ClearView Energy Partners

Japan’s nuclear crisis makes it harder to prevent climate instability

March 16, 2011

The short-term human and economic costs of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami are staggering.

The long-term repercussions could be worse.

That’s because, even if the situation does not deteriorate any further, the fires, explosions, radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will  lead to greater scrutiny–and higher costs–for new nuclear plants.

That will make it harder to develop low carbon energy to replace fossil fuels and avert potentially catastrophic climate change. [click to continue…]

{ 4 comments }

Libya, Egypt, energy and the environment…

March 7, 2011

What will the civil war in Libya, revolution in Egypt and political turmoil elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa mean for the U.S. economy, energy prices and the environment?

If you’d like to hear the insights of a couple of smart energy experts, join me on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for a free webinar organized by The Energy Collective. My guests will be Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners and Geoff Styles of the GSW Energy Group. Both write frequently, intelligently and clearly about energy and energy policy.

Below is more information about the webinar. If you have questions you’d like me to ask Kevin or Geoff, please add them to the comments here or email them to me at marc.gunther@gmail.com. We’ll also take questions during the conversation. [click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

Shareholders say: Tell the truth about fracking

March 7, 2010

IMG_0697_hydraulic_ranch

No form of energy–not solar, wind, hydropower, obviously not coal or oil–comes without environmental tradeoffs.

One promising new energy source–a vast supplies of natural gas, trapped in shale deep beneath the earth’s surface–is getting renewed scrutiny these days, and for good reason.

While natural gas is often called a “bridge” to a clean energy future, critics are bombing the bridge with a frack attack, says energy policy analyst Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners.

Book was referring to the drumbeat of questions being raised by environmentalists, community activists, reporters and  members of Congress about  hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process during which water, chemicals and sand are pumped underground at  high pressure to cause tiny fissures in rock and force natural gas to the surface.

In the weeks ahead, new pressures will come from activist shareholders of a dozen energy companies. They’ve filed shareholder resolutions asking the companies to take a hard look at fracking and its risk, and they will raise the issue at annual shareholder meetings. [click to continue…]

{ 6 comments }

Why the “Petro Metro” wants electric cars

March 2, 2010

Why on earth would Houston, the city of drill-baby-drill, the fossil-fuel capital of America, the city whose NFL franchise used to be called the Oilers, embrace the electric car? For good reason, it turns out–so says the city’s mayor, the local utility company, Reliant Energy,  its parent company NRG Energy and NRG’s CEO, David Crane.

“Houston’s not a natural market for electric cars,” Crane admitted, when we met the other day. “But electric cars are good for our business in all kinds of ways,” he added. So NRG and Reliant is working with officials Houston, America’s 4th largest city, to persuade Nissan to make Houston one of the leading launch markets for the Nissan Leaf, the all electric vehicle that the Japanese automaker plans to start selling later this year.

Houston's skyline at night

Houston's skyline at night

“We are the Petro Metro, but we are also a car city,” said Houston’s newly-elected mayor, Annise Parker, at an event earlier this month to welcome Nissan to the city. Certainly there’s a sizable market awaiting Nissan in the city. Houston is home to 4.5 million vehicles that travel 86 million miles a day, according to Reuters.

The problem for Houston–and for most other cities that want to welcome electric cars–is that it lacks an infrastructure of charging stations where electric car owners can fill up their cars with, er, electricity. This winter, Nissan took the Leaf on a three-month, 24-city tour designed to spark excitement about the car, a five-passenger car that the company says will travel about 100 miles on a single charge.

But because the Leaf will be produced in limited numbers, at least at first, the tour was also a way for Nissan to solicit partners, mostly cities and utility companies, that will assume the costs of building charging stations that will allow electric car drivers to overcome what is known as “range anxiety”–the feeling that they might run out of electricity without a charging station nearby. [click to continue…]

{ 3 comments }