The world's best thinkers on energy and climate
No, not about his ludicrous proposal to give US motorists a summer “holiday” from the 18.4 cent/gallon and 24.4 cent/gallon federal taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, respectively. That’s the purest and lowest form of political pandering I’ve seen during the current 17-year-long election cycle here in the US. The thing he’s apparently right about, given his gasoline tax vacation idea, is his admission that he … [Read more...]
What was Mahatma Gandi’s famous line? First they ignore your e-mail, then they ridicule you in their blogs, then you win and they scrub their web sites and claim to have been on your side all along? OK, maybe I’m updating the quotation just a wee bit, but this seems to be the general pattern that’s playing out regarding peak oil. First we have the premature crowing about Bakken (and Jack2 before that and Brazil’s rumored … [Read more...]
The distribution tariff rates for gas and electricity will rise in Belgium for yet another 20 percent (at least). The excuse this time is the high investment costs. Last year’s cop-out was that one became responsible for the street lighting since the opening of the energy market. I don’t see anything of that in practice though. The public lightning is a joke in Belgium. It’s the utter waste of resources. I’ve said in an earlier blog that Belgium … [Read more...]
CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) in India is a cheaper fuel than traditional liquid fossil fuels, thus demand for CNG is four times greater. In September 2006, as previously reported, Orbital and Bajaj Auto expanded licensing arrangements to encompass applications that could make use of LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) and CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). “Natural gas has inherent clean burning properties that enable NGVs to produce lower pollutant emissions … [Read more...]
This blog previously has suggested that a solid oxide fuel could be used for a home and noted that a waste water plant in California had purchased three DFCs (Direct Fuel Cells) from FuelCell Energy. The Vaasa Housing Fair 2008 will be held at a beautiful location by the sea in Suvilahti, Vaasa, three kilometers from the Vaasa city center. The housing fair area consists of private houses, small housing associations and blocks of flats, all of … [Read more...]
From Environmental Capital: World Green Exchange, an offshoot of an existing electricity-and-gas trading platform, officially launched operations Wednesday. To compete against the established, and much larger, climate-change exchanges out there, WGE brings a twist to the table: It runs auctions. That brings buyers and sellers together directly, sort of a regulated e-Bay for trades of natural gas, electricity—or greenhouse-gas emission … [Read more...]
I don't know about any of you, but it's frickin' cold in Ontario right now, so it's this time of the year when we rely heavily on home heating. Ontario is a mish-mash of different technologies: resistance heating, natural-gas furnaces, oil furnaces and propane. Out of them all, the most affordable option is natural gas. Now, natural gas is okay but it's not ideal. It still emits greenhouse gases and NOx. It's also becoming more volatile and is … [Read more...]
Q: Consider the graph to the right, represeting a five-year moving average of U.S. natural gas prices from 1922 to present. What effects do you expect continually rising natural gas prices to have? A: Natural gas companies resort to more expensive extraction techniques to get at hard to reach natural gas reserves. Proof below the jump. From the Columbus Dispatch: More than a mile beneath an area of Appalachia covering parts of … [Read more...]
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