Free Republic

While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

Energy-efficient light bulbs lose on average 22% of their brightness over their lifetime, a study has found. In some cases they emit just 60% as much light as traditional models which are being phased out of shops, it says. The study in Engineering and Technology magazine concluded that consumers were being misled by the bulbs' packaging. Of the 18 energy-saving bulbs tested over 10,000 hours by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, three stopped altogether.

"Duke Energy boss Jim Rogers is a big voice on energy and climate change for a couple of simple reasons. He runs a big utility, heavily invested in coal power, and he’s an outspoken proponent of climate-change legislation that spooks many of his peers. Duke’s Jim Rogers: “We could find ourselves in 2050 where coal has a limited role, if any.” So his take on America’s energy future is usually interesting. No exception in this recent interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, where he makes the case for why nuclear power will likely beat coal in a country still...

President Obama was in the Sunshine State today to announce a $3.4 billion federal investment in a so-called Smart Grid, which amounts to a complete overhaul of the country's energy transmission system. (VIDEO AT LINK) The president chose the town of Arcadia, Fla., to make the announcement because it is home to the country's largest solar power production facility, which was one of the 100 projects awarded federal stimulus money through the Smart Grid grants. Standing before a giant field, lined with close to 100,000 solar panels, President Obama addressed a small crowd of invited guests. "We're on the cusp...

President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will prioritize the development of nuclear energy, especially the use of nuclear technology in spacecraft. Medvedev made the announcement Thursday during his annual address to the Federal Assembly. This was not the first time that Russia has suggested the development of nuclear-powered spacecraft. Anatoly Perminov, the head of Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, said last month that the agency has planned to develop spacecraft with a megawatt-class nuclear power set.

North America's electrical grid is one of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th century. However, at the time of its design, the main goal was to make sure the lights stayed on, with no serious thought to energy efficiency, environmental conservation, alternative energy sources, consumer-tailored choices, or cyber security. But times have changed, and today the grid offers a virtual window into your home – providing granular levels of information such as when you cook or shower, and for how long. The information and communications technology revolution has changed our society in profound ways and these new technologies are...

One of the major challenges to developing the 174 billion barrels of oil sands claimed as “established reserves” by the Canadian province of Alberta is supplying the large quantities of natural gas needed to produce the oil sands and upgrade them to synthetic crude oil. In 2006, the oil sands industry in Alberta consumed about 1 Bcfd of natural gas, accounting for more than 40% of total gas demand for the province. As oil sands operations shift from the surface-minable resource to the more plentiful deep deposits, which require gas- and water-intensive in situ production methods such as Steam-Assisted Gravity...

What was once the central political battleground for addressing global warming in the United States may be making a comeback. While President Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill continue to focus on legislation covering greenhouse gas emissions across broad sections of the U.S. economy, a small bipartisan faction of Senate moderates is examining the idea of passing a bill that deals only with the heat-trapping emissions from power plants. "A power plant-only cap and trade could be doable on the Hill," Mark Helmke, a senior aide to Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), said today. Senate Democratic...

Although Valero Energy Corp.'s refining business has been pummeled this year, there's a bright spot on the company's balance sheet that comes from a surprising source: ethanol. Valero is making money with the corn-based fuel just six months after buying seven corn ethanol plants from bankrupt VeraSun Energy for $477 million. Although Valero's ethanol business is small when compared with its vast refining operations, “the business has worked out for us very well,” Valero CEO Bill Klesse told analysts during the company's earnings conference call late last month. “We feel very strongly that ethanol is going to be part of...

On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard..... Industry representatives have said the standards would force manufacturers to make televisions that have poorer picture quality and fewer features than those sold elsewhere in the U.S..... Some manufacturers say implementing a power standard will cripple innovation, limit consumer choice and harm California retailers because consumers could simply buy TVs out of state...

With long-term energy costs on the rise, the days of the “throwaway society” are numbered. To discard valuable material is to throw away energy. France and Great Britain recycle valuable plutonium and uranium that remains in used nuclear fuel to produce more carbon-free electricity. In the United States, where nuclear energy provides one-fifth of the nation’s electricity, recycling was banned in the mid-1970s by President Jimmy Carter. He feared that nuclear recycling could be misused to produce weapons. Currently, most European and Asian countries with nuclear energy programs are involved in used fuel recycling. The process is safe, closely monitored...

CHEYENNE — A Wyoming legislative committee on Wednesday voted against sponsoring two bills to tax wind energy development. Industry representatives and lobbyists warned members of the Joint Revenue Committee at a meeting at the state Capitol that the proposals to tax wind power would increase costs for Wyoming households and hurt the state’s fledgling wind industry. “You need to not cobble together all these tax notions into one bill,” said Larry Wolfe, a lawyer representing Duke Energy, a major wind power developer.

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania — Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop. Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal. Although there are no formal laws in this southeast Pennsylvania town against drying laundry outside, a town official called Froehlich to ask her to stop drying clothes in the sun. And she received two...

CARACAS, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday the South American oil producer's economic slide was largely due to its compliance with OPEC-mandated production cuts. GDP shrank 4.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, a second consecutive three-month contraction that by most economists' definition puts Venezuela in recession. Though Venezuela is still heading for a smaller economic decline this year than plenty of other nations, Chavez critics have leapt on this week's data as evidence of the failure of his decade-long socialist drive.

Dorgan, who chairs the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, announced a $457,000 federal Energy Department grant to study the feasibility of a new oil refinery in North Dakota. What I’ve never understood is why the Rural Electric Co-Op is getting an earmark to study an oil refinery. And on top of that, why are we spending almost a half a million of our grandchildren’s as-yet-unearned tax dollars on studying the feasibility of an oil refinery in the state ? Plus, we already have one refinery in the state and there’s another one in the works... Other than the fact...

California sets limits on energy-gulping TVs Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:38pm EST By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California regulators on Wednesday gave final approval to the nation's first mandatory energy curbs on television sets, a growing but often-overlooked power drain that accounts for 10 percent of home electric bills in the state. Supporters say the measure will save California consumers more than $8 billion over 10 years in electricity costs and enough energy to power 864,000 homes. California often leads the way in environmental initiatives in the United States. The rules require all new TVs sold in California...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand. On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient, beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, with only a quarter of all TVs currently on the market meeting that standard.

WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Two U.S. Senators on Monday unveiled bipartisan legislation aimed at doubling nuclear power in 20 years and increasing funding for research into low carbon sources of energy. Sponsored by Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Virginia Democrat Jim Webb, the bill would provide $100 billion in loan guarantees for carbon-free electricity projects, adding to the existing $47 billion loan guarantee program. Although the additional loan guarantees would not be limited to nuclear power, the nuclear industry would likely be the major recipient of the extra money because it is one of the most established low carbon...

The Energy Department plans to announce on Tuesday a significant step toward building a new kind of nuclear reactor that could be used to replace the fossil fuels normally needed to complete high-temperature processing at chemical plants, fertilizer factories and oil refineries. Such facilities typically burn oil or natural gas — both of which contribute to global warming — to generate high-temperature steam needed for proper processing. Nuclear reactors, meanwhile, normally don’t run beyond 600 degrees, which is not hot enough for this purpose.

The U.S. Obama administration put its mark in the overwhelmingly Republican state of Alaska, asking Alaska pipeline coordinator Drue Pearce to step down, according to U.S. news sources Monday. Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, USCG (Ret.), the deputy federal coordinator, will be interim coordinator until a permanent replacement is named. Pearce, a former Alaska Senate president, had been appointed federal coordinator of Alaska natural gas transportation projects by former President George W. Bush 2006. A terse statement by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska lamented the move, adding "I regret the loss of Drue's experience and knowledge on this project, but I understand...

Upset about FirstEnergy's pricey, hand-delivered light bulbs? You ain't seen nothing yetBy Kevin OBrien October 08, 2009, 3:59AM There was a time when you and I could be trusted to change a light bulb. In those days, powerful people who made weighty decisions understood that if a light bulb burned out, even the dimmest of us common folk would know enough to remove it from its socket, choose a suitable replacement and install it. Apparently all of the weighty decisions have been made, because powerful people have now worked their way down to telling us what kind of light bulb...

> Each unit will produce 70 MWt or 25 MWe— enough to provide electricity for 20,000 average American-size homes or the industrial equivalent. Approximately 1.5 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall, the units will be able to be transported by ship, rail, or truck and produce power for seven to ten years depending on usage. The HPM uses the energy of uranium fuel and meets all the non-proliferation criteria of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). > The liquid metal reactor takes advantage of the physical properties of a fissile metal hydride, such as uranium hydride, which serves as a...

WASHINGTON (CNN) - An energy advocacy group is launching another television ad in South Carolina taking aim at Sen. Lindsey Graham for his support of energy legislation that would include a cap-and-trade program. The 30-second spot is the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign against the Republican by the American Energy Alliance, a group funded in part by oil and gas companies that has spent roughly $375,000 over the last month knocking Graham on South Carolina's radio and TV airwaves. The newest ad comes one week after Graham was censured by the Charleston County Republican Party for supporting the legislation,...

EIN Presswire / The YESS Storage Battery is Your Energy Storage Solution! ERRA Incorporated, San Antonio, TX, USA has acquired all rights and patents to a breakthrough battery technology to be marketed as the YESS Battery from ERRA, Inc. "Our acquisition of this battery technology for all fields of use enables us to deploy the battery in hundreds of existing applications that will prove to be truly game changing. In addition to those existing markets, this battery will create new markets that did not previously exist. It will have significant impact for the entire clean / renewable energy industry." Jim...

US researchers have genetically modified bacteria to eat carbon dioxide and produce isobutyraldehyde - a precursor to several useful chemicals, including isobutanol, which has great potential as a fuel alternative to petrol. The modified bacteria are highly efficient and powered by sunlight, so a future goal is to set up colonies near to industrial plants. This would allow greenhouse gases to be recycled into useful chemical feedstock - supplying several hydrocarbons that are typically obtained from petroleum.  Liao and his team used genetically modified cyanobacteria to produce isobutyraldehyde from carbon dioxide Cyanobacteria and microalgae that consume CO2 have been identified for...

COAL RIVER MOUNTAIN, W.Va. – This mountain in southern West Virginia, right in the middle of Appalachia’s spine, is fast becoming someone’s Waterloo. It’s too soon to tell who will be the loser: the coal industry, the environmentalists or the people who call this region home. Nearly 500 mountaintops in Appalachia have been destroyed (or used for commerce, depending on your perspective) by mountaintop-removal mining. MRM, as it is known, is cheaper and faster than underground mining. It involves blasting the top of a mountain to remove its layers of coal. The Coalition for Mountaintop Mining, an advocacy group under...

We Alaskans have a very special relationship to our environment. The land is our back yard. We use it for recreation and subsistence. The land has provided our livelihood, for the people and for the state. Alaska is a land of amazing natural beauty, and the resources that underlie that beauty are what sustains our economy. Responsible development, sustainable yield, and resource stewardship were written into the constitution and statutes when Alaska became a state 50 years ago, and have been part of how we have developed our natural resources ever since. When Alaska Statehood was being debated, a major...

In 1968 the discovery of the giant Prudhoe Bay field, the first field to be discovered on Alaska’s North Slope and among the 20 largest oil fields ever discovered worldwide, triggered a northern Alaska oil industry that now includes 19 producing oil fields, all feeding oil into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline for transportation to the Valdez Marine Terminal 800 miles to the south. In fact, the totality of northern Alaska consists of five distinct geologic regions: the Brooks Range, the Brooks Range foothills (also known as the Arctic foothills), the North Slope (also known as the Arctic coastal plain), the...

The Resource Development Council (RDC) has been at the forefront of efforts to convince the Obama administration to provide for a seamless transition to new oil and gas leasing programs in the future that will expand access to the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). RDC strongly supports access to the OCS, especially in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and the North Aleutian Basin. The responsible development of potentially immense oil and gas deposits in Alaska would significantly boost the state’s economy, extend the life of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, improve the economic viability of the proposed natural gas pipeline from...

The Canadian Energy Research Institute figures that a “realistic” target for oil sands production by 2043 is 5.3 million barrels per day, almost a five-fold increase over the next 34 years, hitting 1.7 million bpd in 2015 and 4.5 million bpd by 2030. That forecast lags far behind earlier CERI targets, which counted on 5 million bpd by 2015 if all announced projects were completed. But, if its updated scenario is accurate, CERI estimates the Alberta government could collect C$852 billion in royalties; capital outlays would total C$309 billion and the industry might face a bill for greenhouse gas compliance...

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with Westinghouse Electric Co. next week to discuss the safety of its proposed AP1000 nuclear-reactor design. Toshiba Corp.'s Westinghouse unit will address the commission's concern about the structural integrity of the silo-shaped shield building that would contain the reactor and trap radioactivity in an accident, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said. Containment buildings at existing reactors were poured at the site as a solid piece of steel-reinforced concrete, Jaczko said. Westinghouse wants to piece the building together from sections, he said. "When you're dealing with the kinds of accident scenarios that we look at, or...

Yesterday the New York Times reported the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv’s revelations that Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat and advisor to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from Iraqi oil revenues. Galbraith’s profits would result from his cashing in on his links to the Kurdish regional leadership, and his role in drafting Iraq’s Constitution, shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In 2004, Galbraith helped the Kurds arrange deals with Norwegian oil firm DNO and prepare for negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution, including controversial provisions on...

Not exactly sure what I can post since it is from Bloomberg but if you go the site one of the lead articles is the EPA threatening coal mining in Applachia over a insect. What the Spotted Owl did to the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest this bug will do to coal mining.

Creeping along from red light to red light on your way from a major sports event or concert, or stopped by every red light on the way home late at night, on empty roads, you've probably wondered why traffic lights in the U.S. aren't a little more adaptable. The short answer: they're not at all smart, and at least here in the U.S. they're horribly outdated. The typical U.S. traffic signaling system is (sorry, fellow GenXers) 30 to 40 years old. And the result of these inflexible geezers signaling traffic is a lot of needless idling and the lack of...

Here comes that law of unintended consequences again. Global Warming Moonbats believe that electric cars are one of the major solutions to the problem of man made CO2 emissions causing the snow caps to melt, animals to die and blockbuster video to run out of your favorite videos. New research show electric cars are not the answer. The Environmental Transport Association in the UK, believes that electric cars could increase the rate of climate change, depending on how the electricity is created. In many countries when people plug in their electric car they would be plugging into a lump of...

Just how tough is Gazprom? As the world's biggest supplier of natural gas, the Russian company has a reputation for hard-nosed bargaining. So when John Hattenberger, chief of the company's new U.S. operation, hired George Thorogood and The Destroyers to play at a party marking the opening of Gazprom's Houston office, he insisted Thorogood leave his Epiphone guitar after the show. "That was clause 19 of the contract," Hattenberger jokes. Today the autographed instrument hangs above Gazprom's trading floor. That's Gazprom with a sense of humor. But more often, its negotiating style is no laughing matter. In January, Gazprom slowed...

Brazilian authorities defended the reliability of the nation's electric grid after a massive power failure Tuesday darkened about half the country and revived concerns about Brazil's ability to provide energy infrastructure to match its surging economy. Blackouts hit about 800 Brazilian cities, including Rio de Janeiro and the economic hub of São Paulo, around 10 p.m. Tuesday night after three high-power transmission lines collapsed, triggering a domino effect that prompted a 14,000-megawatt hydroelectric plant to go offline, officials said. Paraguay, which shares the dam with Brazil, also suffered a major blackout. Energy Minister Edison Lobão said the outage was provoked...

Has this been a trying decade for the average American, or what? It's bad enough that we've have had to cope with stagnant wages and tax increases at just about every level. But in the months ahead, we may have to deal with yet another nightmare: surging gasoline prices. Factors are lining up that could end up pushing gas prices back over $4 per gallon sometime next year. If you're already exasperated about prices at the pump, you're not the only one. Gasoline demand in 2009 has been comparatively low -- take 7.6 million Americans out of the workforce through...

Alberta is crisscrossed with hidden glacial valleys that hold both resource treasures and potential danger. University of Alberta researcher Doug Schmitt discovered a 300 metre deep, valley hidden beneath the surface of the ground near the community of Rainbow Lake in northwestern Alberta. The valley was created by glaciers and over time filled with loose rock gradually disappearing from the landscape. There had already been extensive underground mapping of the area, but Schmitt went beyond the standard practices to locate the valley. He combined a variety of the existing seismic and electrical mapping data and found the valley. It ranges...

The latest World Energy Outlook study released by the Energy Information Agency on Tuesday is like a rich chowder because there are lots of interesting pieces of information, each with their own flavour and bound to have an impact on future energy markets. But first, let’s say that the IEA has been adhering to the ‘forecast early, forecast often’ principle in the last year in the context of looking at future demand for oil and natural gas. The annual WEO happens to be the most comprehensive of this practice. The trouble with forecasting, as the recent Nobel Prize winners in...

In 2007, to great fanfare and amid ever-greater expectations, a large-scale demonstration project was initiated to turn switchgrass into biofuel. For an investment of $70 million, the taxpayers of the state of Tennessee were promised a lucrative new industry that would benefit farmers and create thousands of other "green jobs." The project, which was expected to produce five million gallons of biofuel from switchgrass within two years, would soon be fiscally self-sustaining and afford a "significant return" on investment. As the largest switchgrass demonstration project in the country, it was to have been the foundation for a whole new industry....

Warming: After stifling a report questioning the science behind climate change, the EPA is censoring two of its lawyers for saying the proposed solutions are also problematical. The debate isn't over. It's being suppressed. In the proud tradition of EPA whistle-blower Alan Carlin, whose leaked study blew the lid off the EPA's hyped and flawed science behind climate change, two EPA lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, have produced a Web video titled "A Huge Mistake." In it they say cap-and-trade in general and the Waxman-Markey bill in particular are the wrong answers anyway. Williams and Zabel do not deny...

Cuba orders extreme measures to cut energy use 11 Nov 2009 21:58:49 GMT Source: Reuters * Cuba's energy situation termed "critical" * Some factories, workshops to be closed through December * Most other economic activities to be reduced By Marc Frank HAVANA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Cuba has ordered all state enterprises to adopt "extreme measures" to cut energy usage through the end of the year in hopes of avoiding the dreaded blackouts that plagued the country following the 1991 collapse of its then-top ally, the Soviet Union. In documents seen by Reuters, government officials have been warned that the...

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting...

While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan’s natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked – Uzbekistan. While a number of factors are responsible for this oversight, including relative geographical isolation (Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of the world’s doubly landlocked nations, requiring crossing two other nations to gain access to the oceans), which currently limits energy exports available for the global market, there are a number of pluses that the country has for investors...

BAY CITY, Texas (CNNMoney.com) -- Minimum wage to $20 an hour. That's what 28-year old mother-of-three Sally Delk hopes to do with a job at the local nuclear power plant. Delk is currently enrolled in night classes at the community college here in town. In two years, she hopes to get a degree in nuclear technology, and turn a $7.25-an-hour job flipping burgers into a position at the plant making $15 to $20 an hour. "I have three kids I have to support, and it's a very good job," Delk said, lingering after class on a recent evening. "I don't...

Paradigm smasher This guy is going to ruin everything for the global warming/carbon tax crowd. Non-polluting cars that are high performance and fun? Tell me it ain't so Big Al (Gore). How are we supposed to wallow in "inconvenient truths" if trouble-makers like this mess things up by smoking the car companies with superior home brew engineering? Remember, the personal computer was the creation of a bunch of unfunded individuals, not the military-industrial complex.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A massive power failure blacked out Brazil's two largest cities and other parts of Latin America's biggest nation for more than two hours late Tuesday, leaving millions of people in the dark after a huge hydroelectric dam suddenly went offline. Paraguay was also affected when the Itaipu dam straddling the two nations' border stopped producing 17,000 megawatts of power, resulting in outages in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and at least several other big Brazilian cities, Brazilian Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said. The cause of the failure had not been determined, but Lobao said...

[Venezuela] may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse. ... The country has huge reserves of oil and natural gas and sizable coal deposits. Its Guri dam complex, built with postwar oil riches in the 1960s, ranks as one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects. Guri provides Venezuela with as much as three-quarters of its electricity and, just as crucial, allows Venezuela to export about...

Exxon Mobil Corp. and partners were expected to announce early today the completion of a $5 billion refining and chemical complex in China's Fujian province, a sprawling project that arrives as U.S. refineries and chemical plants are closing. The complex in the city of Quanzhou, which Exxon Mobil developed with Saudi Aramco, China's Sinopec and the Fujian government, will expand production of transportation fuels like diesel and widely used building block chemicals, demand for both of which is projected to grow rapidly in China in coming years. As such, it is a show of confidence by one of the world's...