The tactic du jour for environmentalists trying to sell a skeptical public on tighter regulations is this: spin the thing as a job creator. Last week a Maryland-based environmental group said efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay would actually create 240,000 jobs over the next several years, mainly by employing people to upgrade sewage systems. In a recent report defending stricter mercury pollution limits on power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency said 8,000 more people would be needed to build and run the pollution control equipment than would be laid off as a result of older plants shutting down. Economists that aren’t aligned with either industry or activist groups say that, when it comes to creating or destroying jobs, environmental regulations come out somewhere near neutral — adding costs to industry but producing benefits in public health or other areas.
Investing
Sign up and get Breaking Energy news in your inbox.
We will never sell or share your information without your consent. See our privacy policy.
Renewable energy’s future is now in the developing world, analysts at accounting giant Ernst & Young claim, as cost-conscious and indebted industrial economies focus on investments like smart grid that can slow demand and cut costs.
After a robust decade driven first by concerns about climate change and eventually-foiled expectations that a global price on greenhouse gas emissions would emerge followed by heavy central-government subsidies for renewable energy projects seen as promoting energy security and job growth, the renewable energy sector is moving into a “revolutionary” new phase, a new E&Y report indexing renewable energy country attractiveness says. Keep reading →
Infrastructure has been one of the defining terms for the energy sector in 2011, and it is set to define the industry’s major financial and regulatory debates in the coming year.
Generating, transporting and delivering energy is by its nature an infrastructure-heavy operation, perhaps along with the linked sectors of water and transportation the most consistently infrastructure-intensive activity modern societies engage in. Keep reading →
(Fortune Magazine) I’m on a reporting trip in Angola, a place where the State Department advises travelers to “never touch anything that resembles a mine or unexploded ordnance.” I have brought a guidebook. It says Angola is “not a holiday destination for beginners.” I am traveling with a team of GE executives led by John Krenicki, CEO of the company’s energy unit. We’ve sat through a lecture on an especially virulent strain of malaria in the region. We’ve had two days of back-to-back meetings, visited a power station floating on a barge, and toured a liquefied natural gas plant on the banks of a tributary of the Congo River, downstream from Livingstone Falls, named for the explorer who died of dysentery. We’d had to leave behind two members of the team whose visas to Angola hadn’t come through. And now we’re in a chartered jet, homeward bound, getting ready for takeoff. A crew member comes into the cabin with an announcement. The flight will be delayed. There are wild dogs on the runway.
Shadow Banks Go Long Energy: AOL Energy Comment
By Peter GardettHundreds of millions of dollars have been committed to solar and wind projects in recent weeks, and while the end of the year often brings with it a spate of deals to avoid upcoming changes in tax policy, this time the money is coming from a new and different source.
The rush of dealmaking in the final weeks of 2011 has been striking after a relatively slow year in fundraising for energy deals of any kind, but even more surprising have been the players: private equity firms and hedge funds. Keep reading →