Energy expert Daniel Yergin talks about the impact fracking will have on renewables.
Daniel Yergin, author of the new bestseller The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, is one of the planet’s foremost thinkers about energy and its implications. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his previous book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. Keep reading →
With a mix of nuclear, coal, natural gas, hydro and other renewable energy sources, the US electrical grid is energy independent, Chairman, President and CEO of Duke Energy Jim Rogers told the audience at the recent New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference.
Going back to the 1970’s US energy crisis, the idea of energy independence has been discussed, debated, shot down and resurrected countless times. When a panel of energy and environment experts gave the concept a fresh look, technology and natural gas were two key themes. Keep reading →
China’s growing thirst for oil will leave the rest of the world scrambling for supply, oil could soon face a competitor it never expected and the US has no free market for energy. These are just a few of the provocative ideas former Shell Oil President John Hofmeister shared at a recent New York Energy Forum meeting.
Upon retiring from Shell Oil – the US subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell – in 2008, Hofmeister founded the non-profit nationwide membership association Citizens for Affordable Energy. The group is dedicated to promoting sound US energy security solutions that include a range of affordable energy supplies, efficiency improvements, essential infrastructure, sustainable environmental policies and public energy issue education. Keep reading →
Traffic on the Las Vegas strip, where lights were turned off this weekend for Earth Hour.
Tensions between two competing visions of power markets rose to the surface during early discussions among the industry’s elite gathered in Las Vegas today to consider the state of global energy. Keep reading →
Coal producers are under fire in the US from stricter environmental regulations and stiff competition in the face of low natural gas prices, but it is far from the end of the line for this cheap and abundant fuel source.
The US has been dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of coal” for good reason, with 237,295 million tons of reserves at the end of 2010, the country held over 27% of the world’s coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. That represents more than 240 years of supply at end-2010 production rates. Keep reading →
Coal generating plants that retrofit to meet new mercury pollution rules won’t have to meet the greenhouse gas limits just proposed for new coal plants, says the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA said it doesn’t have sufficient information to impose GHG limits on those plants. Normally, plants performing major retrofits are required to meet the same pollution standards as brand new plants. Keep reading →
Although Iranian geopolitical risk could ease in the second quarter of 2012, the global oil market remains tight, with considerable risk to both the upside and downside, says international banking giant Barclays in its most recent quarterly Global Outlook.
If the news flow from Iran slows in the second quarter, the bank sees oil prices easing slightly lower, as the decreased threat of a supply disruption would calm traders. However, the tightness in the global oil system – spare production capacity is currently only about 2% of global demand – is likely to persist into the second half of the year, keeping upward pressure on prices. Keep reading →
Transformative price shifts and innovative technology combined with an aging existing infrastructure leave the US energy sector looking more like that of an emerging economy than a traditional developed one: And that’s a good thing.
Infrastructure in the energy sector is still built to serve an economy that looks more like the 1950s than 2012, with a transport sector almost entirely dependent on oil products and a centralized hub-and-spoke electricity system dependent on a blend of coal and nuclear with natural gas and renewable generation still in the minority. Keep reading →
Jim Rogers CEO of @DukeEnergy – "I’m not going to put all my chips on any one #technology" re #natgas vs #nuclear #energy at #wsjeco petergardett
Gas prices are once again dominating the national debate.
But despite rhetoric, high gas prices aren’t hurting as much as they used to. Keep reading →
