One of oil’s most important characteristics is its fungibility, which means that a barrel of refined oil from Texas is equivalent to one from Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or anywhere else in […]
The U.S. Could Run on 80-Percent Renewable Electricity by 2050
It won’t be cheap, or easy. But it’s technically feasible for the United States to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, according to a new report from […]
Who Owns Solar?

Along with the emergence of three distinct ownership models (customer-owned, third-party-owned, and utility-owned), the U.S. photovoltaic (PV) market has grown, over the last ten years, at an average annual rate of approximately […]
Negative wholesale electricity prices: possible, but rare

Under certain conditions, electric generators in regional transmission organizations (RTOs) actually pay to produce power as reflected in a price below zero. This situation can arise because some types of generators, such […]
Solar Hot Water is Where the Money Is
There are about 200 million solar water heating (SWH) systems in the world. There are about one million systems in the U.S. Year-on-year numbers, even during the recession, showed SWH to be […]
Accurate Wind Assessments: Pinning Down Performance | Wind Technology Magazine Article
Accurate pre-construction assessments are critical to securing project financing and ensuring investor confidence. However, North America’s wind power industry has developed a reputation for producing energy below levels predicted by pre-construction wind […]
Analysis: CO2 market has failed to promote cleaner energy
Europe’s emissions trading scheme has failed to create incentives for utilities to use cleaner energy fuels, meaning that governments will have to switch to simpler tools, such as subsidies and regulation, to […]
The U.S. Has A Natural Gas Glut; Why Exporting It As LNG Is A Good Idea
The emergence of shale gas has caused natural gas prices in North America to drop to the lowest levels seen in decades. Shale gas resources elsewhere in the world, however, have not […]
Riyadh’s OPEC Whip Risks Russian Backlash
The Secretary General of OPEC, Abdalla El-Badri couldn’t have put it any better in Vienna today, ‘there are genuine demand uncertainties’. To prevent further ‘demand destruction’, OPEC has decided to keep official […]
This Week In Petroleum Summary

Yesterday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its June Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) , which included significant downward revisions to the crude oil and petroleum product price forecasts for the second […]