2010 may well become known in the renewable and environmental community as the year of the solar battles. Battle is definitely brewing in California, with the main focus at the moment on Brightsource. Just before the new year, Senator Feinstein introduced a new bill that she hopes will help balance preservation of the Mojave desert with recreation and renewable energy development.

Reporting from the negotiation room

Today's NRC, a Dutch newspaper I like akin to the NYT, heavily criticized the Copenhagen meeting, and it was not alone. All major newspapers expressed dismay after the speeches held by Chinese prime-minister Wen Jiaboa and President Obama. I was not overly enthused by their speeches either. Both repeated mostly old statements, praised their own proposed steps forward, and accused the other of hampering global progress and signing of an effective Copenhagen treaty.

Will shale gas indeed be the next big thing as suggested in today's (10/10/09) article in the NYT . The numbers in this article are correct. Shale gas estimates are indeed very high. The article does not discuss any potential negative environmental impacts. Water quality, for example, is heavily debated in Pennsylvania, which is one of the major shale gas states. I would applaud a move tomorrow to shale gas from coal, whilst going full throttle on renewable development. I worry about heavy investments in shale gas and liquid gas transport as that may halt or hinder a move to cleaner electricity.

Interesting article today in the New York Times about a (small) silver lining in the current economic and climate gloom. Emissions have gone down a bit because of the economic downturn, but more importantly China is making more rapid progress towards the reduction of its carbon dioxide emissions, mostly through nuclear energy and wind.

Mighty interesting, those developments in China. Think SE needs to visit soon....

Check out the latest Science magazine for its special issue on Carbon Sequestration and Storage. Steve Chu, Secretary of Energy, contributed to this issue as well.

Sun's barely up when I sip a quick coffee, slip into something a bit more uncomfortable and put up my hair, all to look as much as possible like a serious scientist. After all, I'm getting ready to attend a hearing on the CLEAR act called by the House committee on natural resources with Ken Salazar as first witness and who knows, he might look my way.

This could be interesting. It's Ken's first appearance in the committee as secretary of the Department of the Interior, and my guess is that the committee members will all show up and use their five minutes of questioning to get on their own soapboxes. An excellent way to understand what the main passions and frustrations are.

President Obama's administration certainly sees the energy future of the US different than the last administration. Overall, this is very good news. A few years ago, when I first starting looking seriously at the US energy policies and proposals, I was not very confident about our chances to create a sustainable energy future. I'm much more optimistic now. Of course, this is a day to be optimistic and a day to believe in what we can accomplish if we just put our talents to it. At the same time, it's also the day to start looking more carefully at the proposals. There's much work to be done and the devil is, as always, in the details.

Check out FirstLook for an attractive interactive display of wind and solar resource data at http://firstlook.3tiergroup.com/ .

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published its long awaited
World Energy Outlook 2008 .
A highly recommended read.

A quick first summary with more analysis to come:

The current financial crisis could well lead to a growing worldwide petroleum shortage in the short to medium term. The crisis has lead to a decrease in crude oil prices (see our stats in the left column of the page). Oil companies are therefore not making the profits hoped for and some have started cutting or delaying new projects.
IEA expects that oil prices will bounce back up to around 100 dollars per barrel in 2010.