Sign up | Login with →

recession

Vestas Lays off 10% of Workforce, Restructures Management

January 16, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 316 views
0

How the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer Vestas is laying off 10% of it's global workforce, halting production at one of its 26 plants. What does this mean for the company, and, more significantly, for the global wind industry in 2012? [read more]

Let’s Shelve the Small Talk: Boost Energy Innovation to Reduce America’s 3 Deficits

December 9, 2011 by Matthew Stepp
with 294 views
0

 Robert Solow, Nobel laureate and father of neoclassical economic growth theory, says that policymakers’ current economic solutions are nothing more than “drivel” and that spurring innovation – especially energy innovation – must be a central goal of public policy moving forward.   As ITIF and the Breakthrough Institute... [read more]

US To Be A Net Exporter of Petroleum Products- Is This A Good Thing?

December 7, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 545 views
0

US petroleum product exports have been in the news, along with the welcome discovery that we are apparently on track to become a net exporter of these fuels this year, for the first time since the 1940s. This is a far cry from energy independence, as various oil skeptics have been quick to point out, but it's still a noteworthy... [read more]

Will Energy Determine the 2012 Election?

November 8, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 410 views
10

A year from today Americans will know who will serve as President from 2013 to 2017. Even though $4 gasoline was still fresh in the minds of voters, energy played only a minor role in the outcome of the 2008 election, overshadowed by two wars and a crippling financial crisis. Will that be the case again in 2012, or will energy loom larger, propelled by its close connection with the economy? Several Republican candidates have already raised energy as a campaign issue, and the administration has repeatedly emphasized the linkages between energy, jobs and taxes. [read more]

Renewable Energy Faces the European Debt Crisis

September 18, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 950 views
2

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]

The American Jobs Act's Poison Pill(s)

September 13, 2011 by Geoffrey Styles
with 584 views
10

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]

JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!

September 9, 2011 by A Siegel
with 717 views
4

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]

Breaking the Link Between Energy Consumption and Economic Growth

May 10, 2011 by Sierra Martinez
with 479 views
1

There are skeptics of energy efficiency who claim that, paradoxically, all the energy and money we have been saving due to energy efficiency, across all sectors of the economy, has actually caused us to increase our energy consumption.  This “economy-wide rebound” theory is a startling, but ultimately unsupportable, theory that is... [read more]

The Challenge Isn’t Going Away: Clean Energy, Jobs and National Security

January 4, 2011 by Osha Davidson
with 1,991 views
4

In April, 2007, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi created a congressional committee to address three of the most pressing issues of the day: climate change, economic prosperity (in the form of jobs), and national security. Today, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, issued a final report. After three-and-... [read more]

Explaining residential electricity consumption: macroeconomic implications

January 3, 2011 by Lynne Kiesling
with 1,223 views
0

At Grist, Sean Casten muses on the macroeconomic implications of trends in electricity consumption. His musings focus on the established correlation between electricity consumption and economic activity, an association that he fleshed out in an earlier post. In these two posts he looks at trends in residential, commercial, and industrial... [read more]

Coal Power Hit Hardest by Recession, Cleaner Energy Sees a Rise

June 15, 2010 by Taylen Peterson
with 551 views
1

New information released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that over the last two years, coal-fired electricity suffered where renewable energy shined. From 2008 to 2009, energy consumption in general was down 4%, due almost totally to the recession, or as placating pundits like to call it, the economic downturn... [read more]

Oil Prices and the Recovery

January 11, 2010 by Geoffrey Styles
with 126 views
1

As oil prices continue their upward trend, I'm noticing more articles and getting more comments from readers questioning whether $80-plus oil could squelch the nascent economic recovery--or for those who believe the recession isn't over, deepen it again. It's not an unreasonable question, particularly when we compare current retail fuel... [read more]

2009 lessons and 2010 predictions

January 4, 2010 by Doris de Guzman
with 239 views
0

So what do we learned from 2009? Recession drove a little bit of a decline on venture capital investments in the clean technologies sector compared to 2008 but the good news is that 2009 seem to be a record year for federal grants and funds on renewable energy, clean technology and green chemistry. There was also proliferation of new... [read more]

CNN on The Long Recession

November 18, 2009 by Robert Rapier
with 126 views
0

One of the themes I have been hitting during my recent presentations concerns the oil price risk hanging over our heads. My hypothesis goes something like this. The days of huge supply excesses in the oil production world are over. Those 5 million barrel per day supply cushions of 10 years ago kept oil prices low, and fairly stable. As... [read more]

The Recession Bites Back: Devastating Impacts on Low Carbon Technologies in the UK

October 12, 2009 by Climatico Analysis
with 190 views
0

The Committee on Climate Change released its latest report today highlighting the devastating impact the economic recession has had on carbon trading schemes and investment for low carbon technologies. The report emphasises the vast investment needed in efficiency through green housing, power and transport in Britain, to service the... [read more]