/11) reports: The Chevron CEO is a rare breed these days: an unapologetic oil man. For decades—going back to Jimmy Carter—politicians have been peddling an America free of fossil fuels. Mr. Obama has taken that to an unprecedented level, closing off more acreage to drilling, pouring money into green energy, pushing new oil company taxes, instituting anticarbon regulations. America is going backward on affordable energy, even as oil hits $110 a barrel…As for biofuels, “we would need to consume land the size of states” to hit the country’s current ethanol targets. Chevron is investigating biofuels, but Mr. Watson says the “economics aren’t there” yet. Unlike many CEOs, Mr. Watson insists on products that can prosper without federal subsidies, which he believes are costly and lacking in transparency when “consumer pockets are tight, government pockets are tight…Bottom line: “We’re going to need oil and gas and coal for a long time if America wants to keep the lights on.”

Problem: supply of crude oil from Middle East is unstable. Solution: drill for oil in the U.S. and import from Canada Bloomberg (4/18/11) reports: Crude prices currently include a premium of $15 to $20 a barrel, OPEC’s Secretary General said, commenting on the commodity’s 19 percent gain this year, driven by rising unrest in oil-producing nations in the Middle East…Oil officials from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Iran joined Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, in saying there is no shortage of fuel in the market…“I can’t say the market is oversupplied, but the market is adequately supplied and our production in March is almost the same as our production in December, even though one of our member countries is out of production,” OPEC’s Abdalla el-Badri told reporters today in Kuwait. “Yes, the price is a concern.”..Additional shipments to make up for halts in Libyan output has been met by a lack of buyers, el-Badri said, when asked if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will decide to raise production when it meets in June…Crude fell as much as 1.1 percent in New York to $108.47 a barrel today after Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said yesterday that the global “market is oversupplied” with crude.

NYT asked and answered their own rhetorical question, but here’s the kicker, they expect us to believe them on their word New York Times (4/18/11) reports: A year after BP’s Macondo well blew out, killing 11 men and spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the much-maligned federal agency responsible for policing offshore drilling has been remade, with a tough new director, an awkward new name and a sheaf of stricter safety rules. It is also trying to put some distance between itself and the industry it regulates… But is it fixed? The simple answer is no. Even those who run the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service concede that it will be years before they can establish a robust regulatory regime able to minimize the risks to workers and the environment while still allowing exploration offshore…“We are much safer today than we were a year ago,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who oversees the agency, “but we know we have more to do.”..Oil industry executives and their allies in Congress said that the Obama administration, in its zeal to overhaul the agency, has lost sight of what they believe the agency’s fundamental mission should be — promoting the development of the nation’s offshore oil and gas resources. Environmentalists said the agency, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has made only cosmetic changes and remains too close to the people it is supposed to regulate.

Two cheers. When in comes to government-induced green energy investment, the U.S. doesn’t waste as much money as Germany of China Global Post (4/18/11) reports: Germany and BEIJING, China — In the rough and blustery North Sea, almost 30 miles off Germany’s coast, 12 wind turbines tower over the water, with rotors longer than football fields…Like most wind turbines, those that make up the Alpha Ventus Offshore Wind Farm have gearboxes that transmit the power of the rotors to much faster-spinning cogs that generate electricity…The strain from wind turbulence makes these gearboxes the most fragile part of the turbines and a true engineering headache…Six of the Alpha Ventus gearboxes are made by Renk, a 130-year-old engineering company based in Augsburg, southern Germany. The three decades in which Renk has been involved with wind turbines haven’t always been easy, said Toni Weiss, general manager of Renk’s industrial gear division. But he estimates the firm is now five to seven years ahead of most rivals

Well, there’s a first time for everything Houston Chronicle (4/14/11) The top U.S. officials in charge of offshore oil and gas exploration on Wednesday got a close-up look at the first deep-water drilling project approved since last year’s oil spill…Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and his chief offshore regulator, Michael Bromwich, spent two hours examining new safety systems – including one spurred by the spill – on the Ensco 8501 rig that is about to begin drilling a bypass well for Noble Energy in the Gulf of Mexico..They touched drilling fluids hauled from pits on the semisubmersible rig, interviewed workers about their jobs and studied the systems used as a last line of defense against surging oil and gas…Afterward, Salazar said he was impressed that “testing capabilities have been significantly enhanced since a year ago.”

Are you sure wind is stochastic?  Because Denise Bode keeps telling me that it is reliable Seeking Alpha (4/14/11) reports: Everybody knows that wind power is variable, which can be troublesome for a society that needs reliable power all day, every day. When inquiring minds ask whether wind power can ever be a reliable energy source for the U.S., we’re soothed by calm assurances that better transmission networks and wider geographic dispersion can overcome the variability with no fuss, muss or bother. Occasionally, however, the facts are too glaring to ignore and somebody needs to insist on a reality check. Today is one of those days for me…The Bonneville Power Administration, or BPA, operates in the Pacific Northwest. It has a geographic footprint of 300,000 square miles, it manages electric power generation and distribution in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Western Montana, and it exports more than half of its power production. In The All True April Fool’s Edition of the Department of Energy’s Blog, the following graph tracked the BPA’s regional load and power production for a period of seven days. Wind power, a quintessential favorite of renewable energy advocates everywhere, is the green line at the bottom of the graph…

It’s the biofuels, stupid CNN Money (4/14/11) reports: As global food prices rise near record highs, the World Bank warned Thursday that further spikes could push millions more people deeper into poverty…The organization that loans money to developing nations said its global food price index was up 36% in March from levels a year earlier. The increase was driven by sharp boosts in prices for corn, wheat, soybeans and other staples… Despite a modest drop versus the month before, the index remains near its 2008 peak…The surge in global food prices has already driven 44 million people below the “extreme poverty line,” which the World Bank defines as living on just $1.25 a day…An additional 10% increase in food prices would cause another 10 million people to fall below the poverty line, while a 30% spike would lead to 34 million more poor, according to the World Bank.

What is the green’s answer to high oil prices? Force Americans to buy more expensive, smaller, less capable, less powerful, but more fuel-efficient cars. Never mind that Europe has already done this and only 80% of the distance traveled is still by car–but in small cars Los Angeles Times (4/14/11) reports: There is no magic wand that will bring down the price of gasoline, which has once again crossed the $4 mark in California. But there is a long-term solution that will inoculate us from higher costs in the future…The Obama administration can’t do much to lower the price of a gallon of gas, but it is on the cusp of a crucial decision that could help consumers come out ahead because they would need less gas…Officials are quietly working on just how steeply to require the auto industry to cut emissions and increase mileage in the next generation of cars, SUVs and pickups. Their decision, coming as early as May, could require dramatically cleaner vehicles that would cut carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 6% a year and average 62 miles per gallon. The new rules would be phased in from 2017 to 2025…Obviously, using less gas is good for the environment. It means less carbon dioxide pollution and smog. It also boosts our energy security — a big deal, given the uncertainty of oil supplies from troubled regions and often unsavory players — and saves us money at the pump. That beats sending our dollars overseas.

Talk about earning your pay; Rep. Doc Hastings pushes through three new bills that would help expand American energy New York Times (4/14/11) reports: In a grueling nine-hour markup, the House Natural Resources Committee approved a trio of bills yesterday aimed at increasing production of domestic oil and gas off the nation’s coasts… he advance of bills by Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to accelerate and expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans is an early victory in the House GOP’s “American Energy Initiative.” The proposals could receive House votes as early as next month …Democrats loaded the docket with more than two dozen amendments in hopes of making the markup uncomfortable for Republicans, whom they blamed for turning a blind eye to unanswered questions from the BP PLC oil spill last year in the Gulf…But the bills emerged mostly unchanged with the notable exception of a provision by Texas Republican Bill Flores to extend lease terms for operators whose permitting was delayed in the wake of the BP spill.

We imagine that they will bring the same diligence to this as they have to every other instance where affordable, reliable energy is involved E&E News (4/14/11) reports: The Interior Department tomorrow will launch a new evaluation of the effects of oil shale leasing across millions of acres of federal land in the West…The programmatic environmental review — to be announced in tomorrow’s Federal Register — is Interior’s first step to complying with a February settlement with environmental groups to revisit a George W. Bush administration plan to offer oil shale leases on 2 million acres…The administration will also be reviewing Bush-era royalty rates designed to attract research into developing the resource…At issue is a 2008 program that expanded the available acreage for commercial tar-sands leasing and amended eight resource management plans in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to make roughly 1.9 million acres available for commercial oil shale development.

Britain is on track to miss renewable energy goal despite considerable subsidies Bloomberg (2/13/11) reports: The U.K. will likely miss a goal set by the European Union to derive 15 percent of its energy supply from clean sources by 2020, a research group said…A milestone, to get 10 percent of its electricity in 2010 from sources such as the wind and sun, was missed, the Renewable Energy Foundation said today in a statement. That was a target set during the former Labour party leadership…“Failure to meet the much-discussed 2010 target, in spite of very high levels of consumer subsidy, is a clear indication that the EU 2020 goals are impractical and unaffordable,” John Constable, policy and research director for REF said today by telephone. “We need an urgent rethink.”…The U.K. generated 6.5 percent of its electricity from renewable energy last year, according to the London-based group’s research, which was based on data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and energy regulator Ofgem.

For those of you who were thinking that a carbon tax would be better than cap and trade, why not have both? E&E News (4/14/11) reports: The European Union today proposed a stark restructuring of the bloc’s taxes on fuels and heating oil, including fees tied to greenhouse gas emissions. The plan, which faces multiple hurdles, likely will draw steep opposition from E.U. countries wary of rising gasoline prices…For years, Europe has pondered whether to bolster its existing cap-and-trade system — which places limits on CO2 emissions from sources such as power plants and factories — with a carbon tax on oil and fuels used in home heating, including coal. Several European nations, like Sweden and Finland, have long employed carbon taxes. But last year France, facing social unrest, abandoned similar plans…The carbon tax will be necessary for the union to meet its ambitious unilateral goal to slash its CO2 emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, said E.U. taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta. Europe’s existing energy taxes are outmoded — for example, they tax ethanol more than coal — and countries need certainty in drafting recovery plans, he said.

Sure it’s possible to get 17 percent of our gasoline imports from algae (or from Jack Daniels) but the question is, what will it cost? Department of Energy (4/13/11) reports: Every day, the United States spends about $1 billion to import foreign oil, money that we could be investing in American energy and the American economy. President Obama recently announced an ambitious but achievable goal of reducing our oil imports by a third by 2025. To meet this goal, we will need to increase our use of homegrown advanced biofuels…Today, the Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) came out with a new study that shows that 17 percent of the United States’ imported oil for transportation could be replaced with American-grown biofuels from algae…Developing the next generation of biofuels is an important step towards reducing our dependence on foreign oil and advancing new economic opportunities throughout the country.

What does this geologist have against poor people? Times Live (4/13/11) reports: Fracking should not be allowed in South Africa. Ask just about any South African who’s heard about it – sheep farmers, rural labourers or even city-slicker geologists like myself – and they’ll tell you that fracking is dirty, wasteful of water and a solution to nothing but short-sighted corporate greed. It’s a no-brainer: we don’t want it… Fracking – oil and gas industry slang for “hydraulic fracturing” – is a technology used to extract natural gas trapped as tiny bubbles in underground layers of gas shale. After a well has been drilled into a stratum of gas-bearing rock, large quantities of fracking fluid, consisting of water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals, is pumped into it at high pressure, fracturing the source rock and allowing the gas to escape towards the surface.

What do you think Obama said this morning: be careful what you wish for or I love it when a plan comes together Washington Post (4/12/11) reports: Gasoline prices are soaring toward $4 a gallon, a threshold that some analysts say will damage the fragile economic recovery and crimp consumer spending just as families are planning their summer vacations… Bill Simon, chief executive of Wal-Mart U.S., said recently that the retailer sees fewer customers when gas prices begin to rise, because its mammoth stores are typically farther away than local grocery and convenience stores…Oil prices above $100 will hurt the recovery, the IEA report said. “Economic impacts from high prices are never instantaneous, and often take months to materialize, but preliminary data for early 2011 already show signs of oil demand slowdown,” the IEA report said. “Unfortunately, the surest remedy for high prices may ultimately prove to be high prices themselves.”

Would everyone who understands the meaning of the phrase “arbitrary and capricious” please stand up? E&E News (4/12/11) reports: A top U.S. EPA official shook the oil and gas industry today with the assertion that injecting diesel underground is illegal unless a drilling company got a permit…”There’s no permit to go get,” said Lee Fuller of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents drillers. EPA’s lack of clarity on the technical but politically charged portion of the hydraulic fracturing debate frustrates the industry, he said…Under persistent questioning at a Senate subcommittee hearing today, EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe reluctantly stated that drillers who “frack” with diesel are supposed to get a permit, and if they do not, they are violating the law (Greenwire, April 12)…Perciasepe resisted efforts by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and others to clarify what EPA is doing about such potential violations. He said the agency is following up on congressional investigations on the topic and reiterated details of a multi-year study of fracturing. But his answer was enough to make industry take interest…”This is the first time EPA has taken an explicit position on the issue,” said Matt Armstrong, who represents oil and gas firms at the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.

We hate to point this out, but they have yet to meet the 2010 standard.  But that probably doesn’t make any difference when you are hurtling into the abyss Bloomberg (4/12/11) reports: Gov. Jerry Brown is poised to give California the most aggressive standard in the country for renewable energy, requiring that one-third of utilities’ power comes from solar cells, windmills or other alternative sources within 10 years…The Democratic governor is expected to sign the legislation Tuesday at a solar plant in the San Francisco Bay area, accompanied by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu…Supporters say the standard will mean cleaner air and lead to less reliance on foreign oil. They also say it will assure investors that demand for renewable energy is strong and will create an environment that promotes job growth in the industry…Some critics say the move will drive up California’s already-high energy costs, hurting companies’ competitiveness.

Remember this in about a month when the President calls for more drilling to reduce his political vulnerability on gasoline prices Politico (4/12/11) reports: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday that Republicans have a “sense of amnesia” about last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill in pushing for legislation to spur more offshore oil and gas production…And he warned that if another disastrous spill struck and “we didn’t have the ability to contain it, it would probably mean death to oil and gas development in America’s oceans.” “I don’t have amnesia, and neither does the president,” Salazar told reporters at the Interior Department. “And much of the legislation that I have seen being bandied around, especially with the House Republicans, is almost as if the Deepwater Horizon Macondo well incident never happened.”…Salazar said he was speaking specifically about legislation from House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and perhaps from other Republicans…Hastings has introduced three bills aimed at expediting and expanding offshore energy development. His panel is set to vote on them Wednesday.

What? You mean that people take advantage of venal and corrupt government extortion efforts to feather their own nests? E&E News (4/12/11) reports: Officials along the Gulf Coast have spent tens of millions of dollars — furnished by BP PLC — on gear, technology and vehicles, much of which has little to do with the oil cleanup…Much of the money was provided with no strings attached by the oil giant last spring while the crisis was unfolding. Many of the expenditures were only remotely connected with spill cleanup efforts…Reserve police officers in a Mississippi town bought Tasers. A Louisiana parish president received an iPad. A Florida county spent $560,000 on concerts to promote its oil-free beaches…Some of the money went to towns and cities that were never even touched by the oil…Altogether, BP said it paid state and local governments more than $754 million as of March 31, not including $694 million in reimbursements to the federal government…Although BP and the federal government took the lead on cleanup efforts, many communities said they needed additional tools…Charlotte Randolph, the Lafourche Parish president who received the iPad, said she needed it in addition to her parish-paid Blackberry to communicate with staff and officials. She purchased the iPad on Aug. 26, 2010, a month after the well was capped and a few weeks after the federal government said it had cleaned up most of the oil.

Governor Moonbeam plans on powering California with sunbeams Seattle Times (4/12/11) reports:Gov. Jerry Brown plans to sign legislation that would require California utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources, giving the state the most aggressive alternative energy mandate in the U.S.Under the bill, California utilities and other power providers would have until the end of 2020 to draw 33 percent of their power from solar panels, windmills, landfill gases, small hydroelectric plants and other renewable sources…Supporters said the increase from the current 20 percent target will reassure investors that demand for renewable energy will grow, fueling a field that has been one of the few growth spots for California’s economy during the recession…U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was expected to attend the bill signing ceremony Tuesday at the SunPower-Flextronics solar manufacturing plant in the San Francisco Bay area city of Milpitas.

Oscar Wilde once described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience.  Which sounds like a pretty good description of the Obama Administration’s fetish with solar and wind power E&E News (4/11/12) reports: California’s most aggressive large-scale solar power developer today won a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the federal government…The Department of Energy announced plans to direct the funds to Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Inc. for completion of a 392-megawatt solar-thermal generation facility in Ivanpah, Calif. The plant, which is expected to go live in 2013, is one of a handful of renewable energy projects to be streamlined by the Obama administration under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act…The DOE loan adds to $530 million in investments from private equity investors (E&ENews PM, Feb. 15)…Also assuming liability for the DOE loan are NRG Solar LLC and Google Inc. A BrightSource spokesman reached today said Google has joined the partnership with a $168 million investment, making the Internet search giant a new equity partner…In October 2010, NRG said it would invest up to $300 million in the project.

Even potheads understand the need for access to affordable and reliable energy Evan Mills (4/11/11) reports: What kind of facility has lighting as intense as that found in an operating room (500-times more than needed for reading), 6-times the air-change rate of a biotech laboratory and 60-times that of a home, and the electric power intensity of a datacenter?…The emergent industry of indoor Cannabis production results in prodigious energy use, costs, and greenhouse-gas pollution.  Large-scale industrialized and highly energy-intensive indoor cultivation of Cannabis is driven by criminalization, pursuit of security, and the desire for greater process control and yields. The practice occurs across the United States and in many other countries…The analysis performed in this study finds that indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. homes. This corresponds to 1% of national electricity consumption or 2% of that in households. The yearly greenhouse-gas pollution (carbon dioxide, CO2 ) from the electricity plus associated transportation fuels equals that of 3 million cars. Energy costs constitute a quarter of wholesale value…In California, the top-producing state—and one of 17 states to allow cultivation for medical purposes—the practice is responsible for about 3% of all electricity use or 8% of household use. Due to higher electricity prices and cleaner fuels used to make electricity, California incurs 70% of national energy costs but only 20% of national CO2 emissions.

Up, up and away! Gas prices soar as President Obama continues his war on affordable and reliable energy CBS Chicago (4/11/12) reports:  At one time, $5 per gallon gas seemed like a far-fetched idea, but that is no longer the case…As of Monday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in the Chicago area is $4.11, compared with $3.71 a month ago, and about $3.10 a gallon at this time a year ago…Some experts say $5 per gallon gas is possible by Memorial Day-or sometime in summer. Others caution that reaching that mark is unlikely over the next six weeks. In Chicago, the prices keep rising to near-record levels–with no relief in sight…Right now, oil markets are so skittish that records set in 2008 could fall.

T. Boone “Rent Seeker” Pickens gets some favorable ink in the NYT and the author is right to point out it’s not about money, but power — in every sense of the word New York Times (4/12/11) reports: On Wednesday, amid all the hullabaloo over the budget battles, a simple, discrete and largely overlooked bill was dropped into the Congressional hopper. Sponsored by two Democrats and two Republicans — that’s right: an actual bipartisan piece of legislation — its official title is the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act, or the Nat Gas Act, for short. People in the know, however, call it the Boone Pickens bill…. His critics like to point out that anything that boosts natural gas will put money in his pocket. But so what? He’s already plenty rich, and, he says, “I’m sure not doing this for the money.” Besides, he’s right…The bill introduced last week is an offshoot of the Pickens plan, his cri de coeur for energy independence, which he put together in 2008 and has spent more than $80 million promoting. Although Boone believes that our continued reliance on OPEC oil is dangerous, he also knows that even if you drill, baby, drill, as many Republicans want, it won’t make much difference. Quite simply, America is running out of oil. The Pickens plan calls for increased use of wind, solar, nuclear, even coal. ”I’m for anything that’s American,” he said.

The common sense defense: producers would rather sell than spill oil Wall Street Journal (4/11/11) reports: The Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010 was the largest offshore spill ever in the U.S. It humbled one of the oldest, biggest and most distinguished oil firms, BP, forcing it to set aside $20 billion in compensation and sacrifice its chief executive. No wonder the oil industry is doing some soul searching. In response to the catastrophe, oil companies have taken measures ranging from delaying drilling to devising new technologies to contain giant spills. Big oil has also drastically improved the oversight of contractors and training…Soon after the disaster, BP postponed its offshore drilling projects in Libya. This was before the current unrest forced it to mothball its Libya strategy for the longer term. Moreover, Total of France said it would take a closer look at its deep water CLOV project in Angola—before launching it August 2011…Searching for oil deep under the sea tends to yield the reward of huge gushers. But the blow-out preventer—the device used on a rig to stop the release of natural gas – also has to deal with unusual levels of pressure. This is critical to the safety of the entire operation. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, the device couldn’t resist the flow, which led directly to the catastrophe. The sheer scale of the disaster also meant it took months to plug the well.

Like green energy, green jobs are carbon neutral…and don’t exist Western Energy Alliance (4/7/11) reports: As the managing director for a professional recruiting and consulting firm in the energy industry, I split my time between seeking job opportunities in the renewable energy and oil and natural-gas sectors…While I have no allegiance to one over the other, reports of green jobs inspired me to target much of last year’s efforts in the renewable sector…“Green jobs” is a big buzz term, thanks in part to the president’s campaign promise to recover our stalled economy. However, the only green jobs I’ve seen with any consistency in the last couple years are low-paying, temporary positions that are mostly in manufacturing…As Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, and Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Washington, reported two years ago, the dirty secret behind many of these green jobs is that they fall short of union leaders’ expected standards for pay and working conditions…I understand that natural gas doesn’t carry the same cachet as renewable energy, but I was struck by the under-reporting of this sector’s relative job boom. Many times, recruiting conversations with hiring managers, which I expected to be about green jobs, instead centered on the many job opportunities in the natural-gas industry.

If you can’t beat ‘em, tax ‘em Wall Street Journal (4/11/11) reports: The European Union next week will propose taxing transport and heating fuels according to their greenhouse-gas emissions as well as their energy content, introducing a climate-change component in EU tax rules for the first time, after years of negotiations…The European Commission, which has executive powers in the European Union, will propose a minimum rate of €20 ($29) a metric ton of CO2 emitted by products like gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal starting in 2013, a draft document obtained by Dow Jones Newswires shows…According to the document—which is the draft revision of an existing law on taxation of energy products, and might still change before being made public Wednesday—the commission will also propose a gradual increase of a minimum levy on diesel to bring it to the same as that on gasoline by 2018.

The government is bidding away top talent from the private sector; instead of working on the next invention these poor souls will be making sure the forms are in order Fuel Fix (4/11/11) reports: The federal government has collected more than 300 applications from aspiring environmental scientists who are eager to get a job working for the U.S. agency that polices offshore drilling…The resumes poured in during a four-day swing this week through universities in California, Oregon and Washington, said Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement…“This dramatically exceeds my wildest applications on planning this trip,” Bromwich told reporters during a conference call from southern California, where he met with students at two universities. “I think it shows the level of interest in our agency and in the expansion of our environmental science capabilities and in playing a role in the new era that we’ll be seeing in BOEMRE.”

For all you Dragnet fans, here are ‘just the facts’ for gas prices Yahoo (4/11/11) reports: The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States has moved closer to $4, jumping more than 19 cents since mid-March to a level less than 10 percent below its all-time high, a widely followed survey said on Sunday…The Lundberg Survey said the national average price of self-serve, regular unleaded gas was $3.765 on Friday, up from $3.573 on March 18, and up 91.3 cents from $2.852 a year ago…Prices in several western U.S. cities are already above $4 per gallon, led by San Francisco at $4.13. Chicago was close behind at $4.11 a gallon, the survey said.
The national average would have been higher had refiners and retailers not resisted passing on rising crude oil prices as customers grow less willing to pay what it takes to fill their gas tanks, analyst Trilby Lundberg said in an interview…”Demand has been falling at these prices,” she said.
The record high average pump price is $4.112 set on July 11, 2008. Lundberg tracks roughly 2,500 gas stations.

The Employment Prevention Agency survives the budget battle The Hill (4/10/11) reports: A last-minute spending deal to avoid a government shutdown reached late Friday night does not include a requirement to study the effects of Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said…Key Senate Democrats said Friday afternoon that they were considering accepting such a study in exchange for Republicans dropping policy riders restricting various EPA rules…Neither the study nor the EPA riders are included in the final agreement, Reid spokesman Jon Summers told The Hill Saturday…Republicans had been pushing for the inclusion of a series of policy riders that would prohibit EPA from implementing climate and other regulations in the legislation to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend…new study tries to turn coal and natural gas against each other The Hill (4/11/11) reports: Cornell University professors will soon publish research that concludes natural gas produced with a drilling method called “hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more…The conclusion is explosive because natural gas enjoys broad political support – including White House backing – due to its domestic abundance and lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned than other fossil fuels….Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth, however, argues that development of gas from shale rock formations produced through hydraulic fracturing – dubbed “fracking” – brings far more methane emissions than conventional gas production…nough, he argues, to negate the carbon advantage that gas has over coal and oil when they’re burned for energy, because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas

Before Obama says he can do nothing about gas prices, how about he tries to do something first? Like have open up some of the 97% of OCS where he doesn’t allow development Herald Times (2/6/11) reports: Pitching the promise of energy independence, President Barack Obama cautioned Wednesday that it’s going to be tough to transition from America’s oil-dependent economy and acknowledged there’s little he can do to lower gas prices over the short term…“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now,” the president told workers at a wind turbine plant. It’s a theme Obama’s struck before as he tries to show voters he’s attuned to a top economic concern with gas prices pushing toward $4 a gallon…Obama said he wants to move toward “a future where America is less dependent on foreign oil, more reliant on clean energy produced by workers like you.” That will happen by reducing oil imports, tapping domestic energy sources and shifting the nation to renewable and less polluting sources of energy, such as wind, the president says. He has set a goal of reducing oil imports by one-third by 2025.

Go Anchorage! Anchorage Daily News (2/1/11) reports: Anchorage’s city power utility made a long-awaited offer this week to buy wind power from Cook Inlet Region Inc., backers of a proposed wind turbine project on Fire Island… But CIRI senior vice president Ethan Schutt said the offer is so low it’s ridiculous and contains unworkable terms…Municipal Light and Power director Jim Posey held a press conference Thursday to explain the utility’s offer, which he said protects ML&P customers from higher costs…CIRI wants to begin construction of turbines on Fire Island off Anchorage this summer, but has so far been unable to get any utility companies to sign contracts to buy the power it would generate, said company spokesman Jim Jager. “Realistically, the project isn’t going forward until we have power-purchase agreements,” he said in a recent interview…The corporation is lined up to get nearly $44 million in federal grants to help build the turbines, but the money is contingent on starting this year. The state has approved using $25 million in public funds to build a transmission line from Fire Island to the mainland…The first phase of the project — 22 turbines that could provide electricity for 12,000 households — would cost about $135 million, said Schutt.

Shock Study! Wind Farms are inefficient.  Who would have thought? BBC (2/5/11) reports: The analysis also suggested output was low during the times of highest demand…The report, supported by conservation charity the John Muir Trust, concluded turbines “cannot be relied upon” to produce significant levels of power generation…However, industry representatives said they had “no confidence” in the data…The research, carried out by Stuart Young Consulting, analysed electricity generated from UK wind farms between November 2008 to December 2010…Statements made by the wind industry and government agencies commonly assert that wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year, it said….But the research found wind generation was below 20% of capacity more than half the time and below 10% of capacity over one third of the time.

Weird — You mean turning food into fuel means there’s less food? New York Times (2/6/11) reports: But last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter, went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled… Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream… But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.