Domestic Policies and Private Sector Initiatives

• Defense Industry Daily's Joe Katzman has a great collection of links up on the impressively wide variety of steps the Pentagon is taking improve the military's energy security through increased efficiency and distributed, renewable power generation.

• Renewable Energy Access notes that the national Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE) has recently expanded its database of energy incentives to include state and federal tax deductions for energy efficiency - just in time for The 15th.

• This knowledge-packed post from Lynne Kiesling discusses the difference between what politicians and the media refer to as 'deregulation' in electricity markets and what truly effective deregulation would look like, in the context of a recent discussion of the topic among Maryland policy makers.

• Both California and Massachusetts have decided to offer cash prizes in competitions for the best business proposal in the clean energy sector. The California Clean Tech Open invites entrepreneurs to compete for $50,000 in cash. Entries can come from one of five categories, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, and transportation technologies, and the winners will receive professional services in addition to the prize money. Applications are due by May 19th, and the finals will be held in late September. The Massachusetts competition, called the Ignite Clean Energy Competition is hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum and offers $125,000 to the best clean energy business proposal in solar power, wind power, biofuels, waste energy recovery, and other technologies. The semi-finals are scheduled for April 11th, and the final competition will be held on May 9th.

Investments and Mergers

• In what some expect will touch off a wave of consolidation across the utilities industry, there have been several large merger deals completed recently, and several other ambitious attempts that are proving unsuccessful. In the latter category is the likely-to-be thwarted hostile attempt by Italy's Enel SpA to purchase Suez SA of France for $34.7 billion. In a move that highlighted the "national champion" status of both companies involved, France moved to merge Suez with Gaz de France SA (the French government owns an 80% stake in GDF), a combination that will likely be successful in blocking Enel's bid by creating the world's second largest power and gas supplier, which would be valued at around $83.27 billion. Here's the latest.

• A similiar situation surrounds the on-going bidding war for Spanish utility company Endesa SA. Germany's E.ON made an offer to purchase Endesa for $34.6 billion. Endesa's national cousin, the Spanish government-controlled Gas Natural SGD SA, then made a counter-bid worth only $27.5 billion, likely hoping for special treatment by the Spanish government to close their less-enticing offer. The latest news is that Endesa says the Gas Natual offer is too low and will not be successful as is. Stories like this and the one above will be interesting to watch as futher consolidation in the utilities industry conflicts with the national stakes some European governments hold in large utility providers.

• The merger mania isn't confined to Europe. In what would be the largest energy takeover deal in the Asia-Pacific region in over a decade, Alinta Ltd. offered to buy Australian Gas Light Co. for $8.9 billion. Alinta, Western Australia's largest natural gas retailer, pursued AGL Co. in order to tap power demand in the nation's east. Unfortunately for Alinta, AGL is nearly three times its size and has made a counter-offer of $2.7 billion for its would-be suitor.

• Falling into the category of successful merger deals is National Grid's purchase of Keyspan for $7.3 billion. National Grid Plc, a British company, already owns utilities in New York and Massachusetts, and will add Keyspan's 2.6 million gas customers to its operations as a result of the deal. National Grid also announced that it will purchase a Rhode Island gas distributor from Southern Union for $498 million, adding 245,000 Rhode Island customers - about a 50% increase over the company's existing customer base in the state.

• Renewable Energy Access reports that revised standards for market entry will likely result in an IPO boom in China. Though these revised standards are not exclusively related to energy IPOs, they may combine with plans to create a stock market especially for small- to mid-cap companies to produce a market environment conducive to newly-issued solar and other cleantech stocks. (Via Cleantech's Stories of the Week .)

• In US IPO news, two ethanol producers, Aventine Renewable Energy and VeraSun Energy, have filed with the SEC for IPOs. Aventine's deal is valued at $150 million, higher than VeraSun's valuation at $50 million. The market for companies that produce only ethanol is relatively young one - the first pure ethanol IPO, that of California's Pacific Ethanol, took place about a year ago, in March of 2005.

• Cleantech Investing has a nice recap of several recently-released annual surveys of clean energy investing, and all seem to indicate strong growth in the sector. Clean Edge values the market at $40 billion in 2005, representing a 33% growth over the 2004 market, with near 50% growth over 2004 in both global wind and solar markets. Likewise, clean venture capital giant Nth Power released (along with Clean Edge) it's annual survey of venture capital investments in clean energy, which reached $917 million - about a 28% growth over 2004 levels.

• Cleantech also offers a nice summary of the current state of the hydrogen venture capital market, along with several good reasons for why it isn't taking off the same way capital markets for solar and wind ventures are.

• Amid the buzz surrounding the Enron trial lately, it's interesting to note that a group of private equity firms and hedge funds seems close to purchasing Enron's international holdings. These assets include power generation plants, natural gas pipeline and distribution facilities and other energy distribution assets in Latin America, Turkey, Poland and the Philippines.

International Affairs

• The US and India signed a new partnership on nuclear technology during US President Bush's visit to India last month. As part of the agreement, the US agreed to share reactors, fuel and expertise with India in exchange for India's commitment to maintain rigid security standards. It was a historical vote of confidence in India, who had suffered internationally as a result of its decision to pursue nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This post came to us via Dan Drezner, who likes the deal.

• Also during President Bush's recent visit, India pledged its participation in the FutureGen coal plant project. As a participant in the project, which is headed by the US Department of Energy, the Indian government will contribute $10 million in funding, and in exchange Indian companies will be invited to participate in the initiative. The aim of FutureGen is to produce the world's first coal-burning electricity plant that removes and sequesters carbon dioxide from its emissions while it generates electricity and commercial-grade hydrogen. The proposed plant is scheduled to begin operations by 2012.

• The Nigerian rebel group calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Nigeria Delta (MEND) released the one British and two American oil workers they had taken hostage and vowed to end kidnapping. However, the group vowed to continue its campaign against the country's oil industry, which has resulted in a reduction of Nigeria daily crude of 26%, to 1.6 million barrels a day, since attacks on oil installations began in February.

• In a series of raids across the country in late March, Saudi Arabian security forces simultaneously arrested 40 suspected al-Qaeda operatives who seem to have been plotting a second attack on the Abqaiq oil facilities (via John Robb).

• The European Commission recently released a Green Paper with recommendations for a new EU Energy Policy, which urges members to continue to liberalise as well as decarbonize. Though the paper is only recommendation at this point, it gives a nice summary of a powerful school of thought presently developing in the EU.

• Some people thought it was strange when Germany's former chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, took a position with Russia's energy giant Gazprom the day he conceded the German election, and I'll bet they find it even stranger that Schroeder apparently approved a secret E$900 million loan to Gazprom just before leaving office.

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Biofuels

• Renewable energy historians take note - Italian archaeologists have discovered evidence that ancient Cypriots used olive oil to fuel copper smelting furnaces, the earliest known use of vegetable oil as a fuel.

• The Watt notes that Philips is planning a pilot commercial launch of its new, highly-efficient wood stove in India this summer. The design utilizes a thermoelectric fan to burn at higher temperatures, increasing fuel efficiency by 80% and reducing hydrocarbon emissions by up to 99% compared to traditional three stone fires.

• Plans are underway to build the world's largest biodiesel plant in Claypool, Indiana. The biodiesel plant will be fully integrated with a soybean processing plant and will produce 80 million gallons of biodiesel a year - more than the 75 million gallons produced throughout the US in 2005.

• New ethanol projects are similarly growing larger and, increasingly, are funded by corporate investors, not local farmers, if these anecdotes coming from Minnesota are indicative. Rising oil prices and strong government support for ethanol production have made plants relatively solid investments for Wall Street, and the focus of the industry may be shifting away from the small farmer-owned facilities that were once at its center.

• More distressingly for environmentalists, Futurepundit notes that new ethanol plants in the US are beginning to be fueled by coal instead of natural gas due to high gas prices.

• The Pacific Northwest's Burgerville chain of fast food restaurants has announced plans for a new program that would recycle all the 39-location chain's restaurants' used cooking oil into biodiesel.

• Engineers at Virginia Tech have developed a pretreatment process for corn stover - the most abundant agricultural residue in the US - that could significantly reduce costs of cellulosic ethanol production (via Green Car Congress).

Fossil Fuels

• Honda and Climate Energy's home cogeneration system is currently undergoing its first US residential test in Massachussetts. The compact unit, is combined with a furnace or boiler system to simultaneously produce about 1 kW of electricity along with 3 kW of heat, increasing overall efficiency to nearly 85% as well as providing a source of distributed electricity that be used at home or sold back to the grid. See this post from the Engineer-Poet on the considerable potential benefits from residential cogeneration.

• Meanwhile, Honda is working with Plug Power to develop an innovative hydrogen-era home cogeneration system that would produce electricity, heat, and hydrogen fuel from natural gas.

• Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are attempting to develop low-cost, high-volume, renewable feedstocks for carbon fiber composites for use as a lightweight replacement for steel in automobiles. Carbon fiber is just as strong as steel but only one-fifth the weight, offering the potential of cars 60 percent lighter and 30 percent more fuel efficient. Green Car Congress has more details, and a good discussion in the comments.

• A quarter-inch corrosion hole in a pipeline at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field resulted in the spillage of an estimated 201,000 gallons of crude oil over 1.9 acres of tundra over the several days it went undetected - the largest oil spill in the history of Alaska's North Slope. US DOT personnel are in the process of investigating the pipelines, and have found that the pipeline was dangerously close to springing other holes, and that (pipeline operator) BP's leak-detection system had not been sufficiently rigorous. The pipeline will remain closed while cleanup is in progress, reducing North Slope oil production by nearly 100,000 barrels a day, or 12 percent of normal output.

• Chevron, who already owns 20% of the Athabasca oil sands project in Alberta, has acquired an additional 75,000 acres of land nearby which are expected to hold 7.5 billion barrels of heavy oil. The DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy newsletter adds links on environmental concerns attending the development of Canada's oil sands, plus a Google Maps link to satellite photos of existing oil sands projects.

• A new report by US DOE claims that state of the art enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques could add 89 billion barrels or more to US reserves, and a potential 430 billion barrels in the long run with advances in technology and increased sequestration of carbon dioxide from industrial processes. Green Car Congress provides an in-depth summary here, and Econbrowser's James Hamilton takes a skeptical look.

• Shell and Norway's Statoil are developing the world's largest offshore EOR project at an 860 MW gas-fueled power plant and methanol production facility. Approximately 2-2.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from the plant will be captured every year and reinjected into the same offshore gas and oil fields that supply its fuel, increasing production from the field while reducing the greenhouse impact of the facility to near zero.

• The USGS has just completed the first in-depth survey of Afghanistan's petroleum resources, and discovered 18 times the oil and 3 times the gas resources previously estimated. The mean estimate of oil reserves has risen to 1.6 billion barrels, and the mean estimate of gas reserves to 16 TCF.

• A team of researchers at the University of Nottingham are attempting to reduce the costs of coal gasification plants by reducing the wear and tear on turbines caused by corrosive minerals in the coal. Their work, which could help make coal gasification plants a commercially viable technology, is focused on developing a low-cost, environmentally benign process using (and reusing) hydrofluoric acid to leach the minerals from the coal before gasification.

• By suspending nanoparticles in water and other liquids, researchers at the University of Leeds have developed 'nanofluids' that transfer heat 400% faster than their conventional counterparts. Among the doubtlessly numerous applications of this technology would be much more efficient home heating.

Geothermal

• The Geothermal Energy Association claims that several new projects are set to increase US geothermal capacity by up to 75 percent, adding 1.8-2.1 GW capacity to the 2.8 GW already online. The group credits this 'renaissance' in US geothermal power to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended the full production tax credit from just wind to include geothermal energy and gave the Bureau of Land Management more authority and more resources to grant geothermal leases and permits.

• Meanwhile, a group of energy companies are collaborating on the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, which plans to drill holes more than 4-5 km deep in hopes of dramatically increasing the amount of energy harvested by geothermal projects (current boreholes are typically 600 to 1000 m deep). Their engineers estimate that the energy extracted from each hole could increase from 5 MW to 50 MW if the temperature of the borehole can be increased by 200 degrees and the pressure increased by 200 Bar, which could translate into an enormous energy boon for the already geothermally-endowed country (via Muck and Mystery).

Hydrogen

• GE has figured out how to dramatically reduce the capital costs of manufacturing hydrogen via electrolysis - make electrolyzers out of plastic. A prototype design could lead to a commercial machine able to produce hydrogen for about $3 per kilogram, less than half of current costs of $8/kg (via AltEng).

• Eco-tech business developers GreenShift have formed a new company, General Ultrasonics, to develop technologies that use high intensity ultrasonic energies to catalyze chemical reactions, including the synthesis of hydrogen fuel. Current prototypes of the technology have used used ultrasonics to produce hydrogen via steam reformation at 25% lower temperatures than had previously been possible (via Green Car Congress).

Nuclear

• A powerful-but-tiny new gamma ray detector designed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is 10 times more precise than the conventional sensors currently used to examine nuclear materials. While the detector is currently only a prototype, it could significantly aid non-proliferation efforts by providing more detailed information about the composition and age of radioactive materials than is currently possible.

• Sandia National Labs's Z Machine - a key research facility in US nuclear fusion research - has successfully and unexpectedly produced plasmas reaching 2 billion degrees Kelvin - hotter than the inside of a star, and an amount of energy equivalent to as much as four times the energy invested in the process . No one's exactly sure why this happened, of course, but the results have held up over 14 months of additional testing, and understanding the phenomenon could help pave the way for smaller fusion reactors than originally envisioned. Via Peak Oil Rob, who also notes a skeptical assessment of the prospects for fusion research by the late William Parkins, a physicist who worked on the original Manhattan Project.

• Rob also looks into an investigation of Purdue scientist Rusi Taleyarkhan's apparently bogus research into sonofusion, the creation of fusion energy using sonic 'bubbles'. As Rob notes, Taleyarkhan seems to have been 'willfully deceitful' about the results of his work - 'his career is over,' and serious research into 'bubble fusion' probably is as well.

Solar

• I generally don't link to product press releases, but this is too cool and too closely related to last month's post on the link between renewable energy and physical security - check out the new MobileMaxPure system, a towable photovoltaic array that combines electricity generation and storage with water purification and emergency communications systems in one unit. An earlier version of the product (lacking the communications systems) has already been used to provide drinking water in post-Katrina Mississippi.

Wind

• US DOE has announced a partnership with GE to develop a 5-7 MW capacity 'next-generation' offshore wind turbine over the next 3-4 years. These turbines would be significantly larger than today's models (ranging from 2 to 5 MW for the largest) and reduce costs from an average of around 9.5 cents/kWh today to 5 cents/kWh.

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—The use of large quantities of energy is central to the functioning of an advanced economy. There are severe limits to energy conservation even in the long run. Global economic growth will bring about significant increases in primary energy demand.

— Energy resources are fungible, especially among the fossil fuels. For example, coal can be converted into liquid fuels such as gasoline at low cost. So, too, can other, nonconventional fossil fuels like oil sands and shale and potentially the methane hydrates that are abundant on the sea floor. Noncarbon energy sources such as nuclear and solar energy could each provide a substantial fraction of the world’s long-term energy needs, but both present problems in the short term.

—There are no serious long-term (century-scale) shortages of fossil fuel supply once the interconvertibility of oil and other fossil fuels is taken into account. Even the arrival of “peak oil”—the point at which oil production reaches a maximum—would not mean a global energy shortage at today’s prices. However, the transition from oil to other sources of liquid fuel will require a significant lead time, and engineering that transition should be part of public policy.

—The greater constraints are likely to emerge from environmental concerns, especially the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) acting as a greenhouse gas. Carbon emissions will have to be mitigated, because the business-as-usual course is fraught with grave global risks. The limits on the global oil supply will not reduce the risks from CO2, since coal and other low-cost fossil fuels will in any event substitute for declining supplies of petroleum and natural gas, and their CO2 emissions will be larger, not smaller.

—Realistic technologies that can mitigate the carbon challenge up to the middle of this century at modest cost are nearly ready for application. The centerpiece of such a strategy will most likely be carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at power plants and other large industrial units such as steel and cement factories. The cost of implementing these technologies on a large scale is likely to be below 1 percent of gross world product if they are carried out with a long lead time. In addition to CCS, conversion of the vehicle fleet to hybrid or other lower-carbon technologies is very likely to be cost effective and might well pay for itself...

They discuss the century-long time scale as well, with a healthy optimism about our ability to develop and deploy advanced zero-carbon technologies. The paper is comprehensive and I don't really disagree with anything they say so far (I haven't gotten to the policy recommendations yet, of course).

However, I think that they may be missing a significant part of the picture. The 'energy problem' stands not on just two, but three legs - not just environmental damage and limited resources, but security drives much of the current concern, and is likely be an increasingly significant motivating force behind our search for energy alternatives over the next few decades. And not just 'security' in the limited sense of 'reducing our dependence on oil imports from the Middle East', but in the broader sense of the decentralized, resilient energy system envisioned by John Robb in his fascinating, must-read article in Fast Company, "Security: Power to the People". I've excerpted only the relevant grafs - read the whole piece for the rest of Robb's big picture:

Insert whatever standard disclaimers you want about buying into Robb's Global Guerrillas framework wholesale - it's a potent work of ongoing futurism that any serious attempt at prognostication ignores at its peril. The Engineer-Poet has touched on this subject before in the context of economic crises and natural disasters in his post from last October, "Alternative Energy is Civil Defense," and his points are at least as relevant to the threat of terrorists employing systems disruption techniques against our energy infrastructure.

Security concerns can't be our sole consideration as we work to evolve our energy systems - continued economic growth (globally, not just in the US) is obviously our top priority for the forseeable future, and environmental issues will continue to shape the market. But the security benefits from more robust, decentralized energy systems should be valued when we consider the costs and benefits of various alternatives - preferably before, but most certainly after the US gets hit with its first systems disruption attack. The energy crisis of the '70s provoked by the Arab oil embargo spurred enormous changes to the functioning of global energy markets, creating a much more flexible and efficient system for trading oil and gas that completely blunted the impact of the 'oil weapon' within a decade; I think we'll see even deeper and more obvious changes to energy markets and technologies in the coming decades as a result of these new threats. Stay tuned, and keep watching this space - we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next month.

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Private Sector Initiatives

• Following close on the heels of California's recently announced Solar Initiative (CSI - see below), two southern California apparel companies began plans to integrate solar production into their businesses. Patagonia installed a 66kw Sharp Solar PV carport, and American Apparel hired LA-based Permacity Solar to install 465 Schott 315-watt ASE PV Modules and a SatCon 135 inverter on the roof of its main production facility in downtown LA, a system that will total to 146 kw of capacity.

• Whole Foods announced that it will purchase sufficient wind energy credits to power all its stores. The plan, which will result in the purchase of 458,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of wind credits annually from Boulder, Colorado-based Renewable Choice Energy, is the largest ever corporate purchase of renewable energy credits in the US. Via Knowledge Problem, where Lynne Kiesling adds value with worthy questions and a discussion about whether subsidies for wind power are still necessary.

• The Whole Foods wind power plan makes it second only to the US Air Force's 1 million MWh of renewable energy on the Environmental Protection Agency's recently-released list of top 25 partners in its Green Power Partnership. As Jamais Cascio at Worldchanging notes, the group of firms considered for the list, all of which have agreed to purchase green power (including biomass, biogas, geothermal, micro-hydro, solar, and wind power) preferentially, consumed over 4 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy in 2005 - nearly a 100% increase over 2004 consumption.

• The Walgreens chain of pharmacy stores will work with Denver-based ImagineIt, Inc to install rooftop solar PV systems on 112 of Walgreens' 2,080 stores. The project will allow each store to generate 20-50% of its overall electricity requirements onsite, and is expected to generate 13.8 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year in total.

• The US Green Building Council has certified buildings at over 110 campuses nationwide as meeting its standards for increased energy efficiency. Their announcement includes anecdotes from a variety of interesting projects, including a 'living roof' at Carnegie Mellon in (Super Bowl XL champs!) Pittsburgh.

• Pittsburgh partisan Lynne Kiesling has an interesting post up on the potential for distributed monitoring and sensing technologies to improve the efficiency of our transportation and electric power systems - and whether or not there's a role for government in facilitating the deployment of these technologies.

Investment and Mergers

• China National Off-Shore Oil Company (CNOOC) will pay $2.3 billion to buy a 45% stake in deepwater oil and gas field Nigerian Oil Mining License (OML) from South Atlantic Petroleum Limited. The territory involved with the purchase, which covers the substantial Akpo oil field, will come onstream in the second half of 2008, contributing another 19% in daily oil production over CNOOC's 2005 rate of 410,000 barrels per day. The move follows CNOOC's failed $18.5 billion bid for Unocal, which it lost to Chevron last summer; this post by Geoff Styles discusses why the acquisition of Nigerian OML makes better strategic sense.

• Toshiba won its bidding war with GE for Pittsburgh-based nuclear reactor vendor Westinghouse, paying $5 billion to purchase the company from the UK state-owned nuclear group BNFL. Toshiba's purchase includes Westinghouse's forthcoming AP1000 pressurized water reactor, as well as BNFL's 22.5% stake in the South Africa pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) project. Nuclear professional Rod Adams, who called the impending sale a nuclear referendum in the market back in July, was particularly pleased to note that the winning bid was nearly 3x the government's original estimate.

• The Cleantech Capital Group has partnered with the American Stock exchange to begin publishing the Cleantech Index, a stock index comprised of 75 companies that derive at least half of their revenue from 'cleantech' products and services. They define 'cleantech' as 'any knowledge-based product or service that improves operational performance, productivity or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste or pollution.' The index's combined market capitalization is in excess of $100 billion, and the possibility is being discussed that a related financial product be created, such as an exchange-traded fund that would track the index.

• As a run-up to the recently-begun trial of ex-Enron executives Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, this New York Times article neatly summarizes the current state of energy trading, much of which has settled in hedge funds and investment banks post-Enron. At least 450 hedge funds, with an estimated $60 billion in total assets, currently focus on energy- and environment-related trading. Via Geoff Styles, who adds some personal thoughts based on his experience as an energy trader.

Domestic Policies

• As noted last Thursday, President Bush outlined his Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI) during this year's State of the Union Address. While the president has featured calls for 'energy independence' in all of his SotUs, and while the real follow-through from the speech remains to be proven via congressional approval, the White House has included some concrete fiscal committments in the 2007 budget, including $289 million for hydrogen fuel cell research, $281 million toward clean coal development, and $150 million toward biofuel research.

• President Bush also proposed the Solar America Initiative, which includes $65 million for public-private sector solar research partnerships, including the Thin Film Partnership and the Crystalline Silicon Initiative.

• Though it wasn't mentioned in the State of the Union, the White House is also planning a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which would facilitate the provision of nuclear reactors and 'cradle to grave fuel cycle services' for developing countries. The initiative would revive nuclear fuel reprocessing in the US and include $250 million in funding for research on 'proliferation resistant' reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel reprocessing has been banned in the US since 1979 due to security concerns, and the new proliferation-blog Nuclear Fuel Cycle doubts that the proposal will pass due in large part to the persistence of these concerns (via NEI Nuclear Notes).

• The California Public Utility Commission voted 3-1 in favor of passing the California Solar Initiative (CSI), the largest solar initiative in the world in terms of investment. Allocating $3.1 billion in solar incentives over the next 10 years, the CSI replaces a patchwork of short-term incentive-based renewable initiatives while allowing immediate market stimulation with $300 million in stop-gap funding for solar projects currently on hold. This jubilant post by Arno Harris at Clean Energy Future provides an excellent, in-depth review of the initiative.

• The Environmental Economics blog notes that the EPA has proposed new methods for calculating fuel-efficiency standards for cars, SUVs and pick-up trucks starting in model year 2008 (cars that are expected to be available in fall of 2007) - the first such change since 1985. Under the new methods, which take into account high speed and rapid acceleration, use of air conditioning and cold weather operation, existing mile per gallon estimates would drop 10-20% for city driving, and 5-15% for highway driving. The EPA is also proposing a universal adjustment to better account for other conditions that can affect fuel economy but aren't included in efficiency tests, such as road grade, wind, tire pressure, load, and the effects of different fuel properties.

• In a distinctly Chinese approach to improving energy efficiency, Beijing has announced the creation of a team of 20 "energy police" to monitor excessive use of heat and lighting in large public spaces like office buildings and shopping malls.

International Affairs

• A group of Nigerian rebels calling themselves the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta attacked Royal Dutch Shell locations in the region and held four foreign oil workers hostage for 19 days (they have since been safely released). The group - which is demanding $1.5 billion from Shell (as 'compensation for pollution'), more control over the region's oil wealth, and the release of two imprisoned ethnic Ijaw leaders - caused Shell to withdraw 330 workers from the delta, resulting in a hefty reduction in Nigeria's overall oil production – 10% of the nation's 2.4 million barrels a day by one estimate (via Knowledge Problem) . The group has vowed more attacks and says it aims to cut Nigerian oil exports by 30 percent in February, and Global Guerillas' John Robb sees networked potential for big mayhem and big bucks.

• Russia continues to find itself accused by its Eastern European neighbors of abusing the power it holds over local natural gas markets. After last month's pricing dispute between Russian and Ukraine, Georgia is now accusing Russia of waging an energy blockage by cutting off its supply of natural gas in retaliation against the nation's pro-US policies. The supply disruption came as the result of pipeline sabotage (noted and discussed by John Robb here), the repair of which Georgia claims Russia purposefully prolonged. Georgia signed 30-day supply contracts with Azerbaijan and Iran while pipeline repairs were being completed, and is hoping to secure gas from Azerbaijan on a longer term basis and reduce its dependence on Russian gas in the future.

• At its inaugural meeting in Sydney, the US-Australia-India-Japan-China-South-Korea Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate announced the creation of a new fund to promote the development and use of clean energy technologies. In addition, the APP (aka the AP6) formed eight industry-specific working groups to develop projects for the fund, each of which will include executives focused in the mining, renewable energy, aluminium, cement, distributed energy, power generation, building and appliance efficiency and transportation sectors. While the US has yet to announce the exact amount it plans to contribute, Australia is expected to chip in $75m USD.

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Bio

• Green Car Congress takes a look at a new study published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences examining the total ecological footprint of ethanol production in the US and Brazil, which finds that ethanol is not environmentally sustainable. On a similar note, anti-ethanol mainstays Pimintel and Patzek released their latest study claiming that ethanol production is net energy negative. This information was apparently not weighed heavily in the decision to include a 7.5 billion barrels-by-2012 mandate in the aforementioned Energy Bill.

• The US National Biodiesel Board and American Soybean Association are moving to protect their hard-won biodiesel subsidies from foreign suppliers of less expensive palm oil. Is this energy security?

• Alt-E James joins in with links to several recent articles debating the value of subsidizing ethanol production, including a good recent piece by Slate on why the ethanol subsidy is 'worse than you can imagine'.

Electricity

• Lynne Kiesling notes the recent investment in BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) company by the folks at Google, then links to a post on the Progress & Freedom Foundation's blog about the potential of BPL to make electricity markets more dynamic.

Fossils

• Green Car Congress looks at some recent improvements made by Syntroleum to its Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) process, and notes that they may begin using its GTL process for CTL (Coal-to-Liquids) plants.

• Knowledge Problem examines a new FTC report on the factors that influence retail gasoline prices, giving particular attention to the role that requirements for boutique formulations of gasoline can play in exacerbating price variability. Includes a link to a nice map of the USA color-coded by different formulations - suitable for framing!

• Peak Oil Rob links to recent discussion about a possible slowdown in the growth of Chinese oil demand. Don't get too excited, though - Geoff Styles notes that the one of the most significant short-term effects of China's recent move to revalue the yuan may be a re-stimulation of oil demand.

Hybrids

• Gothamist reports that NYC will be seeing hybrids in service in the city's yellow taxi fleet as soon as this fall.

• Mike MilliGCC notes a new addition to the Southern California Air Quality Management District's small fleet of plug-in hybrids (which previously included five Dodge Sprinter PHEV vans) - a PHEV-converted Toyota Prius. The Prius PHEVs will be modified by Energy CS in a partnership with CalCars, who in late June announced a commercial version of the conversion kit.

Hydrogen

• One of Gov Schwarzenegger's top environmental initiatives hit a stumbling block this month, as the California state legislature approved only 60% of the funds requested for the construction of the Hydrogen Highway.

• Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed durable catalytic support materials that can reform liquid hydrocarbon fuels into hydrogen for vehicles even at high temperatures.

• BP has announced plans to build a hydrogen-fueled power plant in Scotland that will use natural gas as a feedstock. Natural gas will be converted into hydrogen for electricity generation and carbon dioxide that will be shipped to North Sea oilfields for sequestration and enhanced oil recovery.

Nuclear

• Years of under-investment in supply and suddenly-soaring global demand for nuclear power have pushed uranium prices to nearly $30/lb, triple prices from just a few years ago - and 'industry watchers' expect the price to rise further in the years to come.

• The Nuclear Energy Institute's blog is on the grind, doing yeoman's advocacy work with detailed rebuttals to recent anti-nuclear research by the Rocky Mountain Institute and the New Economics Foundation.

• Peak Oil Rob takes a look at the latest round of sonofusion research-and-reaction.

• Rob also continues to keep tabs on the state of conventional (?) fusion research, noting that India wants in on the hugely expensive ITER international experimental fusion reactor project

Solar

• Worldchanging FOCUSES on new developments in PV concentrator systems - recent announcements of conversion efficiencies approaching 40% in the US and in Europe, and a new San Diego startup making similarly exciting claims about PV concentrator systems that can be built for $2-3/watt.

• On the other end of the efficiency spectrum, Alan Monkeysign takes a look at new work from a Danish national laboratory on plastic solar cells, which are much cheaper - but much less efficient (5%) - than silicon cells. They're also much shorter-lived, although the most notable feature of the new Danish technology is that their plastic cells have a relatively long 2-year lifespan.

Water

• The UK Royals announced plans for the construction of a micro-hydroelectric power plant on the Thames which will provide electricity directly to Windsor Castle. The plant will produce a third of the energy required to run the castle, offset approximately 600 tons of CO2 a year, draw attention to the potential in England for electricity from small-scale hydroelectric generators - and cost a cool million pounds.

Wind

• The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has decided to approve a plan to shut down wind turbines in the Altamont Pass during winter months to protect bird populations that have been dying in large numbers there. The plan will shut down half of the 4,000 turbines in the pass from November to February.

• ...Meanwhile, a new study by the Dutch Bird Protection Charity and the Dutch utility Nuon claims that wind turbines kill only a third of the birds predicted by earlier models. Researchers claimed that 50,000 birds were killed every year by the Netherlands' 1,700 wind turbines - far less than the 2 million birds killed annually by Dutch motor vehicles.

• Worldchanging takes a look at the recently-award winning "Swift" micro-turbine, a UK-manufactured, 1.5 kW capacity, low-noise and low-vibration model designed for urban rooftops.

• Universisty of Alberta engineers have developed a new design for inexpensive, small scale wind turbines that can harness even light winds to produce electricity for homes. I like the project leader: "My work is something that can make a small change, and it's probably a bunch of small changes here and there that will add up and one day have a big impact."

Policy

• After 5 years of trying, the US finally passed a 'comprehensive' Energy Bill. Some things to like and lots to complain about, natch - check out some reactions from Geoff Styles/Energy Outlook, Lynne Kiesling/Knowledge Problem, Mike Millikin/Green Car Congress, Engineer-Poet/Ergosphere, and Randall Parker/Futurepundit.

• Less-heralded, but potentially more significant in the long term, was the other big US energy policy announcement of last week - the unveiling of the 'secret' US-led alternative/complement to Kyoto, the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate. Thoughts from Roger Pielke Jr./Prometheus (also see an absolutely essential post from earlier in the month on the timing of the costs and benefits of climate policy), Worldchanging, and me.

That's it for now - as always, please send any links, tips, questions, and (especially) hottt gossip to newenergy - at - windsofchange.net. See you - from now on - on the last Friday of every month -

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