Posts Tagged by big energy
Fossil Fuel Industries Likely To Remain Insanely Profitable
| May 4, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
The reader who asked me about this article on renewable energy from RealClearScience poses this follow-up:
So the article didn’t stress the importance of a “level playing field” which I understand is of major importance. So, your overall impression is that the article mentioned obvious problems in green energy without emphasizing the most important one. Correct?
Thanks for your note, and yes. The article’s purpose was to bring new people up to speed on renewable energy in the least offensive way possible, which required talking around the central issue, which I would summarize as follows: Read More
What’s the Plan For Phasing Out Fossil Fuels? Which Do You Want To Hear First? The Good News or the Bad News?
| April 29, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Germany has installed enough photovoltaics that, at this point, coal-fired power plants are beginning to become unprofitable. This is driven by a combination of factors, e.g., that coal isn’t asked to provide power at the peak of the day, when both the sun and the price of electricity are at their zenith. Of course, most of us cheer when coal runs into trouble, but issues like this raise some fantastically interesting questions about the future of power generation – and transportation – as we migrate from fossil fuels into more sustainable modalities. Read More
From Guest Blogger Adam: Celebrate Today!
| February 2, 2010 | Posted by adam under Renewables - Business |
I am new to the Blog section here so I will stick my toe in the water first with a short article about an event that happened this morning. Mr. Obama in announcing his proposed government budget for the 2011 spending year will end some $36.5 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies, saying it would help fight global warming.
I almost dropped my coffee when I heard him say this on CNN! The changes would take effect on January 1, 2011, and save $36.5 billion over 10 years, according to the budget proposal.
Of course the Petroleum industry issued a statement immediately as follows:
“With America still recovering from recession and one in 10 Americans out of work, now is not the time to impose new taxes on the nation’s oil and natural gas industry,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute.
“Imposing new taxes would reduce our nation’s energy security by discouraging new investment in domestic oil and natural gas production and refining capacity and pushing those investments — and American jobs — abroad,” he added.
Hogwash! What is wrong with this statement above is there has NOT been a single new oil fefinery built in the USA in 25 years while this tax subsidy was in place and now that there is the threat of it being removed, BIG oil is saying there won’t be any new investment in oil refineries??
What they are really saying is that it is a different future we are talking about – not just changing how we get energy, but changing what we do with it. However, it means not only a radically different structure of the economy, but a change in who runs American industry. And this is what the Big Oil companies are fighting to the death. They want to keep the same people in charge who have driven things to crisis, because they are the people who they put in charge. The same bankers, industrialists, politicians, writers, lobbyists, and assorted other elites, who have wildly thrown away a generation on an orgy of consumption.
Today should be celebrated news for those of us who embrace the Electric Revolution and finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. In future articles I will attempt to prove how Edison and Tesla were right, and how Ford and Standard Oil were wrong, and how the future of energy will shift away from the refining & burning of cheap Oil to the generation & storage of cheap Elecricity through renewable energy sources.
Until next time – celebrate today!
Big Energy and Campaign Finance Reform
| November 17, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
The interviews that I am conducting that will eventually form the chapters of my upcoming book on renewables are, by design, on a variety of different topics. Yet I can’t help noticing that powerful common threads are emerging from the words of a range of different types of professionals speaking on topics that, on the surface, have virtually nothing to do with one another.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this lies in the politics behind Big Energy. Here are a few points of consensus:
- A “cozy” relationship exists between government regulators and those they ostensibly regulate.
- This relationship is spawned from the fact that regulators often come from — and later return to — those industries.
- Political campaigns are financed largely from contributions from the corporate giants whose interests the legislators are asked to regulate, presenting huge and obvious conflicts of interest.
All of this may sound like “old news” — so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning. Yet here is a variation on this theme — perhaps more intersting — that actually comes up in our my conversations even more often that this “the fox is guarding the henhouse” discussion above:
The political cycle is two years. Advocating an idea that does not produce demonstrable results in that time period is political suicide. Such support has no upside, and will be used by the supporter’s opponents as evidence of stupidity or corruption. Yet investment in renewable energy — in all its many forms — is long-term (certainly more than two years) by nature. Throwing money quickly and carelessly at the energy problem without thinking it through is guaranteed to produce failure — including gross inefficiencies, and, ironically, more ecological damage.
And guess who wins when renewable energy projects misfire? That’s right, it’s the status quo boys, heartlessly pumping their oil, greedily mining their coal, and recklessly splitting their atoms.
Again, I point to our political machine as the true culprit underlying the horrible environmental effects that the energy industry is wreaking on us. In particular, if we do not see intense grass roots efforts demanding a total reform of campaign finance law, it appears that we are doomed to sit idle while the last few billion barrels of oil are sucked from our earth and its exhaust fumes dumped into our skies.
I’d love to hear readers’ comments here.
