There are so many easy reasons to be a pessimist today: the world financial crisis, the discord and dysfunction in Washington, and the almost certain doom that many scientists claim we are facing from global warming. With the first high profile cleantech company failures, the euphoria of the cleantech bubble has burst (more…)

Greenhouse gases are such materials as Carbon Dioxide and Methane that are implicated in global warming. From a permitting point of view it is a new phenomena. Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first Texas Greenhouse Gas (GHG) permit for the Lower (more…)

Yesterday, a ceremony was held in Lubmin, Germany to inaugurate the Nord Stream gas pipeline, connecting natural gas in Russia to Western Europe. The new pipeline is unique in that it goes directly to Germany from Russia without passing through any other country. The pipeline runs along the bottom of the (more…)

It’s a $160 billion a year market you’ve probably never heard of.

Ethylene, the intermediary chemical compound from which popular plastics and many other high value products are derived, has traditionally been made in the petroleum industry via steam cracking, an energy- and carbon-intensive process. It’s the most produced (more…)

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. The study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center (more…)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, following a summit meeting with Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, has expressed support for a proposed Russian project to send Siberian natural gas to South Korea through North Korean territory. (more…)

Brazil is often associated with ethanol when it comes to alternative energy, but 78 new wind power projects expected to generate around 2,000 MW are starting to make the country’s renewable energy mix a little more varied.

On Monday, Mauricio Tolmasquim, president and (more…)

There is a good deal of worry about the robustness of our nation’s economy. And rightly so. Especially since we have about 5 million fewer jobs today than in 2007, even as we have about 10 million more people to support with those available jobs.

In an effort to understand why economic (more…)

A U.S. Energy Department advisory panel has issued a qualified endorsement of the controversial shale gas exploitation technique of hydraulic fracturing, but a group of scientists charges that the panel’s recommendations are tainted because six of its seven members have current financial ties to the (more…)

Natural gas has been getting a lot of bad press recently because of the fracking (‘hydraulic fracturing’) debacle. The problem is that this method of gas drilling is riddled with controversy and real environmental risks. Gasland, an Oscar-nominated documentary about fracking, brought to the world’s attention how people (more…)