Category: For Peak Oil, Three’s a Crowd

Has the peak oil crowd added a new member?

Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer (Shell)

An email written by Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer has sparked the latest round of debate over the state of oil supplies. In the email, which Mr. van der Veer told his employees to spread around, he says […]

How realistic are Europe’s renewable-energy goals?
The European Union announced ambitious clean-energy targets as part of the big climate-change package unveiled this week: It wants 20% of total energy consumed by the 27-nation bloc to come from renewable sources by 2020. That’s up from 8.5% today — in a continent that’s already worked for decades to […]

What the Fed couldn’t do, the stimulus package apparently can: AP reports that optimism over the economic package drove oil prices over $90. Bloomberg notes that rate cuts and a weaker dollar are also behind oil’s quick rebound.
More fodder over oil’s future from Royal Dutch Shell. The oil major expects demand to outstrip supply […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is holding a hearing as we write to drill deeper into the EPA’s denial of California’s request for more stringent tailpipe emissions standards. (We wrote about this here and here.)
Until the EPA’s final decision document is completed, and its decision-making process is made fully public, today’s spat is […]

Big ideas can have scary consequences.

Europe has traditionally leaned toward big, and often scary, answers to perceived problems: socialism, communism, fascism, the European Union, the Eurovision song contest. Its latest stab at tackling climate change with a new carbon-emissions trading framework is no different. But is that the best approach to fighting global warming?
The […]

Here’s the rub of the question: Is a U.S. slowdown behind lower oil prices, or are higher oil prices finally driving the U.S. slowdown? The WSJ reports that falling prices probably rule out any production help from OPEC; the NYT says global demand will keep prices high. Don’t forget China. Despite adding a power plant […]

Don’t tell Barack Obama, but Wal-Mart says it’s trying to do good.

H. Lee Scott.

Lee Scott, chairman and CEO of the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant, presented today the second part of Wal-Mart’s environmental action plan in front of 7,000 store managers and executives. The upshot: The retailer hopes to use its huge muscle to keep […]

Another brick in the wall against ethanol. Academics tasked with plotting California’s transition to a low-carbon fuel have delivered more bad news: Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought — higher, indeed, than fossil fuel.
California has long been a little wary of ethanol. They worry that adding ethanol […]

Oil prices famously affect airlines’ financial performance. Now, in the wake of last year’s sky-high oil prices, the jet-fuel bill has become all that separates airline winners from losers.
 
Take Southwest: Today it reported fourth-quarter net income of $111 million. But it made $246 million from hedging the cost of jet fuel. Translation: Southwest would have […]

At least according to PFC Energy, the Washington, D.C. oil and gas consultants. A newcomer has burst into the PFC Top 50 list of the world’s biggest energy companies: Iberdrola Renovables, the renewable-energy arm of Spain’s Iberdrola.

Iberdrola chairman Ignacio Galan ringing in the renewables listing.

With a market capitalization of about $35 billion, the Spanish company […]