Renewable energy

-The population crash
-Getting connected: Europe's green energy 'supergrid'
-Pro-Moscow Yanukovych 'to win Ukraine election'

-What’s Missing from the New Clean Energy Agenda?
-Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record
-America Is Not Yet Lost
-Seven States of Energy Debt

One way of looking at our current set of predicaments is that we've been on a binge, consuming energy considerably faster than it can be captured and stored by Earth's ecosystems. While fossil fuels once appeared limitless (and still do to deniers of peak oil), and though we're literally bathed in energy (in the form of sunlight), the disappearance of the fossil-fuel storehouse accumulated over millions of years isn't something that can be replaced with anything nearly as convenient as fossil fuels.

In a busy week for energy policy, UK energy watchdog Ofgem finally acknowledged what has been obvious for years: that liberalized markets cannot deliver energy security in the era of carbon reduction and resource depletion.

Peter Tertzakian has a double education in geophysics and economics and is "Chief Energy Economist" at a Canadian energy investment company. His book "A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Breakpoint and Challenges facing an energy dependent world" was published in 2007, but was, based on the contents of the book, presumably written up around 2005.

-Energy bills will be unaffordable without system overhaul, says regulator
-Is the world awash in oil?
-Demand for oil will peak by 2030 – BP chief

-Depletion of Key Resources: Facts at Your Fingertips
-Cities, peak oil, and sustainability
-Reconsidering Cities
-Peter Newman: The Crash, Peak Oil and Resilient Cities
-Where do we go from here?

-Windfarm boost for north-east industry
-China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy
-Government to reward renewable energy homes with higher feed-in tariffs
-IMF plans $100bn injection into economy to fund energy efficiency
-Wind Power Grows 39% for the Year
-Powering a Green Planet: Sustainable Energy, Made Interactive

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and Production
-Is the US Economy Recovering?
-Venezuela’s Auction
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs

-Investors add spice to rising food prices
-God, Keynes, and Clean Energy
-Peak Autos: America's Love Affair with the Automobile May Be Coming to an End
-Pavan Sukhdev: you can have progress without GDP-led growth
-What Can We Learn from Gift Economies?

-Do soot emissions mean that wood heating causes global warming?
-Bavarian prince hits resistance over plans for giant solar park
-Companies team up with Abu Dhabi over green jet fuel
-Hybrid Cars Won’t Save Much Oil

Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.

Oil prices began the year with a rally, reaching nearly $84 a barrel as temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere required the heating to be turned up a notch.

Because forecasts of abundant fossil fuel supplies far into the future have been embedded in public policy and business planning worldwide, we have made our entire global society dependent on getting these forecasts right. If they turn out to be too optimistic, then we could all be in for serious trouble. Since long-term energy forecasts--and really any long-term forecasts--are difficult if not impossible to get right, perhaps we should consider making society forecast-proof insofar as that is possible.