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peak energy in the news:

A crossroads for Japan: Revive nuclear or go green?

Andrew DeWit, Yale Environment 360

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan has idled all 50 of its nuclear reactors. While the central government and business leaders are warning a prolonged shutdown could spell economic doom, many Japanese and local officials see the opportunity for a renewable energy revolution.

archived May 30, 2012

Burning Desire for Efficiency

Tom Murphy, Do the Math

Ever wonder how efficient it is to heat water? Of course you have! Ever measured it? Whoa, mister, now you’ve gone too far!

archived May 30, 2012

Shale gas rules and emissions - May 29

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-IEA's golden rules for gas are missed opportunity
-Campaigners' anger over agency's shale gas report
-Using shale gas over coal does not help climate, says big gas investor
-Shale play a worry for Bexar ozone

archived May 29, 2012

Fukushima update - May 29

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-Fukushima radiation higher than first estimated
-Fukushima gets mixed radiation report from WHO
-Weakened Fukushima nuclear pool is not unstable, Japan insists
-Japan's radiation found in California bluefin tuna
-Reform the Japanese power system. Nationalize Tepco

archived May 29, 2012

Information storms and the limits to information

Mary Logan, A Prosperous Way Down

Odum often drew an analogy between the way meteorological storms such as hurricanes disperse heat and the way that other systems do, including information systems. After Tom Abel's excellent post last week on trends in education in a world in transition, it is a good time to share Odum's analogy linking storms of information and weather storms. But to make that analogy, we first need a meteorology lesson, starting with the second law of thermodynamics.

archived May 29, 2012

Leverage points in energy storage

Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's Legacy

A lot of money and effort is spent in order to find technological solutions for storing the energy produced by renewables, but very little to understand what the real problem is. How much energy storage do we really need? And is it true that if we don't have 100% energy storage then renewables are useless, as some people say?

archived May 29, 2012

Global scarcity: Scramble for dwindling natural resources

Michael Klare, Yale Environment 360

National security expert Michael Klare believes the struggle for the world’s resources will be one of the defining political and environmental realities of the 21st century. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he discusses the threat this scramble poses to the natural world and what can be done to sustainably meet the resource challenge.

archived May 28, 2012

Germany's energy revolution - May 28

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-Busting the carbon and cost myths of Germany's nuclear exit
-The truth about Germany's nuclear phase-out
-Germany sets new solar power record, institute says
-Germany Stalled on the Expressway to a Green Future

archived May 28, 2012

Peak oil review - May 28

Tom Whipple, ASPO-USA

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The EU crisis
-Iran
-Retail gasoline prices
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

archived May 28, 2012

Limits We are Reaching – Oil, Debt, and Others

Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World

The world is clearly reaching many limits. What limits are the human and natural systems reaching now?

archived May 26, 2012

ODAC Newsletter - May 25

Staff, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre

G8 leaders meeting last weekend in Camp David will have been cheered by the recent slide in oil prices – albeit that the weakening in price is largely a consequence of the increasingly dire economic news. Nevertheless the group issued a statement to the effect that should the price start heading back in the other direction they will be calling on the IEA to take action...

archived May 25, 2012

Drill, Baby, Drill! More drilling doesn't necessarily mean more oil

Andrew McKay, Southern Limits

Oil pundits and politicians are pushing the idea of United States energy independence due largely to the current boom in hydraulic fracturing. But behind the rhetoric, is there any truth to these claims?

archived May 25, 2012

Peak oil notes - May 24

Tom Whipple, ASPO-USA

A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

archived May 24, 2012

Energy policies will lead to diesel fuel rationing in Europe

Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, Dagens Nyheter and Aleklett's Energy Mix

During the last six years the world’s production of oil has, overall, been flat. From 2005 up to and including 2010 annual it was around 81.5 Mb/d with top production in 2010 at 82.1 Mb/d. World oil production has never been greater than in that period. We describe the maximum rate of oil production from an oilfield, region or the world as “Peak Oil”.

archived May 24, 2012

Night Thoughts in Hagsgate

John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report

There are times, at least for me, when the fate in store for industrial society can be seen with more than the usual clarity. I'm thinking just now of the time I looked out a train window and saw an abandoned factory, not yet twenty years old, with foot-high saplings rising incongruously from the gutter around the roof; or of another time, in a weekend flea market here in Cumberland, when I found a kid's book on space travel I'd loved as a child, flipped through the pages, and found myself face to face with the gap between the shining future we were supposed to have by now and the mess that was actually waiting for us when we got here.

archived May 24, 2012

OPEC Has Lost the Power to Lower the Price of Oil

Gregor Macdonald, chrismartenson.com

There’s been a lot of excitement in the past year over the rise of North American oil production and the promise of increased oil production across the whole of the Americas in the years to come. National security experts and other geo-political observers have waxed poetic at the thought of this emerging, hemispheric strength in energy supply. What’s less discussed, however, is the negligible effect this supply swing is having on lowering the price of oil, due to the fact that, combined with OPEC production, aggregate global production remains mostly flat.

But there’s another component to this new belief in the changing global landscape for oil: the dawning awareness that OPEC’s power has finally gone into decline.

archived May 24, 2012

Greasing the wheel: Oil’s role in the global crisis

Lucas Chanel and Thomas Spencer, The Oil Drum

Between January 2002 and August 2008, the nominal oil price rose from $19.7 to $133.4 a barrel. This led to a large increase in oil revenues for oil exporters and a deterioration of the current account for oil importers. Between 2002 and 2006, net capital outflows from oil exporters grew by 348%, becoming the largest global source of net capital outflows in 2006 (McKinsey 2007).

Capital outflows from oil exporters therefore played an important role in the global liquidity glut during the build-up to the US subprime crisis.

archived May 24, 2012

Energy transition - May 23

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-Busting the carbon and cost myths of Germany's nuclear exit
-The energy transition juggernaut
-Clean energy as culture war

archived May 23, 2012

Shale gas - May 23

Staff, Energy Bulletin

-Government backtracks on fracking
-Investor's concerns lead to calls for fracking changes
-Fracking In New York: For Farmers, Gas Drilling Could Mean Salvation-- Or Ruin

archived May 23, 2012

Building wind energy can save Midwestern consumers $200 per year

Richard W. Caperton, ThinkProgress

We’ve all heard that wind energy is too expensive, and that massive investments in wind will drive up electricity rates for consumers. This argument is based on the belief that wind energy is more expensive on a per kilowatt-hour basis than traditional fossil fuels. While even this premise is up for debate (for example, wind is now the least expensive option for new generation for some utilities in the upper Midwest), the bigger problem is that this argument ignores how electricity markets actually work.

archived May 23, 2012

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