economy

fuels comparison

Nearly two years ago, an LA-based company called Rentech Inc. announced plans to build a biofuels plant four hours north of Sault St. Marie, Ontario. Ain’t gonna happen, it seems.[read more]

Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable say they speak for the country’s business interests. When it comes to the Keystone XL pipeline, they most definitely do not. Nicole Lederer explains why.[read more]

Today,  Steve Lacey at the Center for American Progress published 20 Ideas for Job Creation: Keep Focused on Clean Energy. To build on the many good (or even excellent) ideas in that list (repeated below the fold), here are ideas 21-30 of places to go for Clean Energy Jobs: Go to your mortgage broker:  Ed Mazria/Architecture...[read more]

I touched on this McKinsey report earlier, but my most recent Clean Break column delves a  bit deeper into the consultancy’s analysis of commodity trends past and future, and how this will impact the way corporations operate. —————————————————— Has the global economy entered a long period of persistently high, volatile commodity...[read more]

The North Carolina legislature just narrowly derailed a bill that would have prevented any possible increase in the state's gasoline tax. That's a good thing. By that I mean it's good that the state Senate declined to act on the bill after it passed in the House. You see, if enacted, the state's 35 cent per gallon...[read more]

What if they held a UN climate conference and no one came? That's certainly not the case at this year's COP-17 (Conference of the Parties) meeting now underway in Durban, South Africa, but with expectations for dramatic progress low, and a breakthrough on the scale needed to salvage the expiring Kyoto Protocol nearly unimaginable, it could be where the UN-led process is headed. If Durban fails to deliver the goods, it won't be because the participants were any less concerned about climate change than those at past sessions. Nor will it be because of the latest release of Climategate emails, as embarrassing as some of them should be for the scientists involved. The reason is much simpler, and it's the same one that helped Bill Clinton unseat George H.W. Bush in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid." The solution to climate change is unlikely to be found in Durban or any future COP site until the leaders in Brussels, Washington and other capitals come to grips with the massive economic challenges they face and create the framework for a return to robust growth.[read more]

I have just returned from the annual ASPO conference in Washington, D.C. This was only my 2nd ASPO conference; the first one I attended was in 2008 in Sacramento. There were many familiar faces; some of whom I had previously met and some I only knew by reputation. The mood seemed remarkably calmer than in 2008. That year, oil prices were...[read more]

If you believed what politicians say about green energy and jobs, you probably think they fit together like peanut butter and jelly squished between layers of bread. Has there been a renewable power subsidy announcement or ribbon-cutting ceremony where the word “jobs” was not featured in the first two or three sentences uttered by...[read more]

I wrote the post below a week or so ago and thought later I should take it down because it was too negative. In fact, a few people unsubscribed to this blog immediately after I posted it. I do like to use this blog to build hope that there are technologies, policy options, and creative initiatives out there to make the world a more...[read more]

Among the Republican Party candidates vying to contest Obama in the 2012 presidential election, there is a recurring theme: the idea that environmental regulation prevents job creation. While only one candidate attacked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the most recent Tea Party Express debate, Herman Cain’s comment that the agency has “run wild” drew enthusiastic applause. The notion that there is a tradeoff between jobs and the environment is not new, but it is a powerful argument when job growth has been painfully slow, and when immediate economic concerns understandably outweigh long-term and complex environmental ones. It draws political points easily as it taps into voters’ struggles and fears.[read more]

With all the bad economic news and political turbulence in the US, it's been easy to lose track of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, which appears to be spreading from smaller, peripheral countries like Greece to affect the banking systems of core European Union members like Italy and France. To read Paul Krugman's column in last Sunday's New York Times, Europe could be on the verge of another financial crisis on the scale of the one triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Aside from the global economic consequences of such an event, it would send ripples throughout the energy sector, affecting both conventional and renewable energy markets and participants. While such an outcome is far from certain, it's a worrying scenario to contemplate.[read more]

I had a completely different topic in mind for today's posting, but I'll have to come back to the energy implications of a potential European financial crisis later. Since President Obama's jobs speech to Congress last week I have been awaiting the text of the actual proposed bill, rather than the summaries I'd been seeing. It finally...[read more]

We are less than two days out from President Barack Obama’s speech to a Joint Session of Congress and to the nation to outline proposals to help put Americans back to work. This speech could be a strident call for all-out measures to reinvigorate American employment, a more limited set of programs constructed and conceived within a...[read more]

Like many of you, I am often unhappy with our political leaders. One thing that annoys me the most is that many will say or do just about anything to get elected. By now, you have surely heard the news that Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has promised a return to $2/gallon gasoline if she is elected president:[read more]

Before discussing the best way to green the economy, it’s important to note that the U.S. economy has been greening steadily over the past three years. Buoyed by the policies established and extended by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the largest federal investment in clean tech in American history, the clean energy industry has experienced precipitous growth, as documented by Mark Muro and colleagues at the Brookings Metro program in their recent "Sizing the Clean Economy" report.[read more]