October 02, 2009

Not long ago there were two widely held views when it came to the fossil fuels that powered nearly three-quarters of the electric generation industry: the United States was the "Saudi Arabia of coal," with a huge supply that would last well over two centuries, and the increasing reliance on natural gas to produce electricity would stress this country's ability to meet the demand from domestic, or even North American, sources.

Now those assumptions are being turned on their heads as a combination of reports examining recoverable resources are gaining currency. Simply put, separate analyses by government agencies and private organizations indicate recoverable coal resources are not nearly as plentiful as once thought, while a combination of new discoveries and technological advances have made supplies of natural gas much more bountiful, perhaps enough to last another century at current rates of consumption.

Below are a few letters received at EnergyBiz Insider on topics that appeared in the past few weeks. They capture the essence of how many readers say they feel.
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 Architects and engineers draw plans and contractors build buildings, but neither really controls what goes on there. The power of the bank account puts the owner in control of every project. With constantly increasing energy costs, along with many other factors, more owners are investing in green buildings. A recent national survey of the commercial real estate sector revealed that nearly two-thirds of respondents allocated funds to green initiatives, while the majority said their sustainability investment would increase in 2008. While the future is definitely looking greener, it is important to take a brief look at how this green initiative started.

September 30, 2009

It's a first step. But it's a big one. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has signed a final rule to establish a mandatory greenhouse gas reporting system that it says would cover about 85 percent of all such emissions.

The thinking is that the formation of such a registry requires industrial concerns to not just tabulate their heat-trapping emissions but to also consider ways to reduce them. In effect, what gets measured gets managed. That, in turn, would make it more feasible to enact national policy that would require cuts in those releases and could like facilitate the implementation of a cap-and-trade system.

September 28, 2009

Global leaders have wrapped up their presentations to the United Nations. But the question before their respective constituencies is whether the fanfare that they created will carry forward.

While the UN's global warming experts are all pushing hard to force countries to tackle the reduction of heat-trapping emissions head on, the reality is that key countries are becoming ensnared in their own domestic issues. It likely means that the upcoming talks to take place in Copenhagen in December will result in a launch pad for more serious discussions to occur later as opposed to a time and place where the world made hard and firm commitments to resolve the matter.