Posted by One of our fathers had a sign in his garage: “If you don’t have time now to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” That line comes to mind with the latest energy news from Japan, which is embarking on a massive switch in its energy policy, on the fly.…
Can jobs be more than a talking point in the debate over energy? It’s not just a rhetorical question. It’s not a surprise that jobs and the economy consistently show up as the number-one issue for voters this election year. It’s also no surprise that the both sides of the energy debate use estimates of…
Which is more important: making solar panels cheap or making them here? In the end, this may not be an either-or question, but it’s the one that’s raised by the Commerce Department’s decision last week to impose a small import duty on Chinese-made solar panels. Some U.S. solar companies argue that China illegally subsidizes its…
New federal statistics show that, for the first time since 1949, the United States is exporting more petroleum products than it’s importing. Does your life feel any different? This is something of a trick question, as we’ll explain in a moment. But this goes to the heart of the long debate about “energy independence.” The…
If you’re a primary voter, you’ve got your pick of candidates who’ll promise to bring down the price of gasoline. Unfortunately, whoever wins is going to run up against the limits of presidential power pretty quickly. The fact is that presidents don’t have that much authority over the price of oil, for a number of…
Sometimes the decisions we make are less decisive than they seem. Last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its first license for a new plant in forty years. But that decision, significant though it is, doesn’t do anything to settle the major questions we face on energy. Here’s three points to consider when you think…
It’s probably a safe bet that nearly everything this election year, including energy policy, is going to be viewed through the prism of jobs. And fair enough: the Great Recession cost us nearly 8.4 million of them, after a decade where America barely broke even on job growth. Surveys show the economy as the public’s…
The Environmental Protection Agency last week launched its much-awaited database reporting on the greenhouse gas emissions of major power plants. You can go to ghgdata.epa.gov and find out how many tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are being put out by facilities in your community or state. It’s a major advance for transparency…
It’s a mystery to us how a light bulb came to symbolize a bright idea, because they’ve produced only dim-bulb thinking in Washington lately. As part of a $1 trillion stopgap spending bill passed by Congress on Friday, the incandescent light bulb has received a reprieve. Originally, under a bipartisan measure signed by President Bush…
Somewhere, pigs are flying and hell must be icing up, because Congress has actually spent some time discussing the electrical grid. As usual, however, they’re locked in another partisan squabble, but procrastinating on addressing the more fundamental danger. Over the past week, the Environmental Protection Agency has been defending its new, tighter air quality rules…
Welcome to the world we’re building by default. Or, to be more precise, welcome to the world that other countries are building while we stand by squabbling and splitting hairs. One of the first things students in business schools and public policy institutes learn is that refusing to make a decision is, in fact, a…
“The truth is that our energy policy is improvised; it simply isn’t serious.” If you’re thinking that sounds like an apt criticism of U.S. energy policy over the last few decades, you may be surprised to learn that it’s actually a quote from a Spanish policymaker bemoaning his own country’s lack of a long-term, well-thought…
It’s the counterintuitive energy ideas that people have trouble grasping. Another one came out this week, in the form of a Japanese study in Environmental Science & Technology that found the best areas for photovoltaic solar energy may be the Earth’s coldest regions, even the high altitudes of the Andes and the Himalayas. Not only…
There’s an argument against higher fuel economy that’s often dismissed by environmentalists, but resonates with a lot of people. The line of reasoning goes like this: small cars may be more fuel-efficient, but big cars are safer. If you took this to its logical conclusion, of course, we’d all be doing our car buying at…
Ever have those days when you feel you just can’t get ahead? That’s been the story with energy efficiency for some time now. There’s a constant stream of highly touted innovations designed to get the same amount of work done using less energy. You can hardly open up a catalog or walk into a store…
The fight over the Keystone XL pipeline, designed to bring Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries, is being billed as a make-or-break moment for energy: Will America place its bets on fossil fuels, or we will turn instead to more reliance on renewable energy? It’s an important debate, but one crucial point that’s often missed…
The idea that the only way to deal with how humans are changing the climate is to have scientists and engineers figure out a way to change it back again has attracted some clever monikers over the last few years. Journalists and bloggers have called geoengineering everything from “the MacGyver-ish solution” to “Plan B” to…
For a highly technical drilling technique, the controversy over “fracking” for natural gas has gained a lot of traction. In the past week, a federal advisory panel called for tighter restrictions and disclosure on the process. Meanwhile, House Democrats are pushing for tighter rules on companies using the process to drill for natural gas, and…
At first glance, you might not think the debt crisis and the energy crisis have much in common. But they’ve got two big similarities, either of which can come back to bite us. As we write this, it looks like Republicans and Democrats have reached a deal allowing the United States to raise its arbitrary…
The rhetoric about energy can get a little apocalyptic, and the latest debate over ethanol subsidies is no exception. According to the Iowa Corn Growers Association, going through with the Senate’s tentative moves to end ethanol subsidies last week would be a huge mistake. Here’s their forecast: “Cutting the legs out from under the corn…
Is it time for a sidestep on the energy debate? The current argument over climate change seems to be going nowhere fast. Republicans, at least some of the presidential contenders, seem less and less likely to take it as a serious issue. Democrats and environmentalists are still unable to push big ideas, like a cap-and-trade…
Twenty years ago, when Bill Clinton was first running for president, his political adviser James Carville used to respond to questions about the issues in the campaign by saying, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The “stupid” was a little gratuitous. But the point – that the economy is everything in American politics – still holds true,…
Here’s a depressing fact about energy use in the United States. According to the government’s current projections, we get about 80 percent of our energy from fossil fuels now. And in 20 years, we’ll still be getting 80 percent of our energy from fossil fuels. Yes, we’ll be adding more renewable energy to the mix,…
When it comes to energy policy, do we really need to agree on the why before we can agree on the what? That’s been the working assumption of lots of people on all sides of the debate so far, and it’s stopped climate change policy dead in its tracks. One of the few things the…
This past week—in honor of Earth Day—there’s been a lot of soul-searching about why public concern about climate change is declining despite scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings about the consequences of inaction. Politically, of course, action is stalled in Washington, and given the fight over the federal deficit it’s not clear the government will even hang…
