On August 5, 2014, Amory Lovins published a commentary on Forbes.com titled Sowing Confusion About Renewable Energy. He was responding to an opinion piece published in the July 26, 2014 issue of The Economist that was based on a working paper titled The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies written by Charles R….
One of the reasons I am so certain that hydrocarbon producers dislike the idea of competing with nuclear energy is the fact that their ads, stockholder communications, and predictions of future energy supply scenarios virtually ignore nuclear energy. They apparently hope that it will go away long enough for them to accumulate an even larger…
Platts Energy Week TV carried an important segment on July 13, 2014 discussing the need to make major investments in the US natural gas pipeline infrastructure in order to deliver new sources of gas to growing markets. Chris Newkumet from Platts talked with Don Santa of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and Ben…
There was a time when the Royal Dutch Shell corporation demonstrated strong interest in nuclear energy. In 1973, it was approached by Gulf Oil Company, the owner of Gulf General Atomics, as a capital partner for an aggressive expansion program. GA had spent the better part of two decades developing an innovative high temperature gas-cooled…
For the majority of human history, people used their own muscles to provide almost all of the work required for survival and development. A thin slice of humanity achieved a moderate amount of personal comfort and leisure because they were able, often through an accident of birth, to control a portion of the daily work…
France’s President Francois Hollande and his Socialist Party ran on a platform that included scaling back France’s dependence on nuclear energy. It was not a very popular part of his campaign pitch, but Sarkozy was such a flawed candidate that Hollande won anyway. Hollande is trying to follow through on his promise, but there are…
Governor Andrew Cuomo has never tried to hide the fact that he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps. Like Mario, Andrew became Governor of New York. Like Mario, Andrew has established political and financial alliances with well-heeled donors that do not like nuclear energy. Like Mario, Andrew would like to be remembered as a…
Greg Kozera is the President of the Virginia Oil and Gas Association and the author of a recently-released book titled Just the Fracks, Ma’am: The Truth About Hydrofracking and the Next Great American Boom. I heard about the book from his publicist, News & Experts. Here is an excerpt from the communication I received. Hi…
Update: (June 20, 2014) Here is the chart of B&W’s stock price during the past year. It is interesting to note the 10% drop between May 9, 2014 and May 18, 2014 and the fact that the stock continues to trade in a range centered around the new, lower price established after that drop. End…
On April 11, 2014, Roger Annis, a member of the Vancouver Ecosocialist Group, gave a talk at the University of California Santa Barbara. The talk was titled Oil, tar sands, coal, natural gas: What’s behind the expansion drive of Canada’s and North America’s fossil fuel industries? It is a fascinating talk with some excellent slides…
On Wednesday, April 9, 2014, The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists hosted a symposium titled Speaking Knowledge to Power in Princeton University’s Robertson Hall. The speakers included John Holdren, Allison Macfarlane, Frank von Hippel and Christopher Chyba. Three out of the four (Holdren, von Hippel,…
There is a folder in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum titled National Coal Policy Conference that documents an apparently successful effort to influence a rising political star to support national policies that favor coal over natural gas, residual oil and atomic energy. The NCPC, whose existence lasted from its founding in 1959…