Crude Oil Prices Fall on Global Economic Slowdown

Crude Oil prices continue to fall this week, and oil is trading at less than $127 dollars per barrel this morning on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price per barrel has fallen by more than $18 dollars over the last nine days, in part due to a global economic slowdown that is expected to ease the demand for oil.

Oil prices were expected to recover somewhat as Hurricane Dolly moved toward landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, but Dolly has managed to steer clear of major oil infrastructure so far. The hurricane is expected to dump as much as ten inches of rain on Brownsville, Texas today.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

Al Gore’s Energy Plan Includes Building Nuclear Power

Former Vice-President Al Gore is calling for all electricity in the U.S. to be produced from carbon-free sources within 10 years. News reports are hailing his plan as a “green gauntlet”, and many news outlets are incorrectly reporting that his plan calls for all electricity to come from renewable energy.

Gore’s plan instead calls for 20 percent of electricity to continue coming from nuclear energy.

That would mean adding at least 22 gigawatts of new nuclear power – or about 22 new reactors, just to meet the projected growth in electricity demand. Dozens more reactors would also be needed to replace older nuclear facilities that are due for retirement within ten years.

The 103 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. are now 26-years old, on average.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

Santa Fe to Increase Use of Coal and Nuclear Power

The City of Santa Fe is negotiating a deal that will increase the consumption of coal and nuclear power for city operations by more than 70 percent over the next several years.

City officials have been negotiating with PNM, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, to provide power for a new drinking water system it is building. The new water system will require 27-million kilowatt-hours per year.

Proposals to get that energy from on-site generation were said to be unfeasible by PNM in 2006, and creating a public power entity to provide energy for the system was deemed “risky” by the engineer hired by the city to study alternatives. The cost of the electricity needed to run the city’s new water system cannot be determined, because PNM was recently given the right to raise electricity rates as needed to cover its fuel costs.

The video newscast containing this story is here.

Commentary: Good Energy Policy Begins with Asking Good Questions

The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign, The 2030 Challenge, Build Green Santa Fe, The Apollo Alliance, Green Cities, Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement, The Green Gauntlet, and Smart Growth America – all of these programs have great sounding names and, perhaps, they give us hope about the direction our country is headed in tackling our energy and climate problems.

Why then, with so many programs already underway, does Local Energy News continue to report discouraging news, and highlight the lack of progress toward our goals? I do it because I believe that the only thing more damaging than great sounding programs that don’t really address our problems is the widespread belief that we are actually dealing with our problems, when we aren’t.

The folly of false hope is that it allows us to continue down false paths, reducing our chances of getting to the right path soon enough to make a difference. I don’t see many of the programs that have been put forward as being “good enough for now” or “a great start”, I see them instead as attempts to placate the public while the powers that be continue with their business as usual.

We don’t need to be energy experts to differentiate between programs that sound green, and those that truly are. All we need to do is ask different questions. For example:

Did the decision to allow private ownership of critical infrastructures, such as the electric power grid, leave us vulnerable to investor-owned monopolies and their profit motives?

Do new energy policies we are considering promote local self-reliance, or do they reward interests outside our communities and put control of our water and food in someone else’s hands?

Do our policies reward a particular energy technology, which we may or may not know enough about, rather than simply rewarding projects that meet the goals of our community?

Let’s not settle for saying that we want to “increase renewables” or “reduce carbon”. Let’s try setting broader goals, like “diversity of supply”, increased local ownership, use of local fuels and labor, and retention of energy dollars in the local community.

If you want to build a housing complex for seniors living on a fixed income, as Santa Fe just did, we shouldn’t allow the developer to install electric heat—the most expensive kind of heat—after giving the electric company the right to raise rates whenever it wants to. It takes no special knowledge of energy issues to know that you can’t protect the seniors in your community under such conditions.

It’s getting pretty late in the game to claim that we still don’t understand the energy game. Let’s ditch the whole conversation about “renewables” and “carbon” and start talking about local, independent businesses providing energy from fuels that we harvest locally.

That, more than any great sounding program, will get us where we need to go.

The video newscast containing this story is posted here.