Exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US will raise domestic natural gas prices little – and possibly not at all – because the international market won’t take enough LNG to make a difference.
That was the conclusion of three economists who separately studied international LNG prospects. They presented their results to the International Natural Gas Workshop sponsored by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington DC recently. Keep reading →
Policy proposals to solve environmental problems flow from a myriad of sources, particularly activist groups and legislators. But business schools are sharpening their focus on environmental economics, and they may be poised to emerge as much more vocal proponents for environmental solutions.
One such voice was raised in April, when a Northwestern University economist proposed an unusual – some would say radical – approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Keep reading →
Royal Dutch Shell plans to spend at least $1 billion a year exploiting China’s potentially vast resources of shale gas, the firm’s top China executive said, part of an aggressive strategy to expand in the world’s biggest energy market.Shell in March secured China’s first product sharing contract for shale gas, hoping that getting in early will allow it to be a big beneficiary from the sort of boom in shale that has transformed the U.S. energy market. Asked if the firm remained committed to a plan to invest $1 billion a year in China’s shale gas over the coming few years, Lim Haw Kuang, Shell’s top China executive, said in an interview: “Yes, yes and yes.”
Green energy startups are feeling the sting of rejection by investors concerned about falling energy prices and the future of government support.
Summers in a Pennsylvania steel mill might seem like an unlikely place to find the future president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers association, but that’s where Charlie Drevna got his start. Now, it seems prescient as energy and manufacturing become ever more closely linked in the US.
When Drevna was working the mills, they were manufacturing drill pipe for oil and gas production in Oklahoma and other parts of the country where conventional hydrocarbon resources were being produced in volumes that many expected were in terminal decline. Keep reading →
In this economy many cities are looking for ways to make their facilities more energy efficient, and more of them are leveraging Energy Performance Contracting (EPC) to make substantial energy efficiency improvements without any upfront capital.
Since the late 1970s, EPCs have become an increasingly effective way to avoid the cost barrier typically associated with significant building upgrades and retrofits. An EPC permits public entities, such as schools, hospitals, universities and governmental agencies, to fund energy conservation measures based on the amount of utility savings they provide. Under these programs, a qualified energy services company audits a customer’s energy usage, identifies potential savings and guarantees those savings through a long-term agreement. This is a great way for public entities to maximize existing operational budgets for needed upgrades that are guaranteed to reduce energy costs in the long run. Keep reading →
Firefighters have contained a blaze at Chevron Corp.’s (CVX) Richmond refinery in California, but the fire, which broke out Monday, is still burning.
One of the worst droughts in U.S. history is hampering oil production, pitting farmers against oilmen and highlighting just how dependent on water modern U.S. energy development has become.
If the disruption in energy politics caused by a flood of cheap natural gas feels familiar, there’s a reason. Energy policy is being transfigured alongside the energy economy by technology advances that have allowed access to enormous reserves of natural gas. The fuel is so abundant that production has swollen to near-unmanageable levels for pipelines and storage hubs even as prices have fallen near or below costs to produce it. It is hard to argue with the reality: The American Gas Association says reserves estimates have risen to 2,100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as of the end of 2011, a century’s worth of supply. That is disruptive, regardless of the acknowledged potential for hyperbole in industry forecasts. Politicians are noticing that even ExxonMobil – a mainstay of the oil lobby that has set the tone and pace of U.S. energy policy – is increasingly a gas company, not an oil company. The company is investing billions of dollars in new supply ($40 billion on buying XTO Energy, for starters) and says it expects natural gas demand to rise 60 percent through 2040 as coal use declines.
No-one could accuse AMEE of having modest goals.
Since 2007, the East London-based clean-technology company has been accumulating energy and environmental information from governments, companies and non-governmental organizations around the world with the goal of becoming the leading global source of data that can be used to calculate corporate carbon footprints or supply-chain energy consumption. Keep reading →
