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A recently released report by VeraQuest Inc. titled “VeraGreen: A Look at American Attitudes and Behaviors on Environmental Issues,” examines how Americans view environmental issues such as global warming and the involvement of government in the private sector. The report surveyed a stratified random sample of 3,506 online respondents to be nationally representative and has an error range of 1.66% at a 95% confidence level. The study was fielded between October 3 and October 11, 2012. Key Findings: 36% of respondents believe society does not put enough emphasis on environmental issues, compared to 21% that believe it’s too much emphasis. 51%… [more]
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According to a national survey of energy professionals jointly prepared by Sandia National Laboratories and OurEnergyPolicy.org, U.S. energy policy should simultaneously pursue energy supply security, economic outcomes, and minimized environmental impacts. Contemporary political discourse often poses energy policymaking as a binary decision—the economy versus the environment, for example. Public opinion polls frequently support this conception, posing energy policymaking options as a zero-sum game between two opposed goals. However, does this tension in the discourse accurately reflect how policy is made? Do energy professionals — people working on energy issues daily — view U.S. energy policy in this way? How might professional insights… [more]
View InsightHouse leadership is planning a vote this week on a bill to expand leasing for offshore drilling, the “Congressional Replacement of President Obama’s Energy-Restricting and Job-Limiting Offshore Drilling Plan” (H.R. 6082). As E&E News reports, the bill would “expand future offshore leasing to almost all of the Atlantic Ocean, the southern Pacific and Alaska’s Bristol Bay, all areas that were excluded from Interior’s final five-year leasing plan.” The bill would also double the number of sales in the Department of Interior’s plan and accelerate by three years sales Interior plans in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Some have criticized the… [more]
View InsightCoal is one of America’s most abundant and affordable energy sources, and has served for decades as the country’s primary base load electric fuel. Coal comes with significant environmental trade-offs, including local air and water pollution, deforestation, and mountaintop removal from mining process, and greenhouse gas and toxic particulate emissions from burning it to generate electricity. Given plentiful U.S. supplies of low-cost coal, there is clear economic and energy security rationale for continuing to use coal, and government and industry have worked for years to promote and demonstrate “clean coal” technologies. It is hoped that these technologies will capture CO2… [more]
View InsightLast month, the National Alliance for Advanced Technology Batteries released “Distributed Energy Storage: Serving National Interests,” a white paper which outlines the benefits of distributed energy storage (DES) and its relationship to the nascent electric vehicle (EV) industry. According to the paper, DES systems can increase grid reliability, stability and security because of their “ability to provide… electric supply capacity and energy time shift, ancillary services, transmission and distribution (T&D) system support, electric utility customer energy cost management, and renewable energy integration.” These advantages may be necessary if the U.S. were to increase integration of renewable energy sources, see a… [more]
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Domestic natural gas production continues to expand, while natural gas spot prices are at historic lows. Many utilities are responding to these changing market dynamics by building gas plants or “fuel-switching” existing power plants from more expensive fuels to gas. As a result, coal generation continues to fall. Due in part to price competition with natural gas, some Congressional “clean energy” subsidies may not be renewed. EIA projections suggest that domestic production will continue to increase, and that natural gas prices faced by electric utilities will remain below $7.00/mBtu, through 2035. [Source: EIA] What does near- to mid-term domestic natural… [more]
View InsightThree recent efforts – two private, and one public – could shape the future of U.S. shale gas and oil development. The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), an industry group, released Recommended Practices: Site Planning, Development and Restoration, offering general guidance for natural gas professionals developing or restoring shale plays in the Marcellus. Days later, the Appalachian Shale Responsible Producers Group (ASRPG), led by Andarko Energy, released their Recommended Standards and Practices, which again provides general guidance to well operators and shale play developers. Ohio Governor John Kasich has pushed legislation to the state’s legislature that the his office hopes will… [more]
View InsightEastern Utah may see tar sand production begin later this year. A private company, the Alberta-based U.S. Oil Sands, has invested $6 million since 2005 to test the oil sands at its 6,000-acre lease in eastern Utah and develop pilot projects on state land. They were granted preliminary permits to begin production in 2009, and have been raising capital and developing plans to begin production. “We would expect to hopefully to have this up and running by about September of next year,” said Cameron Todd, CEO of U.S. Oil Sands. The Bureau of Land Management estimates that the sands could… [more]
View InsightOn March 27, 2012 the Environmental Protection Agency, under the authority of the Clean Air Act, released proposed greenhouse gas standards for newly constructed power plants. The rules would require that “new fossil‐fuel‐fired power plants meet an output‐based standard of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt‐hour (lb CO2/MWh gross).” Combined-cycle natural gas plants should be able to meet this requirement, and coal- or petroleum coke-fired plants would be able to with emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The proposed rules elicited varied response from advocacy groups, many of which were highlighted in this Los Angeles Times article. Environmental… [more]
View InsightIn a study of U.S. carbon capture and storage (CCS) potential published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found “that the United States can store enough CO2 to stabilize emissions at their current rate for over a hundred years. This result suggests that with a favorable political and economic framework, carbon capture and storage can be a viable climate change mitigation option in this country for the next century.” The video below explains their findings:
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