March is women’s history month. In recognition, the Cato Institute’s post, “Three Women Who Launched a Movement: Celebrating Liberty in Women’s History Month,” brings attention to Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand–each of whom wrote a powerful book in the 1940’s that helped launch the modern libertarian movement.
Each recognized energy as the master resource in different ways.…
In a March 4 article, writer Michael Burnham of E&E News PM (subscription required) talks about the slow down in “clean energy” investments and what this might mean for reducing the carbon peak:
Investments in new wind farms and other “clean” energy projects are slowing with the crumbling global economy, and that could make climate change’s bite harder in the decades ahead, financial analysts warned today.
…With coal-fired power plants, steel mills and cement kilns producing less, greenhouse gas emissions are falling in the short term, the London-based market analytics firm New Energy Finance says in a report today. But flat investment in lower-emission alternatives in the next two or three years — presumably the time it takes for economies to rebound — could push what the analysts dub “peak carbon” back by more than a decade.
Mel Brooks, in his classic comedy The Producers, schemed to make money by over-subscribing shares in a sure-to-fail play. Unfortunately for his character, the play became a smash hit, and all the investors wanted their payouts. Since he had sold well over 100% of the interest in the play, he was in a bit of a pickle.
And so it is with natural gas. Clean, easy to use, abundant—natural gas is everyone’s choice for our energy transition away from oil and coal for power generation, industry, homes, and now transportation. Enter oilman-turned-wind-promoter T. Boone Pickens, with a proposal to move U.S. heavy trucks strongly toward natural gas fuel (as compressed natural gas, or CNG). And to enable the offset, the electricity that is currently generated by such gas (about a 21% market share of power generation, according to the Energy Information Administration’s Annuel Energy Outlook 2009, Table 8) would be supplied by new wind farms, built mostly in the Plains States.…