ModeShift - Part 38

China Demand For Food and Energy Is Raising Prices and Consumer Ire in U.S.

by Keith SchneiderApril 27, 2012September 14, 20121

Dude! What’s up with the law of supply and demand? The United States Department of Agriculture projected earlier this month that national harvests of wheat, corn, and soybeans — the foundation ingredients of the have-it-your-way American diet — will be strong this year. But prices for bread, meat, and milk at my local Glen’s store here in Frankfort, Michigan are going up by the week. Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration reports that U.S. oil consumption …

Ohio River Valley’s Story of Recovery

by Keith SchneiderApril 26, 2012July 28, 20121

Next week I return to the Ohio River Valley for The New York Times to 1) report on how oil and gas mineral leasing is making thousands of Ohio River Valley working families wealthy, and 2) how new urban development strategies, including a streetcar line and a $1 billion mixed-use riverfront project, are writing a 21st century narrative for Cincinnatiâ€™s economy and quality of life. Later this summer, Iâ€™ll report on similar trends emerging in …

U.S. Energy Boom Lifts Ohio’s Steel Industry: Latest New York Times Article

by Keith SchneiderApril 25, 2012July 28, 20121

CANTON, Oh. â€“ Orders for steel from domestic and export markets plunged so low in May 2009 that the Timken Companyâ€™s mill here on Faircrest Street operated for just four days that month. Nearly three years later, with demand for steel soaring and the Faircrest mill operating around the clock, Timken started construction in early March on a $200 million, 83,000-square-foot addition to boost the plantâ€™s production. Just as Ohioâ€™s presidential election has accurately predicted …

Beyond Boom and Bust: Report Says Collapsing Federal Support Means More Trouble For U.S. Clean Energy

by Keith SchneiderApril 18, 2012April 18, 20121

Late in July 2008, when gas prices broke $4.00 a gallon for the first time and when the “drill baby drill!” chant was first heard at John McCain rallies, I flew to Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago. The mission: to rally support for Obama’s clean energy, good jobs message among the leaders of his media team, who were nervous about the political costs of rising energy prices. At the time I was national communications …

The Global Fossil Energy Boom: Perspective From China

by Keith SchneiderApril 17, 2012June 20, 20121

All those natural gas wells that are popping up by the thousands across the United States — they’re starting to appear in China, too. The global fossil energy boom, which in China has mostly meant soaring production of coal, is now beginning to include natural gas. And American and European multinationals are providing financing, equipment, and technical assistance. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that China’s recoverable shale gas resources total 36 trillion cubic meters, …

Global Shale Gas Reserves Are Huge Says Energy Department

by Keith SchneiderApril 16, 2012June 20, 20122

A year ago, while touring and speaking in China, I landed for a day in Chengdu to meet with a young official at the U.S. Consulate and tour one of China’s rare organic farms. At breakfast in one of the city’s newest hotels I noticed a group of young American men, tall and robust in a Midwestern sort of way, and invited myself to their table. They were members of an executive team, dispatched from …

New York City’s New Era of Reckoning

by Keith SchneiderApril 10, 2012April 11, 20123

New Yorkers, if you want to know, think pretty highly about their city these days. And why not? From Battery Park, at the foot of Manhattan, to the far reaches of Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island new residents are arriving at the rate of 5,000 people a month. New jobs are being generated at the same clip. Unemployment is going down, as is violent crime, which has dropped nearly 80 percent in the …

Fossil Fuel Boom Is One of Several Trends Leading Ohio River Cities Back To Economic Relevance

by Keith SchneiderApril 5, 2012December 6, 20146

Thomas Jefferson once said,Â “The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted.” Downriver from Louisville, Kentucky, where the 1,000-mile long Ohio River reaches its widest points, and the mirroring waters slip by miles of unbroken hardwood forests, it’s possible to witness some of the very same beauty that inspired Jefferson. The Ohio is much in my …

Mismatch in Barriers: Fossil Fuel (low) vs. Clean Energy (high)

by Keith SchneiderApril 3, 2012April 18, 20123

Starting in 1989, a group of wildcatters raced across a 12-county stretch of northern Michigan to drill natural gas wells, and build all the roads, pipelines, pumping stations, and processing facilities to develop the region’s Antrim shale, the first shale gas play tapped in the U.S. For most of that time, until Wyoming’s coalbed-methane reserve development really got rolling in the late-1990s, northern Michigan was the most intensively drilled region of the continent. More than …

Energy, Food and Melting Ice

by Keith SchneiderApril 2, 2012April 3, 20120

I read with interest the interviews with Bill McKibben and Amory Lovins that Yale Environment 360 posted today and in February. Good stuff. Perplexing and nerve-wracking all at the same time. Amory’s optimism about the prospects for clean energy, in its consistency over the last 30 years, reminds me of Lester Brown’s equally long-term pessimism about the world’s capacity to feed itself. Both have the technical details in place to make plausible cases but the …