Lindsay Leveen has been writing about Bloom Energy’s fuel cell CO2 emissions for some time. Leveen is a chemical engineer, a technologist, an experienced consultant and the author of a book on […]
Is Shale Gas Excitement in Eastern Europe Unwarranted?
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as it is commonly known, is the method of extracting natural gas from shale rock. Despite environmental concerns over the process of pumping water and chemicals deep into […]
Where On Earth Do We Put Spent Nuclear Fuel?
If Nevada’s Harry Reid is right and Yucca Mountain is flattened, then what will happen to the nation’s 70,000-plus tons of nuclear waste? The Senate Majority Leader is adamant that such spent […]
The Global Implications of Falling Commodity Prices
China’s growth slowdown has serious implications for the convergence of developed and developing countries’ per capita income levels. Just as China’s economic boom benefited commodity-dependent developing countries, its slowdown – and the […]
On Energy Subsidies and Externalities
Energy subsidization is an area of intense debate simply because it artificially promotes some technologies over others. In practice, a high degree of subsidization implies that the energy sector is shaped by […]
While news outlets fixate on the US shale boom, oil troubles loom in these eight countries and beyond
Violence in Egypt and supply disruptions elsewhere in Africa have sent oil prices to a five-month high, but worse may be ahead because of events in places that are not even currently […]
China’s plan to limit coal pollution will benefit the rich but leave the rest of the country gasping
China’s state news agency Xinhua just announced a pilot program to “control” coal consumption in a few dozen major cities, including Beijing. January’s “airpocalypse“, when pollution reached unprecedented levels, spurred outrage among […]
This chart shows why the US recovery is so slow—and will stay that way for five more years
The prescient economist A. Gary Schilling says US growth is going to remain slow for some time to come. In a piece for Bloomberg View yesterday, he wrote that the US is […]
Electricity demand patterns matter for valuing electricity supply resources
The value of existing and potential electricity supply resources depends mostly on how much and when they operate. Because the electric industry currently lacks large-scale storage, supply is adjusted in real time […]
Emergy as a Metric of Sustainability
Under what conditions will a technology be able to survive the energy contraction associated with the depletion of fossil fuels? Which types of technologies are sustainable in a world that can only […]
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