New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new program designed to reduce energy consumption in buildings as part of the city’s greenhouse gas reduction goal. The program called NYC Built to Last is modelled after the NYC Clean Heat initiative that cut soot pollution from heating oil by 50 percent. “Representing three quarters of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, New York City buildings must play a central role in any effective climate action plan, and Mayor de Blasio knows this.” [EDF Energy Exchange]

Ample supply and inventories are insulating the oil market from supply disruptions while gloomy demand forecasts from China and Europe are helping pressure prices downward. Opec may cut output in a bid to support prices, but the efficacy of that strategy at a time of robust non-Opec supply is questionable. A significant supply disruption, however, could spur prices to rise again. “Sentiment remains predominantly bearish given downbeat demand growth expectations and plentiful supplies,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, London-based oil and commodities strategist at Russian bank VTB Capital. “However, I think the downside is limited. The market is very sensitive to supply jitters, given that the risk premium is gone, and judging by the reaction last week to a fresh outage in Libya and OPEC comments.” [Reuters]

In a speech yesterday, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change said a global climate change agreement would provide the regulatory certainty companies need to make greenhouse gas-reducing investments. “In addition to mitigating the negative impacts of climate change and enabling private investments by giving companies certainty, she said a global agreement ‘democratizes energy, because over the past 100 years, what we’ve actually done, frankly, is limited access.’” [The Hill]