One of the messages I got from the whole framing-media-science-policy discussions of the past couple of years was the idea that I (the media part of that equation) don’t solve problems by providing any one explanation of stuff. So, for example, I can do a story, as a colleague and I did earlier this year, …
Dan Yurman calculates the jobs he thinks would be created by expanding the federal loan guarantees for nuclear power: The Federal loan guarantee program for construction of nuclear power plants, set by Congress at $18.5 billion, could if expanded to cover the entire fleet of 21 proposed new reactors, create nearly 80,000 construction jobs, and …
Continue reading ‘On Federal Energy Investment and Job Creation’ »
Does “energy independence” make sense as an energy policy rationale? One of the oft-repeated themes of the presidential campaign was the idea that every U.S. president since Nixon has called for energy independence. Here’s Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf: A second broad rationale for government intervention in energy markets is national security concerns. In 2006, the …
Dieter Helm, writing in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, offers the counter-argument to the point made recently by Andy Dessler that the peak and inevitable decline of fossil fuels may put some sort of upper limit on our ability to to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: Some argue that, however intense the dash-for-resources, …
“SASOL’s plans to build a new coal-to-liquids plant in Limpopo, with a production capacity of 80000 barrels per day, are continuing.” Business Day “Louisiana Energy Services is proposing to double the size of a southeastern New Mexico plant being built to make fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.” AP New Mexico rig count down. Me. …
There has been much discussion of the prospect of developing industrial power from the nuclear fission of uranium. This problem is enormously more complicated than the utilization of solar energy. . . . [W]hereas the solar radiations have been made harmless by natural forces, the artificially induced radiation retains all of its virgin malignity. Whereas …
From Platts: Air China has seen its jet fuel hedge slump to almost half a billion dollars in the red, the Chinese airline warned shareholders in a notice published on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after markets closed Friday. The company, one of the big three national airlines in China, admitted that it bought and …
Found while cleaning off the desk in my office today, a report from back in July prepared by staff for the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee: FY09 will be a robust 9.3 percent (growth rate) due to extremely high energy revenues. Ah, those were the days.
Over at the day job, I’m finished looking at solar tax credits (to be printed on paper and thrown on driveways this weekend) and on to the oil price collapse. The question that interests me is the issue of infrastructure investment. Now that oil is under $50 a barrel, what’s happening to the investment in …
Google searches for “climate change” in blue, “oil prices” in red.