The world's best thinkers on energy and climate
Over the past four years, relatively little new underground natural gas storage capacity was built in the Lower 48 states. EIA measures natural gas storage capacity in two ways: design capacity and demonstrated maximum working gas volume (or demonstrated peak). In 2017, design capacity grew by about 1%, and demonstrated peak fell by 1%. … [Read more...]
Oil companies have become some of the wealthiest organizations in history by producing a product that we now know is endangering the future of humanity. Many of these companies have known about the effects of carbon dioxide for decades, yet while they adapted their own businesses to survive climate change, they actively undermined efforts to understand it. … [Read more...]
According to EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, total U.S. net electricity generation fell slightly (down 1.5%) in 2017, reflecting lower electricity demand. Natural gas and coal generation fell by 7.7% and 2.5% from 2016, respectively, as generation from several renewable fuels, particularly hydro, wind, and solar, increased from 2016 levels. … [Read more...]
China’s shift to green energy has made a huge contribution to reducing the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, write researchers John A. Mathews and Xin Huang. But for China’s renewables revolution, the world would have faced potentially catastrophic geopolitical tensions over oil and gas. … [Read more...]
Science has told us that we must reduce carbon emissions if climate change is to be kept below acceptable limits. The transition has led us in many new directions. Most politicians outside the US believe that our energy supply must be based entirely on renewable energy. This alone creates a large issue, in that the electric grid supplies less than 20% of total energy needs. … [Read more...]
Norwegian energy giant Statoil has announced it is rebranding to ‘Equinor’, a new name the firm states is inspired by “words like equal, equality and equilibrium”, as well as “Nor” for Norway. But is this just an exercise in greenwashing? Just how fair and equitable is the company’s strategy? After all, Statoil remains, at heart, a fossil fuel company. … [Read more...]
A new technology has the potential to transform the transportation of tars sands oil. Right now, the already thick and slow-flowing oil, known as bitumen, has to be diluted with a super-light petroleum product, usually natural gas condensate, in order for it to flow through a pipeline or into a rail tank car. … [Read more...]
While a growing number of global oil and gas companies step up to reduce methane emissions, many operators in Canada have hesitated to take concrete action, perhaps waiting instead for federal and provincial regulations to address the issue. … [Read more...]
Limiting fossil fuel production on U.S. federal lands would reduce both global oil consumption and overall carbon emissions, according to a new study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), a research organization focused on sustainable development. … [Read more...]
It’s been a bad week for the U.S. coal industry. On Monday, Michigan-based Consumers Energy announced that it planned to close all its remaining coal-fired generation by 2040; the company already had closed seven of its 12 coal plants in 2016. … [Read more...]
As the recently published National Security Strategy shows, Donald Trump has turned the expansion of the U.S. fossil fuel industry and its exports into a major component of American foreign and security policy, writes energy expert and author Michael T. Klare. … [Read more...]
EIA expects total 2017 U.S. coal production to be 773 million short tons (MMst), 45 MMst higher than in 2016 and the largest year-over-year tonnage increase since 2001. Coal prices across the United States rose as well, especially for Central Appalachian coal. An increase in demand for U.S. coal exports more than offset a slight decline in U.S. coal consumption, contributing to higher coal production in 2017. … [Read more...]
The number of oil and gas rigs in the United States has increased an astonishing 38 percent over the past year. That’s according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, which reported this week that the country had 1,070 rigs at the end of January, up from just 773 a year earlier. Experts expressed fear that all of this new development does not bode well for the planet. … [Read more...]
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