ModeShift - Part 40

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 …

Ohio’s Fossil Fuel Boom Dims Wind and Solar Development

by Keith SchneiderMarch 29, 2012April 3, 20124

The story of American energy used to be we use too much. There’s not enough. And a technical breakthrough in clean alternatives will save us. How 20th century. The new narrative – really, it’s true — of American energy is this: We’re using less. A national boom in oil and gas production, engulfing 12 states from California to Pennsylvania and North Dakota to Texas, is showing we have much more than we thought. And the …

Along A River of Descent, New Riches in Ohio

by Keith SchneiderMarch 20, 2012July 28, 20123

SARDIS, Ohio — Frank Ellis, who is a 51-year-old electrician from this Ohio River Valley town, spent much of his time since high school working upriver at the PPG plant in Natrium, West Virginia. He owns 140 acres and the rights to the oil and gas below them. Denny Cowley (in pix below) is a 55-year-old sheet metal worker who was raised on a dairy farm near Canton, Ohio, and 16 years ago bought a …

Fossil Fuel Boom Shakes Ohio, Spurring Torrent of Investment and Worry Over Water

by Keith SchneiderMarch 12, 2012July 28, 20121

Photo Â© Heather Rousseau/Circle of Blue WELLSVILLE, OHIO â€“ A torrent of investment in mineral leases, manufacturing plants, pipeline constructiion, and drilling platforms signals what business executives and state energy officials say is the most significant surge in oil and gas development in Ohio in decades. But the development of the Marcellus and Utica shales, two hydrocarbon-rich rock layers that lie beneath much of eastern Ohio, also is producing fresh public concerns about the consequences …

Wastewater Disposal From Fracking Can Cause Earthquakes: Ohio Sets Example

by Keith SchneiderMarch 11, 2012March 11, 20121

It’s been generations since an industrial development as powerful and as widespread as the new oil and gas energy boom has swept across the United States. The risks — drinking water infiltration, wastewater disposal, oil well explosions, wildlife deaths, and earthquakes — are steadily emerging. The question for federal and state regulatory agencies, already under seige from diminished budgets and lawmakers intent on weakening oversight, is how quickly inspection agencies will respond to public threats. …

Critique of Natural Gas Boom Explores More Important Risk: Fear of the Future

by Keith SchneiderMarch 6, 2012April 2, 20122

This week, Ohio counted over 130 drilling permits that it had approved since last summer to a select group of big energy companies to drill for oil and gas in counties along the upper Ohio River. The state says 45 wells, aimed at the oil- and gas-saturated Utica shale, have already been drilled. River towns that have been growing old and shedding their talented young people for two generations are suddenly awake with jobs and …

New American Energy Boom, A Reprieve and a Reckoning

by Keith SchneiderMarch 4, 2012March 4, 20121

Little by little America seems to be catching on to the unexpected oil and natural gas production boom engulfing the United States. The 40-year catechism of U.S. energy, that supplies are going down and Americans use too much, is being completely rewritten. Americans, in fact, are using less energy. Meanwhile, a convergence of new exploration and drilling techniques, and rising global demand that is keeping prices high, is producing what looks to be the most …

Haverford College Friends

by Keith SchneiderMarch 3, 2012December 16, 20124

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When Bob O’Connor (far right above) was 18, he lived directly above me in a second-floor dorm room in Barclay Hall at Haverford College. He’s a big-boned guy with a quiet way, a sizable intellect, and likes to have fun. Two upper classmen, Pete Doan and Evan Lippincott, lived across the hall from my first-floor room. Pete and Evan were dorm reps and were supposed to keep tabs on freshmen like me …

Gas, Steel, and Clean Energy in Confrontation in Ohio

by Keith SchneiderMarch 2, 2012March 3, 20121

Making the complex simpler to understand is one of the guiding missions of my life as a journalist. In the last several years, in reporting from Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America, I’ve devoted much of my time to reporting on global energy issues, particularly the coal production and clean energy surge in China; the gas and oil boom in North America, and the promising rise and troubled fall of clean energy prospects in the …