Top Stories
Democrats abandon comprehensive energy bill.—reliability
high.
"Senate Democrats on Thursday gave up plans to attempt to pass an
energy-global warming bill that caps greenhouse gases, abandoning a
priority of President Barack Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
said no Republican was willing to back a comprehensive energy bill, a
development he called 'terribly disappointing.' ... Instead, Reid and
other Democrats said they would focus on a narrower bill that responds
to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and improves energy efficiency."
See MSNBC
from AP. [This
will further weaken the USA's negotiating position in UN climate talks,
since it can't even commit to the modest reductions it promised at
Copenhagen. This is probably worth one additional degree of warming
this century. Or will grass-roots actions, state initiatives and the
EPA do what the Senate could not?]
BP and the gulf--After the leak.—reliability
high.
"On July 15th a 75-tonne cap closed off the Macondo well at the bottom
of the Gulf of Mexico. ... the chances of BP going on to seal the well
permanently by mid-August, with little or no oil seeping out in the
meantime, look good. ... Things could still go wrong." "This may not
mark a turning-point in BP’s fortunes: it still faces payouts of tens
of billions of dollars, and reports and inquiries that could damage its
reputation and finances yet further. But it will make it clearer that
the company’s wounds are unlikely to be fatal." More on financial and
other consequences for BP. From The
Economist. [Increased
regulation usually favors bigger companies with deeper pockets . . .
such as BP. This disaster may cost it $100 billion over the next few
years, but the pattern of the assets it is selling to meet those costs
indicate it will be betting even more heavily on deepwater drilling for
its future earnings.]
Six lessons from the BP oil spill.—reliability
high.
Long feature article. "For years to come, the United States and the
oil industry will be absorbing the lessons of the BP spill in the Gulf
of Mexico. Regulators will toughen inspections. Oil companies will
adopt more rigorous safeguards. New cleanup technologies will emerge
from university and corporate laboratories. And spill drills could
become a regular part of coastal communities' emergency planning." But
drilling will continue. "Even as brown goo gushes from the Gulf floor
5,000 feet below the surface, and cleanup crews struggle to halt the
slick from befouling beaches and shorebirds, companies are already
developing the technologies to drill twice as deep off South America,
Africa, and in the Gulf itself." Lessons discussed include: "Improve
the offshore police ... design a better drill rig ... Find something
better than a boom" "The overarching lesson may be to beware of
technological hubris." From The
Christian Science Monitor. [These lessons, and
others, to the extent they are absorbed, will help with the next
similar crisis. And there will be other crises. It's just part of the
cost of oil.]
Companies,
Industries, Markets and Supply Chains
The green suits--The economics of
biodiversity and business.—reliability high.
About "the current development of an Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" and "the equally
inelegantly named TEEB process (it stands for The Economics of
Ecosystems and Biodiversity)" Discussion of challenges of getting
businesses to align their goals with environmental needs. Article in The
Economist. [More at GBOB site.]
Government and
Regulation
Japan seeks consumer burden to push
renewable energy.—reliability high.
"Japanese consumers will have to pay higher electricity bills under a
government plan to help triple the generating capacity of renewable
energy in the next decade and cut CO2 emissions. Utility firms will be
required to buy at a fixed rate [high feed-in tariff] electricity
generated from renewable sources of energy -- mega solar, wind,
geothermal, biomass and small hydro power -- from as early as 2012, the
trade ministry said on Friday." See Reuters
article.
China May Spend $738 Billion on Clean Energy
Projects.—reliability high.
"China, the world’s biggest polluter, may spend about 5 trillion yuan
($738 billion) in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy
to reduce emissions from burning oil and coal, a government official
said. The government will submit plans to develop cleaner energy,
including nuclear power and gas from unconventional sources, in 2011 to
2020 to the State Council, or Cabinet, for approval, Jiang Bing, head
of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development
department, said in Beijing today." Story at Bloomberg
Businessweek. [A trillion here, a
trillion there . . . pretty soon you're talking real money. Since my
rough estimate of the cost of getting GHG emissions under control is
only a few trillion dollars, maybe we can do it after all. And see next item for where another trillion
can come from.]
U.N. urges investment policy to foster
low-carbon growth.—reliability high.
"The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) urged
developing country governments to harness investments by multinational
companies to ensure that economic growth does not drive up carbon
emissions. Multinationals can help cut emissions by improving
production processes in their operations and along their value chains
and by making and marketing cleaner goods and services, UNCTAD said in
its annual World Investment Report on Thursday." From Reuters.
Access report here.
Science and
Economics (and Politics)
China 'leapfrogs US to become biggest energy
user'.—reliability high.
"China has overtaken the United States to become the world's top
energy consumer for the first time, a new report says. Provisional
figures from the International Energy Agency indicate that China's
energy demand has doubled in a decade. The IEA said China had taken
first place because it was hit less hard than the US by the global
financial crisis." From BBC News.
Access report here.
[It's worth looking
at the IEA's graph:
China's energy use matches the U.S.'s while China's per capita use is less than
one-third that of the U.S.]
And in reply:
China denies IEA label as world's top energy user.—reliability
high.
"China on Tuesday denied a report that it had surpassed the United
States last year to become the world's largest energy user. The
Financial Times, citing the International Energy Agency, reported that
China last year consumed 2.252 billion tonnes of oil equivalent of
energy from sources including coal, oil, natural gas, hydro and nuclear
power, about 4 percent more than the United States. But Zhou Xian,
spokesperson for China's National Energy Administration, said on
Tuesday that the IEA's estimate of China's energy consumption was too
high, although he declined to give an alternative estimate." Story at Reuters.
[China can quibble
about the numbers, and last year's figures are affected by recession in
the U.S. while there was none in China, but the inexorable rise in
China's energy appetite continues. Efficiency moves can slow that rise,
but non-fossil energy technologies are the only way to disconnect it
from "leadership" in GHG emissions.]
