It’s cold out there. By “out there,” we mean pretty much anywhere in the U.S. north of Brownsville, Texas
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We may never see plug-in airplanes, but the airline industry is one step closer to breaking free from the bonds of petroleum. What does it take to get Steven “Coal is My Worst Nightmare” Chu and Mike “I Quite Like Coal” Morris singing from the same hymnal? A successful clean-coal project, it seems. Our colleague Becky Smith reports in The Wall Street Journal today that American Electric Power boss Mike Morris is thrilled by the early progress on its first carbon-capture project in West Virginia, which has “exceeded expectations.” Now, the sky’s the limit: As a result, he believes AEP will be able to retire 25% of its coal-burning power plants and install advanced carbon-capture equipment on the remaining 75%. It’s going to be a long 2010 for the oil industry. Flickr Not out of the woods yet. That’s the key takeaway from a survey of the chief financial officers of 100 U.S King Coal is dead, long live King Coal. For all the talk of a clean-energy, low-carbon future, U.S coal producers might not have such a black future. Last spring, the day after PowerShift 2009 , I caught up with Bill McKibben in NYC. Tired and exhilarated, Bill shared the feeling of having won the victory of shutting down the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. Well guess what? German utility E.On’s decision to temporarily shelve plans for a big coal-fired power plant in the U.K. is clearly big news. The fun part is trying to figure out just why it matters so much Strange, but true: China’s explosive growth in wind power seems to be accelerating the construction of coal-fired power plants. The Wall Street Journal reports today : [O]fficials want enough new coal-fired capacity in reserve so that they can meet demand whenever the wind doesn’t blow…”China will need to add a substantial amount of coal-fired power capacity by 2020 in line with its expanding economy, and the idea is to bring some of the capacity earlier than necessary in order to facilitate the wind-power transmission,” said Shi Pengfei, vice president of the Chinese Wind Power Association. Crude oil futures slumped below $66 a barrel thanks to a stronger dollar and weaker demand, Bloomberg reports , despite some geopolitical worries over Iran. Actually, Nigeria is the bigger geopoltical risk, argues the WSJ : That’s light, sweet crude that’s at threat. |
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