I thought it was a bit humorous recently — when corn ethanol prices dipped and were cheaper than both sugarcane ethanol and gasoline (even when adjusted for lower energy content) — that some corn ethanol […]
How to Run an Oil Industry into the Ground
Hugo Chavez is putting on a clinic in Venezuela. The theme is “How to Destroy a Domestic Oil Industry.” I have warned for years that this would be the end result of Chavez’s actions. As […]
Peak Oil Interview: Misconceptions, Replacing Oil, and False Solutions
Back in June, I gave a presentation on Peak Oil at the Global Footprint Conference in Siena, Italy. (More on the event here). Following my presentation, I was asked to do a pair of interviews. […]
$10M Purse Split Between Three 100 MPG Auto Teams
The Edison2 “Very Light Car” took home the grand prize of $5M while two other teams were awarded $2.5M each. After undergoing on-track testing at Michigan International Speedway, and laboratory verification at the Department of […]
ExxonMobil Says No to Subsidies
Earlier this week I participated in a conference call with ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) that was hosted by the American Petroleum Institute (API). It is the first API blogger call I have joined in a very […]
Maxwell Forecasts Peak Oil in Seven Years
Respected oil analyst and oil industry veteran Charles Maxwell (nicknamed the “Dean of Oil Analysts”) has forecast peak oil by 2017 or 2018: Bracing For Peak Oil Production By Decade’s End His prediction is not […]
Recycling Our Way to Sustainable Waste Management
While my focus is primarily on energy, I am also interested in other sustainability issues. Some of those include food production, water issues (e.g. water desalination to increase availability of fresh water), and waste management. […]
Why Oil Prices Aren’t Going Down
I saw a humorous story a few days ago: Oil Should Be Around $10 a Barrel The price of a barrel of oil would be closer to $10 if the commodity wasn’t traded as an […]
Crude Oil From Biomass: Evaluating KiOR
Cracking Biomass Back when I worked in a refinery, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about how biomass would behave in certain refining processes. A fluidized catalytic cracker (FCC), for instance, takes […]
Leaked Study on Peak Oil Warns of Severe Global Energy Crisis
This week a study on peak oil by a German military think tank was leaked on the Internet. The document shows that the German government is closely studying the issue of peak oil, and is […]