Who has the power in the power industry?
Minority communities for years have seen large industrial facilities as environmental justice issues, says CASEnergy’s Patrick Moore, with high-impact plants built in their midst because they’re powerless to stop it, but he insists nuclear is different. Keep reading →
In the race to commercialize the next generation of advanced biofuels created from inedible plant material, 50/50 BP – Dupont joint venture Butamax is pushing to make biobutanol the next big thing. The company is moving toward the commercial phase of its program to make biobutanol the US fuel blend of choice.
“We are very excited about this product – biobutanol is the highest value biofuel that can be made,” Butamax CEO Paul Beckwith recently told Breaking Energy. Keep reading →
U.S. electricity regulators face historic challenges over the next 20 years in helping to guide an estimated $2 trillion in investment to renew or replace aging infrastructure, ensure industry compliance with increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and adopt smart-grid technologies, according to a new report from the sustainability think-tank Ceres.
With the enormous investment by both investor-owned and public utilities, regulators should take a new approach to managing the risks of both the costs of new infrastructure and the time it takes to install it, the report said Thursday. 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 →
The upcoming World Energy Leadership Summit in Istanbul will be a good forum to “test the waters” on how global markets view competition in the energy sector, according to CME Group Chief Economist Blu Putnam.
Turkey is a good crossroads to discuss the future of cheaper, cleaner and more efficient energy development in the developing world even as growth challenges and policy limit the expansion of energy infrastructure in many developed countries, Putnam said in a recent interview with Breaking Energy. 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 →
Engine manufacturers, natural gas producers and fuel distributors have been “pushing” the financial and environmental benefits their technology offers, but some industry leaders are now seeing significant “market pull.”
The fuel cost differential that has emerged between natural gas and diesel or gasoline is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the natural gas vehicle business case. Navistar Engine Group President Eric Tech told Breaking Energy that it’s not hard to convince customers to save money. Keep reading →
