In late April dozens of the world’s top energy leaders gathered by the side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul to continue a tradition of discussion that has been going on since the end of the First World War required coordinated approaches to rebuilding a damaged Europe. Keep reading →
Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar
Flying into a fast-growing economy from one struggling out of recession is a bracing experience; discussions of resource scarcity are turned upside down and the focus is on how to move fast enough, not how to navigate uncertainty. But for energy leaders gathered in Istanbul, Turkey ahead of the World Energy Council’s Summit tomorrow, the challenges of growth and the challenges of transition are remarkably similar. Keep reading →
There was no way for the nuclear industry to succeed at handling Fukushima. The disastrous and poorly-managed shutdown of a nuclear reactor built too close to shore, hit by an earthquake and an even-more-devestating tsunami, gave birth to a year’s worth of images and heartbreak no normal business could handle in normal ways.
In the days after the Fukushima disaster the US industry dialed up its responsiveness in ways that ranged from a North Carolina-based disaster response center handling technology questions, sending personnel to Japan, and handling a leap in internet traffic to relevant websites. Most of what the general public wanted was information that could reassure, and the US nuclear industry sought to supply that information. Keep reading →
Can the millions of workers in the US energy sector, their families and neighbors, and the millions more whose lives are built on energy activities, be convinced to vote their concerns about an industry?
In other democracies workers in individual sectors often view their politics through their professional and industrial identities, while many recent election races in the US have hinged on political identities rooted in social values as much as economic beliefs. While the US energy sector remains one of the country’s largest employers and most visible sources of economic vibrancy, its natural constituents rarely raise its issues in their lists of concerns politicians (and presidential hopefuls) should address. Keep reading →
Things are not always as they seem.
I learned that, at first excitedly and then painfully, during my eight-month stint as Associate Editor of Breaking Energy. I’ll be moving to Israel next month where I will be apprenticing with a midwife and continuing to cover the energy sector with a focus on Israeli clean tech. Keep reading →
Hundreds 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 →
From the perspective of the US energy business, the European debt crisis can feel very far away.
The impacts of ongoing sovereign debt debates are felt first in markets for government bonds and currencies; one can only guess what the extent will be of ramifications on government commitments to clean energy or business activity levels in developed and emerging economies. Keep reading →
Markets run in cycles; we are all at the mercy of ups and downs in the macro and micro. Commodities markets, including those for energy, are often held to the dictates of “supercycles.” Infrastructure for commodities is so expensive, development timelines are so lengthy and the underlying shifts in demand and supply occur over such long phases that energy prices and resulting investments rise and fall over decades, not months.
The modern energy economy was born in one great supercycle around the middle of the twentieth century, and we are still its heirs. In the wake of a privately-sponsored boom in energy technology development and deployment in the 1920s, the US government responded to the inequities of the Great Depression of the 1930s by investing in huge electrification projects, choosing technologies, firms and energy types by fiat as it went. Keep reading →
Debates that have preoccupied and in some cases paralyzed growth in the US energy sector could be overshadowed by the development of a single megatrend at the heart of the global economy: the transition to electric drives in machines of all kinds.
While electric vehicles are the most visible aspect of that change, and with roughly 250 million cars on the road any switch from gasoline to electric is significant, the switch from motors driven by their own internal combustion devices to significantly more efficient electric systems is already occurring in many parts of the economy where the infrastructure and the focus on cost reduction already exists. Keep reading →
Energy Book Review: ‘The Eskimo and The Oil Man’ by Bob Reiss
By Peter GardettIn retrospect, it isn’t surprising that there is a market for writing that fits nicely into the niche between the analytical musings of the Economist and the heart-thumping pace of a Jason Bourne thriller.
A little bit populist and much faster paced than traditional writing about current events, while still retaining a seriousness of purpose but steering clear of the polemics of a Michael Moore documentary, the idea for this generation books is fact that reads like fiction. Perhaps it is “a thriller for the CNN generation” or, given reading patterns in the US, just as likely an “Agatha Christie for the CSPAN generation.” Keep reading →