Shot in the Arm! White House Proposes Creation of Energy Security Trust to Fund Clean Energy Research

March 16, 2013 at 12:18 pm

America’s energy security gets a boost from the White House. President Obama proposed the creation of Energy Security Trust during his visit to the Argonne National Research Lab to talk about American energy security. The Energy Security Trust, a$2 Billion investment over 10 years, uses revenue generated by oil and gas development on federal lands to support new research and technology that will shift our cars and trucks off of oil for good.  Below is an infographic that outlines how this works:

Energy Security Trust via Whitehouse.gov

Energy Security Trust Infographic via Whitehouse.gov

Here is an excerpt from the White House Blog:

So how does it work? The Energy Security Trust will invest in research that will make future technologies cheaper and better – it will fund the advances that will allow us to run cars and trucks on electricity or homegrown fuels, and on the technology that will enable us to drive from coast-to-coast without a drop of oil.

Over 10 years, the Energy Security Trust will provide $2 billion for critical, cutting-edge research focused on developing cost-effective transportation alternatives.The funding will be provided by revenues from federal oil and gas development, and will not add any additional costs to the federal budget. The investments will support research into a range of technologies – things like advanced vehicles that run on electricity, homegrown biofuels, and domestically produced natural gas. It will also help fund a small number of real-world experiments that try different transportation techniques in cities and towns around the country using advanced vehicles at scale.

If it is worth something, President Obama has indicated his desire to use the executive powers to curb climate change impacts should Congress fail to act.  According to Bloomberg, the president is also thinking of using a Nixon-era law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, to instruct all federal agencies to consider the impact of climate change when approving “major projects, from pipelines to highways.”  Of course, this can have some serious implications for large scale projects and some constituencies in the business sector are already freaking out over this mandate.

While we are busy discussing this issue, I’d like to share with you an address by President Obama from March 2011 in which he outlined his goals for reducing American energy dependence, heavily emphasizing new technology and alternative sources in addition to “safe and responsible” offshore drilling. A lot of what he outline in his blue print for change is already starting to take effect and I can only say that we are poised for a big change in the way we power our vehicles and industries.  Fossil fuels are definitely beginning to see a slow demise (but it will be decades before they are completely phased out in the transportation sector).

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Dire Straits! Int’l Energy Agency says global inaction on Climate Change cost $1 Trillion; Recommends cutting fuel subsidies

November 9, 2010 at 5:16 pm

(Source: Ars Technica)

Each year, the International Energy Agency produces a report in which it considers trends in energy use and makes projections for the future. Usually, these reports simply take recent trends and project them forward, but this year’s is somewhat different: its author uses a mixture of current trends and the projected impact of countries’ pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and subsidies for fossil fuels. This results in some eye-popping figures. Globally, we’re subsidizing fossil fuel use to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, at a rate of over five times the subsidies going to renewable energy. And our inaction on climate goals has tacked $1 trillion onto the cost of reaching them—in 2009 alone.

We’ll start with the subsidies. In 2009, the total subsidies were $312 billion, which may seem high until you hear the 2008 figure: $558 billion, boosted by countries’ responses to the high fossil fuel prices that year. Most of the subsidies went to help cut the costs of using oil and natural gas products; another substantial chunk went to electricity use.

The IEA factsheet also forecasts a steep rises in the primary energy demand (increases by 36% between 2008 and 2035, or 1.2% per year on average) oil prices. The cost of getting on track to meet the climate goal for 2030 has risen by about $1 trillioncompared with the estimated cost in last year’s Outlook. This is because much stronger efforts,costing considerably more, will be needed after 2020. In the 450 Scenario in this year’s Outlook, theadditional spending on low‑carbon energy technologies (business investment and consumerspending) amounts to nearly $18 trillion (in year- 2009 dollars) more than in the Current PoliciesScenario, in which no new policies are assumed, in the period 2010‑2035. It is around $13.5 trillionmore than in the New Policies Scenario.

Click here to read the entire Ars Technica argument and the IEA’s World Energy Outlook website.

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Dread this! Saudi ARAMCO CEO Predicts World Is Likely to Rely Mostly on Fossil Fuel for Decades

September 13, 2010 at 2:44 pm

Spoken like a true businessman: “Nobody is contending that we should not encourage, should not invest, should not allow renewable energy to grow,” he said. “We are investing in solar energy and are looking at wind and believe it will gradually take an increasing share, but it will take time.” This is somewhat true as many nations are looking at bleak economic prospects and scrambling for resources to invest in alternative energy research! What scares me is the fact that our political leaders (in certain Party) are turning a blind eyes to what’s happening and refusing to invest in progressive economic ideas! Can we, please, prioritize this issue and get working on moving away from oil for good? Our money is fast vaporizing – as fast as the petrol itself and soon we will be left with nothing!

Amplify’d from www.bloomberg.com

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Chief
Executive Officer Khalid al-Falih said the world probably will
rely for decades to come on fossil fuels, mainly oil, natural
gas and coal.

“Even though the share of fossil fuels in the energy mix
may decline over the longer term, the absolute quantities of
energy from these sources will continue to rise simply because
total energy demand is set to expand so significantly,” he said
in a speech today at the World Energy Congress in Montreal.

Coal, oil and natural gas are forecast to account for four
out of every five units of energy consumption “for the
foreseeable future,” he said. Alternative fuels will grow
gradually, with their use for power-generation growing faster
than for transportation, he said.

Saudi Aramco, as his company is known, maintains spare
capacity near 4 million barrels a day, a level that has “helped
assure market stability,” al-Falih said. Aramco is the world’s
biggest crude-oil producer.

Read more at www.bloomberg.com