U.S. Fossil Energy Boom | ModeShift

Energy Department Blocks Disclosure of Road Map to Relieve Critical U.S. Energy-Water Choke Points

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 9, 2010September 9, 20100

The Illinois River Energy biofuels plant in Rochelle releases plumes of steam at sunrise. The ethanol plant processes over 40 million bushels of corn into 115 million gallons of fuel grade ethanol annually. Earlier this summer my colleagues and I began probing the tightening environmental and economic choke points around the United States caused by rising energy production and diminishing quantities of fresh water. This week we broke a new chapter in the story that …

Michigan’s Building Boom in Electric Vehicle Battery Manufacturing

by Keith SchneiderAugust 4, 2010March 8, 20123

HOLLAND, Mich. â€” In February 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which among other things provided $2.4 billion to encourage development of a domestic industry to make lighter, more energy-dense lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles. Two weeks ago, on July 15, the president flew to this small city on the shore of Lake Michigan to attend the groundbreaking for a $303 million, 650,000 square-foot battery plant operated by Compact Power, …

Copenhagen’s Fallout: Senate Drops Climate Action From Energy Bill

by Keith SchneiderJuly 22, 2010September 9, 20100

Until December 2009, the idea of acting to cool the Earth was on a roll. High points included 2007 Nobel Prizes for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s breakthrough science and for Al Gore’s astonishing work to elevate global warming to an international priority, They also included Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential election, and the formation of global online grassroots activism led byÂ 350.org and TckTckTck, a project of the Global Campaign For Climate …

Climategate Is Over, The Moment to Act on Warming and Energy is Here

by Keith SchneiderJuly 8, 20100

As cities on the East Coast sweltered in the sort of dispiriting record-breaking heat that climate scientists accurately predicted, the Obama administration’s lawyers were in a federal appellate court in New Orleans today to reinstate the moratorium on deep sea oil and gas exploration the Interior Department issued in May. Last month a federal district judge with investment interests in the energy industry struck down the temporary ban on new drilling. It’s been that kind …

On Climate and Energy, Pressing For Inevitability

by Keith SchneiderJuly 2, 2010July 2, 20100

Following a 90-minute White House meeting Tuesday on climate and energy legislation with a bipartisan group of senators and President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged to issue this assessment: “The President led a spirited, productive discussion this morning about how to move forward on clean energy legislation. Our caucus is energized on this issue and our resolve to act on energy legislation this summer remains strong.” In holding the meeting, the president and …

Obama Vows To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before: Passing and Signing Climate and Energy Legislation

by Keith SchneiderJune 23, 2010June 24, 20100

Given the emotional reserve of a man whose aides once referred to as “no drama Obama,” the president is getting pretty fired up about energy.Â On Wednesday President Obama concluded an all hands cabinet meeting at the White House by publicly declaring again his resolve to develop a “new energy strategy that the American people desperately want.” “It is time for us to move to a clean energy future,” the president said, adding that “the …

Energy Independence Is America’s Most Elusive Technological Pursuit

by Keith SchneiderJune 18, 2010June 21, 20100

In calling for a new “national mission” to achieve energy independence during his Oval Office address earlier this week, President Obama was clearly seeking inspiration from his predecessors, a number of whom actually achieved the big technological goals they’d pursued. At various inflection points in the nation’s history, presidents managed to cross the country with a unified rail line, developed the powerful bombs in the Manhattan Project that ended World War Two, and sent men …

Massachusetts Biomass Study Finds Caution and Some Optimism in Wood as Renewable Fuel

by Keith SchneiderJune 11, 2010September 9, 20101

After six months of evaluation, a Massachusetts research center said yesterday that the greenhouse gas-reducing benefits of replacing coal and natural gas with wood biomass for electrical generation are lower than previously thought. But the study by the Manomet Center for Conservation Science also found that specific wood biomass technologies, particularly state-of-the art wood biomass plants that generate combined heat and power, produce less than half of the CO2 emissions generated by a coal-fired power …

Obama’s Pivot on Gulf Disaster to Commander in Chief

by Keith SchneiderJune 3, 2010June 3, 20100

On June 2, a day before BP announced it had sheared through a leaking pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the very few steps forward in the company’s 44-day campaign to staunch the worst oil disaster in American history, President Barack Obama finally stopped serving as the cleanup chief and became the commander in chief. During a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Obama pressed the nation to join …

Oiled Dogs of May: Obama’s Gulf Crisis

by Keith SchneiderMay 30, 2010June 1, 20100

Day 40. Great gouts of oil still rush from the ruptured BP well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. A frustrated president visits the scene of the disaster to literally dab his finger at a tar ball washed up on the Louisiana beach. Television news, enlivened by easy-to-get pictures, sets its stand-ups in strategic positions, broadcasting the drama of competition between spreading pollution and technological limits to a nation that clucks about the …