Free Republic

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER Staff Reporter WALL STREET JOURNAL HOUSTON Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330. Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to 4,000 barrels a day. Then suddenly - some say almost inexplicably - Eugene Island's fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy, is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and...

Joe Biden Protests Before Zapatero for the Retroactivity of the Cut in the Subsidies to Renewable Energies.The vice-president of the USA, Joe Biden, has called Moncloa [palace, the Prime Minister’s residence] to protest for the legal uncertainty generated in Spain by the Government in the sector of the renewable energies. The arrangement being prepared by the Industry [economic central planning] Ministry to apply the new regulatory frame in a retroactive way, has brought the complaints of investors and American companies, which have directed their preoccupation and uneasiness to their embassy for the plans that are being handled to severely cutting...

A bitter political dispute between this city's elected leaders and its powerful municipal utility threatens to push the city into insolvency as early as next month. Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel warned this week that the city's general fund could run out of money and fall $10 million into the red by May 5 unless the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power transfers a planned $73.5 million payment it has so far said it would withhold. Without the payment, the city would need to dip into its reserve fund, leaving that contingency dangerously low in the event of...

DALLAS CENTER, Iowa (AP) — Kent Holst stood in front of the Iowa Stored Energy Park’s municipal utility members and proclaimed, “This time, we have something to show you.” Holst, the park’s development director, showed the officials a drill rig behind a house on the south side of Iowa Highway 44, two miles west of Dallas Center. The rig is drilling a 2,800-foot well, which will be used to test the hardness of a sandstone formation. The energy park hopes the formation can hold energy that has been converted into air. When the municipal utilities that own stored energy need...

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for...

GUYUN VILLAGE, China — Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast. Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs. Western capitals have suddenly grown worried over China’s near monopoly, which gives it a potential stranglehold on technologies of the future. In Washington, Congress is fretting about...

AMBOY, Calif. — Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region. But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy. Developers of...

... Stoking the [wind energy] frenzy in Europe is the vast revenue available through a variety of subsidies, including the European Union’s farm subsidy system, which distributes more than €50 billion, or $73 billion, a year to farmers, corporate agribusiness and rural development projects. In Europe, more than €6 billion in structural and agricultural subsidies have been allocated for renewable energy over a 13-year period ending in 2013. This is an attractive sum for a relatively new industry that experts say gets the benefit of the doubt because it has an eco-friendly image that seems above political reproach. ... [C]ritics...

A $60 million project to extract renewable energy from the hot bedrock deep beneath Basel, Switzerland, was shut down permanently on Thursday after a government study determined that earthquakes generated by the project were likely to do millions of dollars in damage each year. The project, led by Markus O. Häring, a former oilman, was suspended in late 2006 after it generated earthquakes that did no bodily harm but caused about $9 million in mostly minor damage to homes and other structures. Mr. Häring is to go to trial next week on criminal charges stemming from the project. [...] The...

The company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned. The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers.But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that “it will...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office said Saturday that he would veto legislation requiring a third of California's energy to come from renewable sources by 2020, choosing instead to mandate the change through an executive order. The Democratic bills that passed the state Legislature just before the end of the legislative session Friday would have set up the most aggressive renewable energy standards in the nation. But they also sought to limit the amount of energy from sources such as wind, solar and geothermal that could come from out-of-state. Schwarzenegger and some energy producers said the legislation would set...

California lawmakers on Friday began approving legislation that would establish the nation's most ambitious renewable-energy standards, even as some warned that the rules would increase energy costs and hurt the state's economy. The Senate and Assembly began voting on two companion bills that would require utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020. One bill cleared an initial hurdle in the Senate on a simple majority vote with just a few hours remaining in this year's regular legislative session. If passed and signed into law, the standard would be the most aggressive in the nation....

With today the final day of the Legislature's session, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders are pushing hard for passage of a law that would require that 33 percent of the power used in California be from renewable energy sources by the end of 2020. The main sticking point is over a bizarre proposal that all this power be generated in-state, even though California is fully integrated into a regional grid that helps keep reliability up and costs down. Our concern is much broader, however. A strong case can be made that the state, the nation and the world...

Wind farms and solar panels are set to take over Australia after politicians agreed on a historic deal to boost clean energy. Labor and the coalition struck the deal in a rare moment of cooperation that has sparked hopes they can agree on another controversial environmental issue - emissions trading. The surprise love-in on renewable energy led to an unusual day in parliament, with the major parties being nice to each other. The federal government's key election promise to have 20 per cent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 is now a done deal. Called the Renewable Energy...

California officials are beginning to worry that the state's focus on transitioning to renewable-energy sources could lead to power shortages in the near term. The state has been so keen to develop renewables that relatively few conventional power generators, such as gas-fired plants, have been built lately. That risks a possible energy shortfall in certain places if the economy rebounds any time soon. California's utilities are barreling ahead to try to meet a state mandate to garner 33% of their power from renewable sources by 2020, and some officials are concerned the effort might push up electricity prices and crimp...

President Barack Obama wants to boost the nation's production of energy from the sun as part of an effort to double renewable power generation in three years. Among the obstacles to Mr. Obama's agenda: the imperiled Devil's Hole pupfish. Patrick Putnam is a field manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in southern Nevada. His job is to help the government decide whether the dozens of solar-energy projects that companies have proposed building on federal land in his jurisdiction pose undue environmental risks. After reviewing some applications for as long as 18 months, Mr. Putnam's office hasn't approved any....

Ordinary light bulbs are supposed to disappear in the next few years as exotic new lighting technologies become common. Much of our electricity will be generated by wind and sun. Car fuel will be extracted from trees and grass. So lawmakers have mandated. Now President Obama has proposed a new energy initiative, one of the most ambitious in decades, that would require the average car to get 40 percent more miles on each gallon. At least, that’s what is supposed to happen. But as the ups and downs of the nation’s energy policy have demonstrated over the last 35 years,...

A measure requiring utilities to generate a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, overcame a legislative hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Thursday. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted down an amendment offered by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions that would have removed the renewable electricity standard from the energy package the panel is currently debating. The proposed committee bill would mandate that power plants meet targets to gradually produce more renewable power, beginning with 3 percent of their output between 2011 and 2013 and rising to 15 percent between 2021 and 2039....

LAKE HUGHES [california] - Plans for the installation of 70 wind turbines on a ridge northwest of Lake Hughes and construction of power lines to connect them with an already-controversial proposed power line in Leona Valley have been submitted to Los Angeles County regional planners. But residents of the Lakes communities aren't too happy about it. "We as a community are not getting a lot of oversight protection on these projects," said Jim Walker, president of the Lakes Town Council. Speaking at a town council meeting Saturday, Walker said he is also concerned about the aesthetic and ecological impacts the...

“THINK of what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan where they’re making real investments in renewable energy,” Barack Obama instructed Americans earlier this year. “They’re surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new industries. This isn’t because they’re smarter than us, or work harder than us, or are more innovative than we are. It’s because their governments have harnessed their people’s hard work and ingenuity with bold investments—investments that are paying off in good, high-wage jobs.” Mr Obama is right that many governments, not least his own, are spending heavily in a bid to...