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Mine fire continues to burn after 46 years

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Mine fire continues to burn after 46 years

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Welcome to Centralia, a small town located in east-central Pennsylvania. Forty-six years ago, this used to be a bustling coal-mining town with over 2,500 residents. Today, Centralia is not even listed in most maps and its population has dwindled down to ten, thanks to a fire that cannot be extinguished.

It all began in 1962, when workers burnt a landfill (trash) in the pit of an abandoned strip coal mine (a mine right below the surface of the ground). After allowing it to burn for a few hours, they extinguished it and left. However, the hot embers from the fires caught on to the coal vein that ran just below the surface of the strip mine and erupted in the pit a few days later.

Once again the fire was put out or so they thought. However, by now the coal, of which there is plenty under the surface of this town, had caught fire. For the next twenty years, firemen tried everything to try put out the fire. They flushed the mines with water, dug trenches, cleaned out the burning material, tried to find the boundaries and put it out or at least contain it. Nothing worked! - It is estimated that over $66 million US Dollars has been spent on the endeavor (attempt).

By 1980, it was decided that the carbon monoxide fumes from the smoldering fire posed a health hazard for the town residents, and the Federal Government spent $44 million dollars relocating them. All but ten of the residents agreed to move.

Forty-six years later, the fire continues to smolder under the town, thanks to the rich coal deposits underneath. Experts estimate that there is enough coal there to keep it burning for another century (100 years).

Today Centralia is a ghost town frequented by its ten residents and visited by a few curious tourists. The Federal Government owns the land and has razed down most of the homes.

What a sad but fascinating story. If you want to look at more pictures of the town before and after (the fire) and read more on this topic go to : http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

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Mine fire continues to burn after 46 years

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Welcome to Centralia, a small town located in east- central Pennsylvania. Forty-six years ago, this used to be a bustling coal-mining town with over 2,500 residents. Today, Centralia is not even listed in most maps and its population has dwindled down to ten, thanks to a fire that cannot be extinguished.

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58,000 Gallon Oil Spill In San Francisco Bay

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58,000 Gallon Oil Spill In San Francisco Bay

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Photo Credit: By Brocken Inaglory - commons.wikipedia.org

58,000 gallons of oil spilled into the San Francisco Bay on Wednesday morning, after a cargo ship hit the base of one of the towers of the Bay Bridge, causing a tear in the side of the ship and rupturing its fuel tanks.

The accident was caused by "human error", which means someone in the ship made a mistake. Investigators are still trying to find out what happened. The fog was unusually heavy that day and the tide had just turned; causing experts to believe that could be the reason for the crash. Though thousands of ships pass under the Bay Bridge each year, this is the first time an accident like this has happened in the 70-years the bridge span has been there. This is also the biggest oil spill in this area in 20 years.

Whatever the cause, the results are devastating (shocking). To begin with the oil that spilled was heavy-duty bunker fuel oil which, is the worst kind of oil. It is very hard to clean and takes years to disintegrate (break down). This means that the bay area marine life may be affected for many many years.

To make matters worse, this is prime migration season, when thousands of birds fly from Canada to the Bay Area. Scientists say about 150,000 ducks from Canada have just flown over to spend the winter in the warmer, richly preserved San Francisco Bay.

The oil has also reached the Farallon Islands where over 200,000 mures (seabirds) migrate this time every year. The Point Bonita area is home to thousands of harbor seals who may also be affected. The furry sea lions that entertain thousands of tourists at Fisherman's Wharf every day could also be in danger.

Photo of the damage to the MV Hanjin Venezia, former COSCO Busan, after striking the San Francisco Bay Bridge (Photo Credit: U.S. Coast Guard - commons.wikipedia.org)

The reason furry animals and birds are both very susceptible is not just due to the oil fumes which are deadly, but also, because when the oil coats their skin, it causes them to get cold and they leave the water. Because of the high metabolism of these animals, they need to eat regularly. Once they get out of the water, they do not eat enough and hence die. Also, if the birds preen (clean and straighten) their feathers, they could get poisoned.

Scientists believe the effects of the oil spill could last for months and possibly years, and may completely change the ecosystem of this beautiful area. The only positive thing we can say about this disaster is that so many people in the Bay Area called offering to help that they had to shut down the volunteer phone line for a few hours.

Click on the video below to see how the birds are being rescued:

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58,000 Gallon Oil Spill In San Francisco Bay

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58,000 gallons of oil spilled into the San Francisco Bay on Wednesday morning, after a cargo ship hit the base of one of the towers of the Bay Bridge, causing a tear in the side of the ship and rupturing its fuel tanks.

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On Sunday, September 19th, BP announced that the leaking Macondo well was finally 'dead' - ending the five month nightmare that began with a horrific rig blast that killed eleven workers and spewed millions of gallons of toxic oil, into the Gulf of Mexico.

While everybody has been waiting for this final event, it was the first 85 days that were the most harrowing, when attempt after attempt to plug the leak, failed.

It was not until July 15th that BP finally met up with some success. Using a procedure known as 'static kill', engineers pumped hundreds of gallons of mud at slow speeds through a pipe right into the blowout preventer at the top of the well and finally, plugged the leak.

Now, they could focus on the permanent solution, which involved a multistep slower procedure, to ensure there were no setbacks. The first thing they did was re-enforce the temporary seal, in early August, by inserting an additional shot of cement and mud above the existing plug.

Once sealed, they replaced the old blowout preventer - the one that had failed and caused the explosion, with a new one.

After that, they began the more permanent work - that of drilling 18,000 feet below the ocean's surface to get to the annulus or outer rig of the oil well and try plug it with cement, so that it would never spew out even a drop of oil ever again.

While this may seem like an easy task, according to John Wright, the man who spearheaded the whole operation, it was one of the toughest jobs he has undertaken in his 25-year career of capping wells. The biggest problem was the depth of the well. He had never had to drill this far down and with no video and a very weak signal especially for the last 1,000 ft. it all boiled down to skill and a bit of luck to get him to the exact spot.

Thankfully, they succeeded and were able to put to rest what seemed like a never-ending nightmare - One that has cost billions of dollars and disrupted many lives. While there is still a lot of clean-up to be done and the residents of the area are a long way from returning to their normal lives, there is hope that things will return back to normal. With a lot of human effort and some help from nature, we hope that it will sooner than later.

sources: mobile.latimes.com, news.yahoo.com

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On Sunday, September 19th, BP announced that the leaking Macondo well was finally 'dead' - ending the five month nightmare that began with a horrific rig blast that killed eleven workers and spewed millions of gallons of toxic oil, into the Gulf of Mexico.

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Gulf Coast Oil Spill Threatens Fragile Ecosystem

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Gulf Coast Oil Spill Threatens Fragile Ecosystem

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A yet to be controlled oil spill near the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, is turning out to be one of the nation's biggest oil-related catastrophe, threatening not only some of North America's most endangered wildlife, but also, the livelihood of thousands of fishermen.

The spill began on April 20th, when an offshore oil rig exploded and ruptured an underwater oil well. Since then, almost 200,000 gallons of oil has been leaking into the ocean every day. The worst part is, authorities still have no idea how to repair it.

As of April 30th, the oil spill, which is currently sitting about 20 miles off the coast of Louisiana, had grown to a 3,850 mile blob, about the size of Puerto Rico. The spill jeopardizes the life of ocean creatures like the endangered Atlantic Blue Fin, as well as, other fish like the speckled trout, flounder and shrimp.

To make matters worse, it has occurred in the vicinity of over 40% of the country's wetlands, home to birds like the wintering waterfowl and other endangered shore birds and mammals.

If that isn't bad enough, thanks to the ever increasing size and ocean waves, the spill is spreading to neighboring states like Florida, where it will impact beach-nesting birds like the black-necked stilt and tern.

As a last straw, even the weather is not cooperating - so far the oil slick has been kept away from the coastline, but on Saturday morning, a strong southerly wind started to nudge it closer to Louisiana's shore and, a storm forecast for the next few days, can only make things worse.

Also, since Louisiana is the country's leading provider of shrimp, crab, crawfish and oysters, a lot of people are worried about their livelihood, which depends on the fishing industry - All in all, a very sad situation!

British Petroleum, the company responsible for the rig that blew up, is trying everything it can, to contain the spill. Their first priority is to stem the flow. However, this has been almost impossible, thanks to the turbulent and choppy seas, which has also made skimming the oil off the surface, almost impossible.

They are also immersing the area with chemicals that break up oil before it reaches the surface, a technique, which has been successful in shallow oil spills. The company is keeping its fingers crossed that it will be as effective in the deep ocean!

Hopefully, they will be able to come up with a solution soon that will minimize the damage to our wildlife and save the livelihood of the poor fishermen!

sources: news.yahoo.com,aboutmyplanet.com, marketwatch.com pbs.org

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Gulf Coast Oil Spill Threatens Fragile Ecosystem

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A yet to be controlled oil spill near the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, is turning out to be one of the nation's biggest oil-related catastrophe, threatening not only some of North America's most endangered wildlife, but also, the livelihood of thousands of fishermen.

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During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil-producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old pricing system, which exacerbated the embargo's effects.

The 1973 Oil Embargo acutely strained a U.S. economy that had grown increasingly dependent on foreign oil. The efforts of President Richard M. Nixon's administration to end the embargo signaled a complex shift in the global financial balance of power to oil-producing states and triggered a slew of U.S. attempts to address the foreign policy challenges emanating from long-term dependence on foreign oil.

By 1973, OPEC had demanded that foreign oil corporations increase prices and cede greater shares of revenue to their local subsidiaries. In April, the Nixon administration announced a new energy strategy to boost domestic production to reduce U.S. vulnerability to oil imports and ease the strain of nationwide fuel shortages. That vulnerability would become overtly clear in the fall of that year.

The onset of the embargo contributed to an upward spiral in oil prices with global implications. The price of oil per barrel first doubled, then quadrupled, imposing skyrocketing costs on consumers and structural challenges to the stability of whole national economies. Since the embargo coincided with a devaluation of the dollar, a global recession seemed imminent. U.S. allies in Europe and Japan had stockpiled oil supplies, and thereby secured for themselves a short-term cushion, but the long-term possibility of high oil prices and recession precipitated a rift within the Atlantic Alliance. European nations and Japan found themselves in the uncomfortable position of needing U.S. assistance to secure energy sources, even as they sought to disassociate themselves from U.S. Middle East policy. The United States, which faced a growing dependence on oil consumption and dwindling domestic reserves, found itself more reliant on imported oil than ever before, having to negotiate an end to the embargo under harsh domestic economic circumstances that served to diminish its international leverage. To complicate matters, the embargo's organizers linked its end to successful U.S. efforts to bring about peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Partly in response to these developments, on November 7 the Nixon administration announced Project Independence to promote domestic energy independence. It also engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts among its allies, promoting a consumers' union that would provide strategic depth and a consumers' cartel to control oil pricing. Both of these efforts were only partially successful.

President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recognized the constraints inherent in peace talks to end the war that were coupled with negotiations with Arab OPEC members to end the embargo and increase production. But they also recognized the linkage between the issues in the minds of Arab leaders. The Nixon administration began parallel negotiations with key oil producers to end the embargo, and with Egypt, Syria, and Israel to arrange an Israeli pullout from the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Initial discussions between Kissinger and Arab leaders began in November 1973 and culminated with the First Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement Agreement on January 18, 1974. Though a finalized peace deal failed to materialize, the prospect of a negotiated end to hostilities between Israel and Syria proved sufficient to convince the relevant parties to lift the embargo in March 1974.

The embargo laid bare one of the foremost challenges confronting U.S. policy in the Middle East, that of balancing the contradictory demands of unflinching support for Israel and the preservation of close ties to the Arab oil-producing monarchies. The strains on U.S. bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia revealed the difficulty of reconciling those demands. The U.S. response to the events of 1973-1974 also clarified the need to reconcile U.S. support for Israel to counterbalance Soviet influence in the Arab world with both foreign and domestic economic policies.

The full impact of the embargo, including high inflation and stagnation in oil importers, resulted from a complex set of factors beyond the proximate actions taken by the Arab members of OPEC. The declining leverage of the U.S. and European oil corporations (the "Seven Sisters") that had hitherto stabilized the global oil market, the erosion of excess capacity of East Texas oil fields, and the recent decision to allow the U.S. dollar to float freely in the international exchange all played a role in exacerbating the crisis. Once the broader impact of these factors set in throughout the United States, it triggered new measures beyond the April and November 1973 efforts that focused on energy conservation and development of domestic energy sources. These measures included the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit on U.S. highways, and later, President Gerald R. Ford's administration's imposition of fuel economy standards. It also prompted the creation of the International Energy Agency proposed by Kissinger.

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Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations - Office of the Historian

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Historical Timeline: History of Alternative Energy and Fossil Fuels

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Historical Timeline: History of Alternative Energy and Fossil Fuels

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History of Alternative Energy and Fossil Fuels

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- Chinese First to Use Coal as an Energy Source

"According to the report of an early missionary to China, coal was already being burned there for heating and cooking, and had been so employed for up to 4000 years. Likewise, in early medieval Europe, the existence of coal was no secret, but the 'black stone' was regarded as an inferior fuel because it produced so much soot and smoke... Thus, until the 13th century, it was largely ignored in favor of wood.

As wood shortages began to appear, poor people began heating their homes by burning coal."

- Windmills Built in Persia to Grind Grain and Pump Water

"For the tenth century, we have material proof that windmills were turning in the blustery Seistan region of Persia. These primitive, vertical carousel-type mills utilized the wind to grind corn, and to raise water from streams to irrigate gardens... [T]heir use soon spread to India, other parts of the Muslim world, and China, where farmers employed them to pump water, grind grain, and crush sugarcane."

"The mill reached its greatest size and its most efficient form in the hands of the Dutch engineers toward the end of the sixteenth century... The Dutch provinces... developed the windmill to the fullest possible degree: it ground the grain produced on the rich meadows, it sawed the wood... and it ground the spices... Above all, the windmill was the chief agent in land reclamation. The threat of inundation by the sea led these North Sea fishermen and farmers to attempt not only to control the water itself, but by keeping it back, to add to the land... Once the dykes were built, however, the problem was how to keep the area under the level of the sea clear of water: the windmill... was the means of raising the water of the rising streams and canals: it maintained the balance between the water and the land that made life possible in this precarious situation."

"Experimenters... discovered that the roasting process used to make charcoal [from wood] could be adapted to coal, the result being an extremely hot-burning fuel called coke. The use of coke in iron and steel production, beginning in England in the 17th century, would so transform those industries as to constitute one of the key developments paving the way for the industrial revolution."

- Coal Begins to Displace Use of Other Energies

"The great shift in population and industry that took place in the eighteenth century was due to the introduction of coal as a source of mechanical power, to the use of new means of making that power effective - the steam engine - and to new methods of smelting and working up iron. Out of this coal and iron complex, a new civilization developed...

By the end of the eighteenth century coal began to take the place of current sources of energy... Wood, wind, water, beeswax, tallow, sperm-oil - all these were displaced steadily by coal and derivatives of coal...

In the economy of the earth, the large-scale opening up of coal seams meant that industry was beginning to live for the first time on an accumulation of potential energy, derived from the ferns of the carboniferous period, instead of upon current income."

"By 1700 [coal] mine shafts were as deep as 200 feet. There were problems down there with gases and especially with flooding... Muscle, animal and human, and sometimes watermills and windmills were put to work lifting the water out of the mines, but it was an endless battle that technology circa 1700 could not win... Coal, the Carboniferous legacy of stored sunlight, would solve that problem. Coal would be burned to power the heat engine... [Thomas] Newcomen... built a steam machine close by a coal shaft... in 1712... Newcomen's first machine made twelve strokes a minute, raising 10 gallons of water with each stroke. Its strength is estimated at 5.5 horsepower, not impressive to us, but the 'fire engine,' as it was sometimes called, was a sensation in power-starved Britain and Europe. Soon there were scores of Newcomen engines, most nodding at the pitheads of Britain's mines, which now could be dug twice as deep as before. In 1700, Britain produced 2.7 million metric tons of coal; in 1815, 23 million tons. That sum was twenty times in energy equivalent what the existing woodlands of Britain could produce in a year... Thomas Newcomen's invention was the first machine to provide significantly large amounts of power not derived from muscle, water, or wind... If I were to attempt anything so simple-minded as to pick a birthday for the industrial revolution, it would be the first day that Newcomen's machine began operating in 1712."

"English scientists William Nicholson and Sir Anthony Carlisle discovered that applying electric current to water produced hydrogen and oxygen gases. This process was later termed 'electrolysis.'" The discovery of electrolysis was an important historical step in the development of hydrogen energy and the hydrogen fuel cell.

- First Coal Powered Iron Forges Are Developed in New England

"In the early 1830's... American iron was still being produced by charcoal. New England still relied on Europe for most of its iron supply, little metal was yet used in machinery, and steam was hardly employed at all as a source of power. This lag in the use of iron and steam appears to have held back high volume factory production in all industries except textiles. Then in the 1830's and 1840's, these patterns began to change quickly. A revolution in American iron making began in the 1830's with the use of coal in the making of wrought iron, and then in the 1840's in the production of cast iron with the adoption of the coal-using furnaces in eastern Pennsylvania. In the same decades, steam began for the first time to be used extensively in industrial production."

- Ethanol Blend Becomes Popular Lamp Fuel in US, Displacing Whale Oil

"In the 30 or 40 years before petroleum was discovered in Pennsylvania, the leading fuel was 'camphene' (sometimes simply called 'burning fluid'). It was a blend of high-proof ethyl alcohol with 20 to 50 percent turpentine to color the flame and a few drops of camphor oil to mask the turpentine smell. Alcohol for camphene was an important mainstay for distilleries, and many sold between one third and 80 percent of their product on the fuel market. The first U.S. patent for alcohol as a lamp fuel was awarded in 1834 to S. Casey, of Lebanon, Maine...

By the late 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country... By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting."

- First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Developed to Generate Electricity

"William Robert Grove (1811 -1896), a Welsh lawyer turned scientist, won renown for his development of an improved wet-cell battery in 1838. The 'Grove cell,' as it came to be called, used a platinum electrode immersed in nitric acid and a zinc electrode in zinc sulfate to generate about 12 amps of current at about 1.8 volts...

In 1800, British scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle had described the process of using electricity to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen. But combining the gases to produce electricity and water was, according to Grove, 'a step further that any hitherto recorded.' Grove realized that by combining several sets of these electrodes in a series circuit he might 'effect the decomposition of water by means of its composition.' He soon accomplished this feat with the device he named a 'gas battery'- the first fuel cell."

- Windmill Becomes Popular Water Pumping Tool of Western Homesteaders and Railroad Builders

Drawing of a Halladay Mill water pumping
station for the railroad, 1885.
Source: www.photolib.noaa.gov
(accessed May 21, 2009)

"Wind as the force behind water-pumping windmills proved quite pivotal in the settling of the West. Such water pumps assisted early pioneers and they are still in use today... This windmill represented intermediate technology at its best. It transformed the abundant wind into an agent to alleviate the shortage of water. It liberated groundwater for a moisture-poor region, providing the technology necessary to settle vast tracts of the rangeland...

Although it was the Western environment that created the demand for a new windmill, a Connecticut mechanic, by the name of Daniel Halladay, provided the inventive genius. In 1857, Halladay, having perfected his windmill, formed the Halladay Wind Mill Company...

It was Western railroad builders who first used the Halladay windmill. Hand in hand with the first transcontinental railroad came the windmill, providing water to the thirsty Union Pacific steam locomotives...

In the years to follow... water-pumping windmills dotted the US landscape. There is no way accurately to estimate their numbers, but some authorities have offered a figure of more than six million."

- First Commercial Oil Well Drilled by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania; Kerosene Begins to Displace Other Lamp Fuels

"By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, coal gas was displacing whale oil lamps for city lighting, public and private. But it was far from an ideal illuminant. Storing it and piping it to the customer was burdensome and expensive, and it was poisonous and explosive.

Kerosene, which Abraham Gesner, a Canadian chemist, discovered how to distill from petroleum in 1853, proved in many circumstances to be a better choice... In 1859, E.L. Drake... was searching for it [petroleum] at the suitably named Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania. He rejected the idea of digging for it, and chose to seek it out with a drill driven by a small steam engine. He hit it on August 29 at 71 feet, initiating America's and the world's first petroleum rush... Before that boom ended in 1879, Oil Creek spouted 56 million gallons of petroleum, kerosene lamps were spreading everywhere, and the American whale fishery was a business of minor importance."

"Worried by the possibility of fossil fuels, such as coal, running out, Augustine Mouchot develops a solar powered steam generation system to drive industrial machinery. Mouchot felt it was possible that the sun's heat could replace the burning of coal to run Europe's industries. Mouchot's research into mirror technology led him to develop the first sun motor. The sun motor used the heat from concentrated sunlight to produce steam which was used to drive machinery."

- First Commercial Scale Hydroelectric Plant Goes into Operation in Appleton, Wisconsin

"It was on Saturday night, September 30, 1882, that one of the world's first hydro-electric central stations was placed in successful operation in Appleton, Wisconsin. As late as 1977, local enthusiasm identified the installation as the 'world's first hydro-electric central station.' This statement has since been corrected to read 'the first hydro-electric central station to serve a system of private and commercial customers in North America.' Whether first built or first in service, it was a significant engineering achievement for its time...

Three buildings were lighted initially- two paper mills and one residence. The people of Appleton reportedly went to view them in those early fall evenings and marveled, declaring them to be 'as bright as day.'...

Progress was rapid. A second dynamo was purchased in 1882 and placed into service on November 25th. Early in 1883 the Waverly House was wired, reportedly becoming the first hotel in the western part of the United States with electric light. Two larger generators were acquired in 1886 and placed in a new central plant to which the original dynamos were also moved.

The Vulcan Street Plant had an 'Elmer' waterwheel, so named because it was patented by Mr. Elmer of Berlin, Wisconsin. The output of the original dynamo was 12.5 KW and was capable of lighting 250 sixteen-candlepower lamps."

Charles F. Brush develops the world's first windmill that can generate electricity as described in an 1890 issue of Scientific American: "With the exception of the gigantic windmill and electric plant shown... we do not know of a successful system of electric lighting operated by means of wind power. The mill here shown, as well as all of the electrical apparatus used in connection with it... have been designed and carried out according to the plans of Mr. Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland Ohio... The speed of the dynamo at full load is 500 revolutions per minute, and its normal capacity at full load is 12,000 watts... In the basement of Mr. Brush's house there are 408 secondary battery cells arranged in 12 batteries of 34 cells each... The house is furnished with 350 incandescent lights... two arch lights and three electric motors. It is found after continued use of this electric plant that the amount of attention required to keep it in working condition is practically nothing. It has been in constant operation more than two years, and has proved in every respect a complete success."

- Birth of the Modern Oil Industry: Lucas Gusher and the Discovery of Texas' Vast Spindletop Oil Field

"The modern oil industry was born on a hill in southeastern Texas. This hill was formed by a giant underground dome of salt as it moved slowly towards the surface. As it crept, it pushed the earth that was in its path higher and higher. This dome was known by several names, but the one that stuck was 'Spindletop'. Through the later half of the 19th century, Pennsylvania had been the most oil-productive state in the country. All that changed on January 10th, 1901...

'Black Gold' erupted from [Spindletop's Lucas Gusher]... to a height greater than 150 feet (nearly 50 meters) on January 10th, 1901. It was not brought under control for 9 days... A device now called a 'Christmas Tree' was invented on the spot to control the flow of oil. Christmas trees are now commonplace in the industry to prevent just such an occurrence. An estimated 850,000 barrels of oil was lost. By today's standards, that's a loss of about $17,000,000. Of course, given the huge amount of oil which glutted the market after this discovery, the price of oil dropped from $2 to $.03 per barrel."

In 1905 Albert Einstein publishes the first theoretical work describing the photovoltaic effect titled "Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light." In the paper "he showed that light possesses an attribute that earlier scientists had not recognized. Light, Einstein discovered, contains packets of energy, which he called light quanta... Einstein's bold and novel description of light, combined with the [1898] discovery of the electron... gave scientists in the second decade of the twentieth century a better understanding of photo electricity. They saw that the more powerful photons carry enough energy to knock poorly linked electrons from their atomic orbits in materials like selenium. When wires are attached, the liberated electrons flow through them as electricity... by the 1920s scientists referred to the phenomenon as the photovoltaic effect."

" Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light" (165 KB) , Mar. 17, 1905

John Perlin From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity, 1999

"The President [Theodore Roosevelt] today signed the Denatured Alcohol bill [Free Alcohol Bill]. This measure provides that alcohol manufactured for use in the arts or industries shall be free from the internal revenue tax when so treated as to be made a poison and so unfit for drinking. It is designed to start a great industry that will furnish cheap fuel for many purposes for which gasoline is now used."

New York Times "Free Alcohol Bill Signed," June 9, 1906

"In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt, seeking a competitor to Big Oil, convinced Congress to lift the Spirits Tax. The ethanol industry was back in business. By the end of World War I it was producing some 50 million gallons a year."

- Studies on Alcohol Fuel (Ethanol) Find Advantages over Petroleum Fuels Such as Gasoline and Kerosene

"Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. [ British Thermal Unit] value, 'a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation...' Other researchers confirmed the same phenomena around the same time.

USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need. The U.S. Geological Service and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline.

When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. 'In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel,' the report said. 'The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.' USGS [United States Geological Service] continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was 'a more ideal fuel than gasoline' with better efficiency despite the high cost."

"Final decision was returned late this afternoon [May 15, 1911] by the Supreme Court of the United States in one of the two great trust cases which have been before it for so long - that of the Standard Oil Company. The decree of the Circuit Court for the Eighth Circuit directing the dissolution of the Oil Trust was affirmed [in an 8-1 decision], with minor modifications... Broadly speaking, the court determines against the Standard Oil Company on the ground that it is a combination in unreasonable restraint of inter-State commerce [under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act]..."

New York Times "Standard Oil Company Must Dissolve in 6 Months; Only Unreasonable Restraint of Trade Forbidden," May 16, 1911
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (298 KB) , May 15, 1911

"Rockefeller's cutthroat business tactics and near monopolization of the domestic industry led to an anti-trust suit brought by the Federal Government. In 1911, a decision of the Supreme Court forced the breakup of Standard Oil Company into Standard Oil of New Jersey (which later became Exxon), Standard Oil of New York (Mobil), Standard Oil of California (Chevron), Standard Oil Of Ohio (Sohio, later acquired by BP), Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco, now BP), Continental Oil (Conoco), and Atlantic (later Atlantic Richfield, then ARCO, then sun, now BP). Rockefeller eventually profited handsomely from the split, and the new companies carefully avoided directly competing with one another."

- World's First Geothermal Power Plant Is Built in California

"The Geysers [72 miles north of San Francisco] were discovered in the early 1800's but were an untapped energy source for many years... [In 1921] John D. Grant drilled a geothermal well and ran a small direct-current generator which was used to provide electricity for lighting The Geysers resort. However, because the materials used at that time could not withstand the geothermal steam environment and because of the difficulties of drilling for geothermal steam, this resource could not compete at that time with other low-cost, easier-to-develop energy resources."

- First Federal Law Established to Control Pollution from the Oil Industry

"The federal government established a precedent for combating oil pollution when it passed the Oil Pollution Control Act in 1924. The contamination of water from tanker discharges and seepage problems on land were the primary problems. The former attracted the most attention largely because the polluting of waterways and coastal areas affected commercial fishermen and resort owners...

The Oil Pollution Act of 1924 had inadequate enforcement provisions and dealt only with dumping fuel at sea by oil-burning vessels.

Although the Oil Pollution Act disappointed [US President Herbert] Hoover and the conservationists, it was the first serious attempt to deal with the issue on a national scale. The problem did not receive serious attention again until the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969."

- First Commercial Wind Turbines Sold to Generate Electricity on Remote Farms

Marcellus and Joe Jacobs develop the first commercially available wind turbine for electricity generation.

The brothers knew that many remote farms were unable to electrify without using gasoline generators. Gasoline generators were too costly and inconvienient for many remote farms since gasoline had to be constantly transported in bulk over large distances. As a result, many farms remained unelectrified.

The Jacob brothers created a wind powered turbine based on the design of earlier water pump mills. The design succeeds when they replace the blades of the water pump mills with modern air plane propellers.

In 1927 the Jacobs Wind Electric Company is formed. Between 1927 and 1957 the company sells over 30,000 units.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s hundreds of thousands of wind-electric systems were in operation around the country with a similar design to the

- Alcohol Fuel Production Promoted to Combat the Great Depression

"By the 1930s, with the country caught in the depths of the Great Depression, new ideas were welcome. Corn prices had dropped from 45 cents per bushel to 10 cents, it was only natural that people in Midwestern business and science would begin thinking about new uses for farm products...

[T]he movement for alcohol fuels... came to be seen as part of a broader campaign for industrial uses for farm crops to help fight the Depression...

By 1937 motorists from Indiana to South Dakota were urged to use Agrol, an ethyl alcohol blend with gasoline. Two types were available -- Agrol 5, with five to seven percent alcohol, and Agrol 10, with twelve and a half to 17 and a half percent alcohol. 'Try a tankfull -- you'll be thankful,' the Agrol brochures said. The blend was sold to high initial enthusiasm at 2,000 service stations... However, Agrol plant managers complained of sabotage and bitter infighting by the oil industry...

By 1939, the Atchison Agrol plant closed its doors, not in bankruptcy, but without viable markets to continue."

Bill Kovarik, PhD "Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future," Automotive History Review, Spring 1998

- Atomic Energy Act of 1946: US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Created

"The use of atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 ushered in a new historical epoch, breathlessly labeled in countless news reports, magazine articles, films, and radio broadcasts as the 'Atomic Age.' Within a short time after the end of World War II, politicians, journalists, scientists, and business leaders were suggesting that peaceful applications of nuclear power could be as dramatic in their benefits as nuclear weapons were awesome in their destructive power...

Developing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, as even the most enthusiastic proponents recognized, would take many years. The government's first priority was to maintain strict control over atomic technology and to exploit it further for military purposes. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, passed as tensions with the Soviet Union were developing into the cold war, acknowledged in passing the potential peaceful benefits of atomic power. But it emphasized the military aspects of nuclear energy and underscored the need for secrecy, raw materials, and production of new weapons. The 1946 law did not allow for private, commercial application of atomic energy; rather, it created a virtual government monopoly of the technology. To manage the nation's atomic energy programs, the act established the five-member Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)."

- First Nuclear Power Reactor to Generate Electricity Built in Idaho

"On Dec. 20, 1951, a nuclear reactor produced useful electricity for the first time.

It was barely enough to power a simple string of four, 100-watt light bulbs, but the 16 scientists and engineers - all staff members of Argonne National Laboratory, which designed and built the reactor - recorded their historic achievement by chalking their names on the wall beside the generator.

The reactor was Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I), housed in a small building that today still sits alone on a wind-swept plain in southeastern Idaho. EBR-I spawned a huge international industry that now plays a major role in meeting the world's energy needs."

- First Silicon Solar Cell Developed at Bell Laboratories

"In 1953, Bell Laboratories (now AT&T labs) scientists Gerald Pearson, Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller developed the first silicon solar cell capable of generating a measurable electric current. The New York Times reported the discovery as 'the beginning of a new era, leading eventually to the realization of harnessing the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.'"

Southface "A Brief History of Solar Energy," www.southface.org (accessed May 18, 2009)

- US Congress Passes Atomic Energy Act of 1954

"In 1954, Congress passed new legislation that for the first time permitted the wide use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. The 1954 Atomic Energy Act redefined the atomic energy program by ending the government monopoly on technical data and making the growth of a private commercial nuclear industry an urgent national goal. The measure directed the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] 'to encourage widespread participation in the development and utilization of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.' At the same time, it instructed the agency to prepare regulations that would protect public health and safety from radiation hazards. Thus, the 1954 act assigned the AEC three major roles: to continue its weapons program, to promote the private use of atomic energy for peaceful applications, and to protect public health and safety from the hazards of commercial nuclear power."

- M. King Hubbard Develops the "Hubberts Peak Theory" for Measuring Oil Supply; Peak of US Oil Production Correctly Predicted

The Hubbert's peak theory states that for any given geographical area, oil production follows a bell shaped curve where oil production will rise to a peak, followed by a sharp decline.

"In 1949, he [M. King Hubbert] used statistical and physical methods to calculate total world oil and natural gas supplies and documented their sharply increasing consumption. Then, in 1956, on the basis of his reserve estimates and his study of the lifetime production profile of typical oil reservoirs, he predicted that the peak of crude-oil production in the United States would occur between 1966 and 1972. At the time, most economists, oil companies, and government agencies (including the USGS) [United States Geological Service] dismissed the prediction. The actual peak of US oil production occurred in 1970."

Hubbert's theory came to be known as the "Hubbert's Peak Theory" and continues to be one of the primary theories used to study the peaking of oil supplies.

"[T]he Atomic Energy Act of 1954 authorized private industry to build, own, and operate nuclear power plants and to engage in a variety of other nuclear activities... Unwilling to risk huge financial liability, private companies viewed even the remote specter of a catastrophe as a major roadblock to their participation in the development of nuclear technology... The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 was designed to deal with these problems. The solution outlined by the act retained the traditional approach of providing recovery to accident victims through common law liability, which could be covered by private insurance. It combined this approach, however, with an unprecedented provision for Government indemnification (reimbursement). Specifically, the act required that certain licensees must maintain financial security against offsite liability for a nuclear accident in an amount equal to that available through private insurance. Liability beyond this amount would be assumed by the Federal Government up to a limit of $560 million per incident."

Government Accountability Office (GAO) " Analysis of the Price-Anderson Act," (1.5 MB) , Aug. 18, 1980

"Neither strip mining nor air pollution riveted attention on the environmental consequences of energy exploitation like the Santa Barbara oil spill. At the time of the spill in January 1969, 925 wells had been drilled along the coastal tidelands from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. Moreover, industrial concern over oil leaks was negligible; faith in the existing technology and the drive for profit limited the incentive to protect against the worst case...

When Union Oil's well, A-21, blew on January 28, it leaked 235,000 gallons of crude, creating a slick of 800 miles. Although Washington responded with investigations and studies, that process offered little immediate relief to Santa Barbara. Commercial fishermen and owners of beach-front property brought lawsuits against Union Oil, and the state initiated lawsuits against the federal government. While Union Oil assumed liability for the blow-out, the financial settlements were well below the total damage. Congress tightened regulations on leases and made offshore operators liable for cleaning spills."

- Oil Production Peaks in the Lower 48 States

Crude oil production in the lower 48 States reaches its highest level in 1970, peaking at 9.4 million barrels per day, confirming the 1956 prediction of M. King Hubbert.

- OPEC Oil Embargo Against the US Causes Gas Shortages and Rationing

"During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an embargo against the United States in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military during the war. Arab oil producers also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old system of oil pricing, and thus the Arab oil embargo was particularly effective.

Implementation of the embargo, and the changing nature of oil contracts, set off an upward spiral in oil prices that had global implications. The price of oil per barrel doubled, then quadrupled, leading to increased costs for consumers world-wide and to the potential for budgetary collapse in less stable economies. Since the embargo coincided with a devaluation of the dollar, a global recession appeared imminent. U.S. allies in Europe and Japan had stockpiled oil supplies and thus had a short term cushion, but the longer term possibility of high oil prices and recession created a strong rift within the Atlantic alliance. European nations and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from the U.S. Middle East policy. The United States, which faced growing oil consumption and dwindling domestic reserves and was more reliant on imported oil than ever before, had to negotiate an end to the embargo from a weaker international position."

US Department of State "Second Arab Oil Embargo, 1973-1974," state.gov (accessed May 29, 2009)

Due to gasoline shortages, Oregon and many other states impose gasoline rationing. "[O]fficials in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, B.C., Bade County, Fla., and other areas... adopted Oregon-type rationing schemes that will allow motorists with even-numbered license plates to buy gas on even-numbered dates, and those with odd-numbered plates to buy on odd-numbered dates. Some states have begun requiring a $3 minimum purchase."

TIME Magazine "Gas Fever: Happiness Is a Full Tank," Feb. 18, 1974

- Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act of 1973 Passed to Increase Domestic Oil Supplies in Wake of Oil Embargo

"After the discovery of a large oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 1968, U.S. Congress decided to construct a pipeline transversing Alaska as a means of transporting the oil to the nearest ice-free port at Valdez, Alaska. Congress passed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in 1973 as an authorization for the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). Many environmentalists protested the construction, concerned about the effects that the pipeline would have on the surrounding environment, as well as the potential risk of an accident that could devastate the region.

In 1972, before the Act went to Congress, the Secretary of the Interior released an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) stressing the importance of minimizing the nation's dependence on foreign oil. The Arab oil embargo of 1973, which occurred immediately prior to the vote of Congress, reinforced this perception and positively swayed public opinion towards expansion of the domestic oil market."

- Congress Creates the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Replace the Atomic Energy Commission

"By 1974, the AEC's [Atomic Energy Commission] regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that Congress decided to abolish the agency. Supporters and critics of nuclear power agreed that the promotional and regulatory duties of the AEC should be assigned to different agencies. The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC]; it began operations on January 19, 1975.

The NRC (like the AEC before it) focused its attention on several broad issues that were essential to protecting public health and safety."

President Jimmy Carter makes a famous speech on energy, detailing how the US is facing an imminent energy shortage and arguing that the country must make profound changes in the way it uses energy. The following is an excerpt from the speech: "Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly... This difficult effort will be the 'moral equivalent of war'... The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce... Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power... If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions."

Jimmy Carter " The President's Proposed Energy Policy," (20 KB) , Apr. 18, 1977

- Federal Surface Mining Control Act Signed to Lessen Environmental Impacts of Surface Coal Mining

"The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) was enacted in 1977 after the US Congress recognized the need to regulate mining activity, rehabilitate abandoned mines, and protect society and the environment from the adverse effects of mining operations.

Before 1977, surface coal mining landowners had abandoned 1.1 million coal mine sites in the United States.

The SMCRA directed owners of coal mines to contribute bonds for land rehabilitation and environmental damages caused by mining activities... The SMCRA did not prohibit mountaintop coal mining, an activity that steadily increased after 1977.

- Department of Energy Organization Act Is Signed, Creating the US Department of Energy

President Carter signing the
Department of Energy Organization Act.
Source: Department of Energy, Office of Management, "August 4, 1977: President Carter signs the Department of Energy Organization Act," energy.gov (accessed Sep. 15, 2020)

"In 1977, with the Nation facing its most severe winter in decades, natural gas shortages caused thousands of factory and school closings and threatened cutoffs to residential customers. More unrest was also taking place in the Middle East, now the world's dominant supplier of crude oil. Islamic fundamentalism was on the rise in Iran and elsewhere, and within two years, the Shah of Iran, one of the world's most prolific exporters of crude oil, would be overthrown.

The rapidly escalating global energy issues convinced the U.S. Government that a sharper focus should be applied to federal energy programs. On August 4, 1977, President Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, consolidating more than 30 separate energy functions carried out by various government agencies, including ERDA [Energy Research and Development Administration]. On October 1, 1977, the U.S. Department of Energy activated."

- World's First Solar Powered Village; Tohono O'odham Reservation, Arizona

"NASA's Lewis Research Center (now NASA Glenn) dedicated a solar power system that it installed on the Papago [Tonono O'odham] Indian Reservation in Schuchuli, Ariz. It was the world's first solar-powered village. The system provided power for water pumping and residential electricity to 15 homes until 1983, when grid power reached the village. At that time, engineers hooked up the homes to the grid, and the solar system began pumping water from a community well."

[ Editors Note: Soldier's Grove, Wisconsin also considers itself America's first solar village. By 1982, 50% of the community's heating was solar power generated.]

- Solar Photovoltaic Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1978

"I am signing today H.R. 12874, the Solar Photovoltaic Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1978, a bill that authorizes an aggressive program of research, development, and demonstration of solar photovoltaic energy technologies.

The bill's long-term goal is to make electricity from photovoltaic systems economically competitive with electricity from conventional sources...

It is still too early to concentrate on commercialization of photovoltaics. Photovoltaic systems hold great promise, but in the short run we must emphasize research and development, including fundamental work on the physical properties of these systems...

Therefore, I will not propose to the Congress that a broad Federal solar photovoltaic purchase program tied to the specific goals of this act be undertaken soon. Rather, consistent with congressional intent, we will focus on research and development that will accelerate cost reductions. We will also continue, where appropriate, small, carefully targeted photovoltaic purchases to meet technical objectives. This approach should lay a firm foundation for the advancement of solar power from photovoltaics in the future."

Jimmy Carter "Solar Photovoltaic Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1978 Statement on Signing H.R. 12874 into Law," www.presidency.ucsb.edu, Nov. 4, 1978

- Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident in Pennsylvania Creates Widespread Public Opposition to Nuclear Power

"On March 28, 1979, an accident at one of the reactors at Three Mile Island near Middletown, in Pennsylvania, closed the era of rosy optimism about nuclear power. The accident began when the coolant flow stopped, various mechanisms malfunctioned, and the operators lost control of what was happening. There was enough uncontrolled radioactivity to make heat for explosions and a meltdown. The interaction of melting metals (including 50 percent of the core) and the coolant steam produced something unforeseen: a large hydrogen bubble. It could have exploded, conceivably splitting the containment dome and spreading radioactive dust over considerable areas of the thickly populated East Coast of the United States; but it didn't. Some radioactive materials escaped into the atmosphere, but most stayed put. There were no immediate casualties or, according to careful investigations years later, any in the long run. Thousands of people in the vicinity of the reactor were evacuated. The cleanup took years and cost millions of dollars.

Opposition to nuclear power soon became nearly as widespread as opposition to nuclear bombs."

"[Altamont Pass]... in Northern California, is home to one of the oldest wind farms in the U.S. and the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world. Altamont Pass is located one hour east of San Francisco, California and serves as a temperature buffer for the city by separating it from the heat of the San Joaquin Valley. Altamont Pass wind farm construction began in 1981 in response to favorable federal and state legislation that resulted from the energy price increases of the 1970s. The Altamont wind farm consists of about 4,800 small wind turbines with a capacity of 576 megawatts (MW) annual generation of about 1.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. The Altamont wind resource area is one of three primary regions, the others being Tehachapi and San Gorgonio [California]."

Melissa Lowitz, MA "Altamont Pass, California," www.eoearth.org, Mar. 25, 2008

"Every year, an estimated 75 to 110 Golden Eagles are killed by the wind turbines in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA). Some lose their wings, others are decapitated, and still others are cut in half. The lethal turbines, numbering roughly 6,000, are arrayed across 50,000 acres of rolling hills in northeastern Alameda and southeastern Contra Costa counties... [A]s many as 380 Burrowing Owls (also a state-designated species of special concern), 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333 American Kestrels are killed every year. In all, as many as 4,700 birds die annually as a result of the wind turbines."

"Early in the morning on Good Friday, March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. The grounding ripped the bottom of the single-hulled vessel, resulting in the rupture of 11 of the vessel's crude oil tanks and the release of nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the environment. It was, and still is, the largest oil spill in United States waters... [Two days later] on the evening of March 26, a severe winter storm blew into the Sound. The oil slick went from a relatively compact mass to a widely dispersed collection of patches and streaks, and response vessels were forced to run for shelter in the face of the storm. The oil soon hit the beaches in hundreds of places [across 1,300 miles of coastline], overwhelming any efforts to stop it... Over the next five-and-a-half months the cleanup operations grew exponentially, ultimately becoming the largest private project in Alaska since construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. At one point more than 11,000 people were working on cleanup... An estimated 250,000 seabirds were killed by oil in the weeks and months following the spill... Carcasses recovered after the spill [also] included: 1,000 sea otters, 151 bald eagles, 838 cormorants, 1,100 marbled murrelets, and over 33,189 other birds." In a criminal plea agreement, Exxon Corporation was fined $150 million - the largest fine ever imposed for an environmental crime. In addition Exxon also paid $100 million in criminal restitution for injuries caused as well as $900 million in civil penalties to be used for habitat restoration.

- Congress Passes Act to Stimulate Development of Hydrogen Power

The US Congress passes the Spark M. Matsunaga Hydrogen Research, Development, and Demonstration Program Act of 1990 "to accelerate efforts to develop a domestic capability to economically produce hydrogen in quantities that will make a significant contribution toward reducing the Nation's dependence on conventional fuels."

The purposes of the Act were to develop "a comprehensive 5-year comprehensive program management plan that will identify and resolve critical technical issues necessary for the realization of a domestic capability to produce, distribute, and use hydrogen economically within the shortest time practicable; to direct the Secretary to develop a technology assessment and information transfer program among the Federal agencies and aerospace, transportation, energy, and other entities; and to develop renewable energy resources as a primary source of energy for the production of hydrogen."

- Solar Two Plant Demonstrates Low Cost Method of Storing Solar Energy

Beginning operations in Apr. 1996, the "10-megawatt Solar Two power tower pilot plant near Barstow, California, successfully completed operations in April 1999, having met essentially all of its objectives. It demonstrated the ability to collect and store solar energy efficiently and to generate electricity when needed by the utility and its customers... Solar Two was conceived and built on the site of its predecessor, Solar One, by a consortium of U.S. utilities and industry and the Department of Energy (DOE). Over its three years of operation,

Solar Two achieved its overall goal of demonstrating advanced molten-salt power tower technology developed over the past decade at a scale sufficient to allow follow-on commercialization of the technology. Plant operations successfully proved that solar energy could be collected efficiently over a broad range of operating conditions and that the low-cost energy storage system operated reliably and efficiently. This unique storage capability allowed solar energy to be collected when the sun was shining and high-value, dispatchable electric power to be generated at night or whenever demanded by the utility, even when the sun was not shining."

- Hydrogen Future Act of 1996 Is Passed to Further Expand Hydrogen Power Development

"The Hydrogen Future Act of 1996 expanded the research, and development, and demonstration program under the Matsunaga Act. It authorized activities leading to production, storage, transformation, and use of hydrogen for industrial, residential, transportation, and utility applications...

The long-term vision for hydrogen energy is that sometime well into 21st century, hydrogen will join electricity as one of our Nation's primary energy carriers, and hydrogen will ultimately be produced from renewable sources. But fossil fuels will be a significant long-term transitional resource. In the next twenty years, increasing concerns about global climate changes and energy security concerns will help bring about penetration of hydrogen in several niche markets. The growth of fuel cell technology will allow the introduction of hydrogen in both transportation and electricity sectors."

- EV1 Electric Car Is Made Available to the Public For Lease; Lease Program and EV1 Later Dismantled by GM

General Motors releases the EV1 to the public for lease to meet a 1990 California mandate that 2 percent of all cars sold in the state in 1998 be zero-emission vehicles.

"A little over 1,000 EV1s were produced by G.M. before the company pulled the plug on the project in 2002 due to insufficient demand. Other major car makers also ceased production of their electric vehicles.

In the wake of a legal challenge from G.M. and DaimlerChrysler, California amended its regulations and abandoned its [zero-emission] goals. Shortly thereafter, automakers began reclaiming and dismantling their electrics as they came off lease."

NOW "Who Killed the Electric Car?," www.pbs.org (accessed July 27, 2009)

- President Bush Unveils the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative to Promote Hydrogen Fuel Cell Development

"[T]he Hydrogen Fuel Initiative (HFI) increased federal funding for hydrogen and fuel cell research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to $1.2 billion over five years. With this increase in funding, the HFI accelerated the pace of RD&D efforts focused on achieving specific targets that would enable hydrogen and fuel cell technology readiness in the 2015 timeframe."

United States Department of Energy (DOE) "Hydrogen Fuel Initiative," www.hydrogen.energy.gov (accessed June 4, 2009)

In support of the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, President GW Bush stated:

"Hydrogen fuel cells represent one of the most encouraging, innovative technologies of our era... let us promote hydrogen fuel cells as a way to advance into the 21st century...

If we develop hydrogen power to its full potential, we can reduce our demand for oil by over 11 million barrels per day by the year 2040...

So I'm asking Congress to spend $1.2 billion on a new national commitment to take hydrogen fuel cell cars from the laboratory to the showroom...

Imagine a world in which our cars are driven by hydrogen and our homes are heated by electricity from a fusion power plant. It'll be a totally different world than what we're used to. The quality of life will be advanced. And people will say, gosh, I'm glad those folks went to Washington and were willing to think beyond the current."

George W. Bush, MBA "Hydrogen Fuel Initiative Can Make 'Fundamental Difference,'" www.georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov, Feb. 6, 2003

- Plans Announced to Build FutureGen, the Worlds First Zero Emissions Coal Power Plant

"On February 27, 2003, the President announced FutureGen as a cost-shared project between DOE [Department of Energy] and industry to create the world's first coal-fired, zero emissions electricity and hydrogen production power plant. The production of hydrogen was to support the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative to create a hydrogen economy for transportation. The original FutureGen plant was planned to operate at a commercial scale as a 275 megawatt IGCC [Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle] facility that would capture and store at least 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year."

Government Accountability Office (GAO) "Clean Coal: DOE's Decision to Restructure FutureGen Should Be Based on a Comprehensive Analysis of Costs, Benefits, and Risks," www.gao.gov, Feb. 2009

[ Editor's Note: On Jan. 30, 2008, US Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman announced a "restructured" approach to the FutureGen project that focused on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and excluded hydrogen production as part of the project.]

United States Department of Energy (DOE) "DOE Announces Restructured FutureGen Approach to Demonstrate CCS Technology at Multiple Clean Coal Plants," www.energy.gov, Jan. 30, 2008

- IPCC Report Concludes Climate Change Is Happening and Is Mostly Human Caused

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its "Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report," the fourth and final volume of its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) on Global Climate Change.

"This Synthesis Report (SYR), adopted in Valencia, Spain, on 17 November 2007, completes the four-volume Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), which was released in various steps throughout the year under the title 'Climate Change 2007'...

[The report] confirms that climate change is occurring now, mostly as a result of human activities; it illustrates the impacts of global warming already under way and to be expected in future, and describes the potential for adaptation of society to reduce its vulnerability; finally it presents an analysis of costs, policies and technologies intended to limit the extent of future changes in the climate system.

The AR4...[report involved] more than 500 Lead Authors and 2000 Expert Reviewers, building on the work of a wide scientific community and submitted to the scrutiny of delegates from more than one hundred participating nations."

Michel Jarrud and Achim Steiner, MA Forward to " Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," (109 KB) , Nov. 17, 2007

- First Commercial Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Goes Into Production in Wyoming

In Feb. 2008 the first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant goes into production.

The plant is "the first small scale waste wood commercial facility operating in the US... The current production facility is utilizing soft woods, but successful test runs have occurred making use of waste materials such as cardboard and paper."

Southwest Farm Press "Cellulosic Ethanol a Reality: First American Plant in Production," Feb. 7, 2008

- National Biofuel Action Plan Unveiled

"Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ed Schafer and Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today released the National Biofuels Action Plan (NBAP), an interagency plan detailing the collaborative efforts of Federal agencies to accelerate the development of a sustainable biofuels industry...

The NBAP was developed in response to President Bush's plans to change the way America fuels its transportation fleets... The President's 'Twenty In Ten' goal calls for cutting U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years by investing in renewable and alternative fuel sources, increasing vehicle efficiency and developing alternative fuel vehicles...

Interagency working groups have been chartered with near term deadlines to deliver such key results as: the development of science-based sustainability criteria and indicators, 10- year R&D forecasts for research to develop cost-effective methods of producing cellulosic biofuels from non-food based feedstock, to advance these next generation biofuels to commercialization, and recommendations on infrastructure issues.

DOE has dedicated more than $1 billion to research, development, and demonstration of cellulosic biofuels technology through 2009."

"In the early morning hours of December 22, 2008, the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee's Kingston Fossil Plant gave way. The breach released 1.3 million cubic meters (1.7 million cubic yards) of fly ash - a coal-combustion waste product captured and stored in wet form... The spill infiltrated the Emory River, buried some 120 hectares (300 acres) in sludge, and even knocked a nearby home completely off its foundation... A report released by the Tennessee Valley Authority stated that the plant's byproducts included arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese, and barium... Estimates of the time required to clean up the spill ranged from weeks to years."

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes billions in energy investments, including grants and loan guarantees for renewable energy development, fossil fuel development, energy efficiency programs, energy storage technology, and electric grid modernization. Section H.R. 1-24 of the Act allocates $16.8 billion to the Department of Energy for "energy efficiency and renewable energy" programs. Out of this $16.8 billion, $3.5 billion will go to renewable energy projects such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels development. $11.3 billion will go to energy efficiency and conservation programs, and $2 billion will go to advanced battery development. Section H.R. 1-24 also contains $4.5 billion for modernizing the electrical grid and an additional $6 billion is allocated to loan guarantees for renewable energy and energy transmission, carbon capture and storage technology, and other green house gas reduction technologies. The section also contains $3.4 billion for fossil energy research and development.

" American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" (1.1 MB) , Feb. 17, 2009

In support of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Barack Obama stated: "[W]e are taking big steps down the road to energy independence, laying the groundwork for new green energy economies that can create countless well-paying jobs. It's an investment that will double the amount of renewable energy produced over the next three years... [W]e will transform the way we use energy. Today, the electricity we use is carried along a grid of lines and wires that date back to Thomas Edison - a grid that can't support the demands of this economy. This means we're using 19th and 20th century technologies to battle 21st century problems like climate change and energy security... The investment we're making today will create a newer, smarter electric grid that will allow for broader use of alternative energy."

Barack Obama, JD "Remarks by the President and Vice President at Signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009," www.whitehouse.gov, Feb. 17, 2009

- President Obama Issues Presidential Directive to USDA to Expand Access to Biofuels; $786.5 Million in Biofuels Funding Announced

"President Obama issued a presidential directive today to Secretary Vilsack to aggressively accelerate the investment in and production of biofuels...

The Biofuels Interagency Working Group will develop the nation's first comprehensive biofuels market development program. The increased collaboration between federal agencies will accelerate the production of and access to sustainable homegrown energy options by coordinating policies that impact the supply, secure transport, and distribution of biofuels, as well as identifying new policy options to improve the environmental sustainability of biofuels feedstock production.

The Biofuels Interagency Working Group [comprised of the USDA, EPA, and the DOE] will also work to develop policies to increase flexible fuel vehicle production and assist in retail marketing efforts while also taking into consideration land use, habitat conservation, crop management practices, water efficiency and water quality, and lifecycle assessments of greenhouse gas emissions."

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) "President Obama Issues Presidential Directive to USDA to Expand Access to Biofuels," www.usda.gov, May 5, 2009

"As part of the ongoing effort to increase the use of domestic renewable fuels, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced plans to provide $786.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate advanced biofuels research and development and to provide additional funding for commercial-scale biorefinery demonstration projects... The DOE biomass program will leverage DOE's national laboratories, universities, and the private sector to help improve biofuels reliability and overcome key technical challenges, with the goal of creating third-generation biofuels like green gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels."

On Apr. 20, 2010, the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig 52 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 crew members.

On Apr. 22 the drilling rig sank 5,000 feet to the ocean floor, causing a series of breaks in the oil pipeline. Initially it was estimated by BP that about 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken pipe.

On Apr. 28, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated the pipe was leaking closer to 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf.

By May 27, the US Department of Interior's Flow Rate Technical Group (a group set up to monitor the rate of oil leakage) stated that the well was actually leaking between 12,000-19,000 barrels a day.

Based upon these May 27 estimates, as much as 30 million gallons of oil had leaked into the Gulf, making the leak/spill the largest in US history - nearly three times the amount spilled during the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

New York Times "Estimates Suggest Spill Is Biggest in US History," May, 27, 2010

- Earthquake off Coast of Japan Damages Six Powerplants at Fukushima Dai-ichi; Nuclear Crisis Eventually Reaches Level 7, the Highest Level Possible

Mar. 11, 2011: "A magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeastern coast, knocking out power and swamping the backup diesel generators needed to cool the six reactors and spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant."

Mar. 12, 2011: "Engineers scramble to prevent a nuclear meltdown. Some of the reactors begin to grow hotter with their cooling systems disabled. A hydrogen explosion rocks Unit 1, causing a radiation leak. Workers furiously pump seawater into the reactor's core."

Mar. 14, 2011: "Crisis depeens at Fukushima Dai-ichi. The pressure and heat continue to build in Unit 3, resulting in a hydrogen explosion that destroys the outer containment building. Fuel rods at Unit 2 are fully exposed to air twice, worrying officials. Workers pump seawater into the cores of Units 1, 2 and 3."

Mar. 15, 2011: "Unit 2 becomes the new focal point as a hydrogen explosion occurs there and its suppression pool is damaged. Explosion and fires also plague Unit 4, and leak radiation into the atmosphere. The government evacuates residents from the 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant."

Mar. 16, 2011: "Another fire at Unit 4 hinders efforts to get the reactors and spent fuel pools under control. Steam and smoke rise from Unit 3, due to evaporation of water in the spent fuel pool. Radiation levels surge. The U.S. government advises its citizens within 50 miles of the plant to evacuate."

Mar. 30, 2011: "Japanese officials say seawater outside of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant contains more than 3,300 times the normal amount of radioactive iodine."

Apr. 11, 2011: "Japan's nuclear regulators raised the severity level of the crisis at a stricken nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing the amount of radiation released in the accident. The regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 - the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency."

- Solar Power Company Solyndra Declares Bankruptcy after Receiving $528 Million in Federal Loan Guarantees

On Sep. 1, 2011 Solar Power company Solyndra declared bankruptcy.

The company had received $1 billion in private capital and $528 million in federal loan guarantees as part of President Obama's stimulus plan under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Prior to it's bankruptcy filing, Solyndra had reported sales growth of 40% from 2009 to 2010 and had been named as one of the worlds "50 Most Innovative Companies" by MIT's Technology Review.

- EPA Announces First Clean Air Act Standard for Carbon Pollution from New Power Plants

On Mar. 27, 2012 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the first Clean Air Act standard for carbon pollution from new power plants. The rule applies to all new power plants that burn fossil fuel to create electricity including coal and natural gas fired power plants.

The new rule proposes that new fossil fuel power plants must meet an output-based standard of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour.

According to the EPA 95% of the new natural gas combined cycle power plants that have been built since 2005 already meet the standard.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "EPA FACT SHEET: Proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants," www.epa.gov, Mar. 27, 2012

According to the Los Angeles Times, "the newest natural-gas-fired power plants [as of 2012] emit about 800 pounds of carbon per megawatt hour, new coal plants, between 1,600 to about 1,900 pounds per megawatt hour."

Los Angeles Times "Obama Administration Sets Limits On Power Plant Emissions," www.latimes.com, Mar. 27, 2012

- EPA Issues First Ever Clean Air Rules for Natural Gas Produced by Fracking

On Apr. 17, 2012 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the first ever federal rules on air pollution from wells that utilize hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) to produce natural gas.

"The final rules include the first federal air standards for natural gas wells that are hydraulically fractured, along with requirements for several other sources of pollution in the oil and gas industry that currently are not regulated at the federal level...

A key component of the final rules is expected to yield a nearly 95 percent reduction in VOCs [volatile organic compounds] emitted from more than 11,000 new hydraulically fractured gas wells each year...

[T]he reductions would yield a significant environmental co-benefit by reducing methane emissions from new and modified wells. Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas - more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide when emitted directly to the atmosphere...

Today's final rules also would protect against potential cancer risks from emissions of several air toxics, including benzene."

"President Obama is issuing a Presidential Memorandum directing the Environmental Protection Agency to work expeditiously to complete carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants...

In 2012 the President set a goal to issue permits for 10 gigawatts of renewables on public lands by the end of the year. The Department of the Interior achieved this goal ahead of schedule and the President has directed it to permit an additional 10 gigawatts by 2020...

The Administration is also taking steps to encourage the development of hydroelectric power at existing dams...

Also, the Department of Defense - the single largest consumer of energy in the United States - is committed to deploying 3 gigawatts of renewable energy on military installations, including solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal, by 2025. In addition, federal agencies are setting a new goal of reaching 100 megawatts of installed renewable capacity across the federally subsidized housing stock by 2020...

In the coming weeks, the Department of Energy will issue a Federal Register Notice announcing a draft of a solicitation that would make up to $8 billion in (self-pay) loan guarantee authority available for a wide array of advanced fossil energy projects... that can cost-effectively meet financial and policy goals, including the avoidance, reduction, or sequestration of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases...

[T]he Administration is establishing a new goal: The federal government will consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 - more than double the current goal of 7.5 percent."

" The President's Climate Action Plan: Executive Office of the President" (311 KB) , www.whitehouse.gov, June 25, 2013 " Presidential Memorandum - Power Sector Carbon Pollution Standards" (2 MB) , www.whitehouse.gov, June 25, 2013

"The Environmental Protection Agency's second stab at a proposal to set the first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants would make it impossible for companies to build the kind of coal-fired plants that have been the country's biggest source of electricity for decades.

Under the proposal, released Friday, any new plant that runs on coal would only be permitted to emit about half as much carbon dioxide as an average coal plant puts into the air today...

The EPA proposal aims to help The White House to cut greenhouse gas emissions by attacking the largest single source in the United States: Power plants pump out 40 percent of the nation's greenhouse gases.

The EPA's new proposal sets a limit for future power plants of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour for large electricity generators that are powered by natural gas. And it sets a slightly higher limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour for small natural gas generators and for coal-fired generators...

The revised proposal comes after loud complaints from industry about the first version of the proposed rule, which was released 18 months ago."

" Standards of Performance for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units (1 MB) , www.epa.gov, Sep. 20, 2013

[ Editor's note : The original Mar. 27, 2012 proposed rule to limit greenhouse gases from power plants was withdrawn by the EPA and replaced with this current Sep. 20, 2013 proposal. There will be a 60 day comment period on this proposal. After that, the EPA has one year to finalize the rule.]

"As the largest concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the world, Ivanpah harnesses the abundant sunlight of the Southwest United States to provide power on a massive scale. The facility has the capacity to generate 392 megawatts (MW) of clean electricity - enough to power 94,400 average American homes. Most of the power generated by the system will be sold under long-term power purchase agreements to Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison Company...

Ivanpah significantly expands the use of CSP technologies within the United States. Its innovative power-tower technology utilizes a field of mirrors called heliostats to track the sun and focus sunlight onto boilers that sit atop 459-foot tall towers. When the sunlight hits the boiler, it heats the water inside to create superheated steam used to spin an electricity-generating turbine."

[ Editor's Note : In April 2014, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released a report on bird deaths (10.2 MB) at the new Ivanpah concentrated solar power plant, and two other plants. They found that Ivanpah "may act as a 'mega-trap,' attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar flux injury." While researching the report, staff observed birds entering the area of concentrated light (the solar flux) and igniting. During the study period, July 2012 to Dec. 2013, the remains of 141 birds were studied. At that time, Ivanpah was not yet fully operational, and was running at 33% capacity.]

- President Obama Announces Solar Power Commitments and Executive Actions

"Today, President Obama announced more than 300 private and public sector commitments to create jobs and cut carbon pollution by advancing solar deployment and energy efficiency. The commitments represent more than 850 megawatts of solar deployed - enough to power nearly 130,000 homes."

" FACT SHEET: President Obama Announces Commitments and Executive Actions to Advance Solar Deployment and Energy Efficiency" (7 MB) , whitehouse.gov, May 9, 2014

"President Barack Obama announced steps on Friday to increase the use of solar panels, boost energy efficiency in federal buildings and train more people to work in the renewable energy field...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Apple Inc, Yahoo Inc, Google Inc and Ikea were among the companies that have made such commitments...

Obama said an additional $2 billion would be devoted to energy efficiency upgrades to federal government buildings over the next three years.

Several financial institutions, including Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, were announcing new plans for "large scale investment and innovative programs" to develop solar and renewable energy installations...

Obama's executive actions would [also] support efforts at community colleges so that 50,000 workers would join the solar industry by 2020..."

Reuters "With Corporate Help, Obama Announces Actions on Renewable Energy," reuters.com, May 9, 2014

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday [June 2] proposed a rule designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal plants by as much as 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels... Existing power plants are the largest source of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for 38 percent. (The transportation sector comes in second, at 32 percent.) Much of this pollution stems from aging, coal-fired power plants... Renewable-energy producers from the solar and wind sector stand to benefit from the regulation because it would provide utilities with a greater incentive to invest in carbon-free electricity sources. By contrast, the coal industry and its allies - including lawmakers from West Virginia, North Dakota and other states - oppose the proposal. So do many business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which have argued that the rule would boost electricity prices and raise the cost of doing business."

Washington Post "Everything You Need to Know about the EPA's Proposed Rule on Coal Plants," washingtonpost.com, June 1, 2014

According to the EPA, by 2030 the rules will: "Cut carbon emission from the power sector by 30 percent nationwide below 2005 levels, which is equal to the emissions from powering more than half the homes in the United States for one year; Cut particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent as a co-benefit; Avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths, up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children, and up to 490,000 missed work or school days-providing up to $93 billion in climate and public health benefits; and Shrink electricity bills roughly 8 percent by increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand in the electricity system."

[ Editor's Note : On Sep. 20, 2013, the EPA proposed separate carbon pollution standards for all future power plants.]

"The heirs to the fabled Rockefeller oil fortune withdrew their funds from fossil fuel investments on Monday, lending a symbolic boost to a $50bn divestment campaign ahead of a United Nations summit on climate change...

With Monday's announcement, more than 800 global investors - including foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers, religious groups, healthcare organisations, cities and universities - have pledged to withdraw a total of $50bn from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.

In addition to the Rockefellers, the World Council of Churches, which represents some 590 million people in 150 countries - also pulled its investments from fossil fuels on Monday...

About 30 cities have also chosen to divest, including Santa Monica and Seattle."

The Guardian "Heirs to Rockefeller Oil Fortune Divest from Fossil Fuels over Climate Change," guardian.com, Sep. 22, 2014

According to a Bloomberg report: "Fossil fuels are an enormous asset class. The current value of the 1,469 listed oil and gas firms is $4.65trn; 275 coal firms are worth $233bn. ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas firm, has a market cap of $425bn."

Bloomberg "Fossil Fuel Divestment: A $5 Trillion Challenge," about.bnef.com, Aug. 26, 2014

"President Barack Obama on Monday will mandate steep cuts to power-plant carbon emissions, as he unveils his administration's signature initiative to combat climate change and sets in motion sweeping changes to the country's electricity industry...

The administration's plan will force the utility industry to shift toward cleaner-burning energy sources for decades to come as the EPA sets the first-ever limits on greenhouse gases from power plants, requiring a 32% cut in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels...

The final version of the climate policy gives states more time to comply with the regulations, but that has done little to assuage critics who assert that the emissions limits will cost jobs and not actually solve climate change...

The regulations also seek to prevent the electricity industry from becoming more dependent on natural gas. Coal, which accounts for just under 40% of total U.S. electricity, emits the most carbon dioxide compared with other fuels...

[T]he final regulation plan will help encourage nuclear power generation, which doesn't emit any carbon and accounts for about 20% of the U.S.'s electricity."

Wall Street Journal Colleen McCain Nelson and Amy Harder, "EPA Emissions Rule to Mandate Limits Beyond Proposed Targets," wsj.com, Aug. 2, 2015

"[Donald Trump] signed an executive order that starts unraveling a raft of rules and directives to combat climate change. That was followed Wednesday by a bid to place on hold a 26-state suit challenging the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's environmental agenda -- the Clean Power Plan -- so the new administration can dismantle it ahead of a ruling on its legality... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will need at least a year to remove the Clean Power Plan from the federal regulatory landscape, while justifying the reversal, allowing for public comment and still meeting its Clean Air Act obligations."

Bloomberg Andrew M. Harris and Jennifer A Dlouhy, "Trump Administration Seeks Halt to Clean Power Plan Review," bloomberg.com, Mar. 28, 20

[ Editor's note : On Oct. 10, 2017, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to begin the process of formally repealing the Clean Power Plan.]

"[T]wo South Carolina utilities said on Monday that they would abandon two unfinished nuclear reactors in the state, putting an end to a project that was once expected to showcase advanced nuclear technology but has since been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The two reactors, which have cost the utilities roughly $9 billion, remain less than 40 percent built. The cancellation means there are just two new nuclear units being built in the country - both in Georgia."

New York Times Brad Plumer, "US Nuclear Comeback Stalls as Two Reactors Are Abandoned," nytimes.com, July 31, 2017

"Congress' passage of the Republican tax bill will be a chapter in Alaska's history books. The law opens a part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, ending an epic, nearly four-decade battle. For years, environmental groups, the oil industry, Alaska Native communities and the state's political leaders have debated the potential consequences of oil development in ANWR... USGS [United States Geological Service] estimates there's potentially somewhere between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic Refuge's 1002 area... For comparison, Alaska's second biggest oil field, Kuparuk, has produced about 2.5 billion barrels of oil."

[ Editor's Note : President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law on Dec. 22, 2017.]

- Three Mile Island to Close, Site of Worst Commercial Nuclear Accident in US

"Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania stopped producing electricity at noon on Friday [Sep. 20, 2019], part of Exelon Corp.'s plan to close and decommission the plant over the next 60 years. The closure comes 40 years after the partial meltdown of the plant's reactor No. 2 - the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident - left the plant with only one working reactor. Tens of thousands evacuated amid uncertainty about the accident. Some radiation was released, but officials said it was within acceptable levels. Yet many who live in the area are convinced that their health problems in later years were related to the accident."

- EPA Lowers Fuel Economy Standards

"The Trump administration on Tuesday [Mar. 31, 2020] weakened one of the nation's most aggressive efforts to combat climate change, releasing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks... [The new standards] would require automakers to increase fuel economy across their fleets by 1.5% a year, with a goal of achieving an average of 40 miles per gallon by 2026. That's still a major departure from current rules, which mandate annual increases of 5%, reaching an average of 54 mpg by 2025."

Los Angeles Times Anna M. Phillips, "Trump Weakens Fuel Economy Standards, Rolling back Key U.S. Effort against Climate Change," latimes.com, Mar. 31, 2020

- Oil and Electricity Demands Drop during COVID-19 Pandemic

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), "Global oil and gas markets are facing an unprecedented situation: demand is collapsing because of the impact of the coronavirus while supply, already overabundant, is significantly increasing." The IEA expects Apr. 2020 oil demand to be at lows not seen since 1995.

Meanwhile, even though reliable electricity has become all the more important as people are confined at home, whether working, online shopping, or bingeing TV shows, overall electricity use has dropped around 15% as factories and other businesses close for stay-at-home orders.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, stated, "Governments can use the current situation to step up their climate ambitions and launch sustainable stimulus packages focused on clean energy technologies. The coronavirus crisis is already doing significant damage around the world. Rather than compounding the tragedy by allowing it to hinder clean energy transitions, we need to seize the opportunity to help accelerate them."

Fatih Birol, "The Coronavirus Crisis Reminds Us That Electricity Is More Indispensable Than Ever," iea.org, Mar. 22, 2020

International Energy Agency, "COVID-19," iea.org (accessed Apr. 15, 2020)

International Energy Agency, "Oil Market Report - April 2020," iea.org, Apr. 2020

Citi announced a new policy in which the bank will not fund new or expanded thermal coal mines, new or expanded coal-fired plants, "oil and gas exploration, development, and production in the Arctic Circle," or projects that will have a negative impact on UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Morgan Stanley announced a similar new policy, while Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo already had similar policies in place.

In a letter to banks in Feb. 2020, Democratic senators wrote, "The scale of your banks' assets individually, let alone together, give you the ability to drive change in protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in shifting towards a U.S. financial sector that effectively analyzes and plans for climate risks."

President Trump stated, "I don't like that. I like the idea of looking into that... They're [the banks] are afraid of the radical left. You shouldn't be afraid of the radical left. You cannot be discriminating against these great energy companies."

Citi, "Environmental and Social Policy Framework," citigroup.com, Apr. 2020

Rachel Frazin, "Democratic Senators Ask Banks to Prohibit Funding Arctic Drilling," thehill.com, Feb. 3, 2020

Rachel Frazin, "Trump Criticizes Banks Withholding Funds from Certain Fossil Fuel Projects," thehill.com, Apr. 24, 2020

Morgan Stanley, "Environmental and Social Policy Statement," morganstanley.com, Apr. 2020

California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Sep. 23, 2020 directing "California's regulators to develop a plan that would require automakers to sell steadily more zero-emissions passenger vehicles in the state, such as battery-powered or hydrogen-powered cars and pickup trucks, until they make up 100 percent of new auto sales in just 15 years."

Brad Plumer and Jill Cowan, "California Plans to Ban Sales of New Gas-Powered Cars in 15 Years," nytimes.com, Sep. 23, 2020

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High Cost of Cheap Coal: The Coal Paradox

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High Cost of Cheap Coal: The Coal Paradox

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FREEDOM! I stand in a cluttered room surrounded by the debris of electrical enthusiasm: wire peelings, snippets of copper, yellow connectors, insulated pliers. For me these are the tools of freedom. I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work. A meter shows that 1,285 watts of power are blasting straight from the sun into my system, charging my batteries, cooling my refrigerator, humming through my computer, liberating my life.

The euphoria of energy freedom is addictive. Don't get me wrong; I love fossil fuels. I live on an island that happens to have no utilities, but otherwise my wife and I have a normal American life. We don't want propane refrigerators, kerosene lamps, or composting toilets. We want a lot of electrical outlets and a cappuccino maker. But when I turn on those panels, wow!

Maybe that's because for me, as for most Americans, one energy crisis or another has shadowed most of the past three decades. From the OPEC crunch of the 1970s to the skyrocketing cost of oil and gasoline today, the world's concern over energy has haunted presidential speeches, congressional campaigns, disaster books, and my own sense of well-being with the same kind of gnawing unease that characterized the Cold War.

As National Geographic reported in June 2004, oil, no longer cheap, may soon decline. Instability where most oil is found, from the Persian Gulf to Nigeria to Venezuela, makes this lifeline fragile. Natural gas can be hard to transport and is prone to shortages. We won't run out of coal anytime soon, or the largely untapped deposits of tar sands and oil shale. But it's clear that the carbon dioxide spewed by coal and other fossil fuels is warming the planet, as this magazine reported last September.

Cutting loose from that worry is enticing. With my new panels, nothing stands between me and limitless energy-no foreign nation, no power company, no carbon-emission guilt. I'm free!

Well, almost. Here comes a cloud.

Shade steals across my panels and over my heart. The meter shows only 120 watts. I'm going to have to start the generator and burn some more gasoline. This isn't going to be easy after all.

The trouble with energy freedom is that it's addictive; when you get a little, you want a lot. In microcosm I'm like people in government, industry, and private life all over the world, who have tasted a bit of this curious and compelling kind of liberty and are determined to find more.

Some experts think this pursuit is even more important than the war on terrorism. "Terrorism doesn't threaten the viability of the heart of our high-technology lifestyle," says Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. "But energy really does."

Energy conservation can stave off the day of reckoning, but in the end you can't conserve what you don't have. So Hoffert and others have no doubt: It's time to step up the search for the next great fuel for the hungry engine of humankind.

Is there such a fuel? The short answer is no. Experts say it like a mantra: "There is no silver bullet." Though a few true believers claim that only vast conspiracies or lack of funds stand between us and endless energy from the vacuum of space or the core of the Earth, the truth is that there's no single great new fuel waiting in the heart of an equation or at the end of a drill bit.

Enthusiasm about hydrogen-fueled cars may give the wrong impression. Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It's found along with oxygen in plain old water, but it isn't there for the taking. Hydrogen has to be freed before it is useful, and that costs more energy than the hydrogen gives back. These days, this energy comes mostly from fossil fuels. No silver bullet there.

The long answer about our next fuel is not so grim, however. In fact, plenty of contenders for the energy crown now held by fossil fuels are already at hand: wind, solar, even nuclear, to name a few. But the successor will have to be a congress, not a king. Virtually every energy expert I met did something unexpected: He pushed not just his own specialty but everyone else's too.

"We're going to need everything we can get from biomass, everything we can get from solar, everything we can get from wind," says Michael Pacheco, director of the National Bioenergy Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. "And still the question is, can we get enough?"

The big problem is big numbers. The world uses some 320 billion kilowatt-hours of energy a day. It's equal to about 22 bulbs burning nonstop for every person on the planet. No wonder the sparkle is seen from space. Hoffert's team estimates that within the next century humanity could use three times that much. Fossil fuels have met the growing demand because they pack millions of years of the sun's energy into a compact form, but we will not find their like again.

Fired up by my taste of energy freedom, I went looking for technologies that can address those numbers. "If you have a big problem, you must give a big answer," says a genial energy guru named Hermann Scheer, a member of the German parliament. "Otherwise people don't believe."

The answers are out there. But they all require one more thing of us humans who huddle around the fossil fuel fire: We're going to have to make a big leap-toward a different kind of world.

Solar: Free Energy, at a Price

On a cloudy day near the city of Leipzig in the former East Germany, I walked across a field of fresh grass, past a pond where wild swans fed. The field was also sown with 33,500 photovoltaic panels, planted in rows like silver flowers all turned sunward, undulating gently across the contours of the land. It's one of the largest solar arrays ever. When the sun emerges, the field produces up to five megawatts of power, and it averages enough for 1,800 homes.

Nearby are gaping pits where coal was mined for generations to feed power plants and factories. The skies used to be brown with smoke and acrid with sulfur. Now the mines are being turned into lakes, and power that once came from coal is made in a furnace 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away.

Solar electric systems catch energy directly from the sun-no fire, no emissions. Some labs and companies are trying out the grown-up version of a child's magnifying glass: giant mirrored bowls or troughs to concentrate the sun's rays, producing heat that can drive a generator. But for now, sun power mostly means solar cells.

The idea is simple: Sunlight falling on a layer of semiconductor jostles electrons, creating a current. Yet the cost of the cells, once astronomical, is still high. My modest system cost over $15,000 (U.S.), about $10 a watt of capacity, including batteries to store power for when the sun doesn't shine.

Like most things electronic, solar power has been getting cheaper. "Thirty years ago it was cost effective on satellites," says Daniel Shugar, president of PowerLight Corporation, a fast-growing California company that has built solar installations for clients including Toyota and Target. "Today it can be cost-effective for powering houses and businesses," at least where utility power is expensive or unavailable. Tomorrow, he says, it will make sense for almost everyone.

Martin Roscheisen, CEO of a company called Nanosolar, sees that future in a set of red-topped vials, filled with tiny particles of semiconductor. "I put some of that on my finger, and it disappeared right into my skin," he says. He won't say exactly what the particles are, but the "nano" in the company name is a hint: They are less than a hundred nanometers across-about the size of a virus, and so small they slip right through skin.

Roscheisen believes those particles promise a low-cost way to create solar cells. Instead of making the cells from slabs of silicon, his company will paint the particles onto a foil-like material, where they will self-assemble to create a semiconductor surface. The result: a flexible solar-cell material 50 times thinner than today's solar panels. Roscheisen hopes to sell it in sheets, for about 50 cents a watt.

"Fifty cents a watt is kind of the holy grail," says David Pearce, president and CEO of Miasolé, one of many other companies working on "thin-film" solar cells. At that price solar could compete with utilities and might take off. If prices continued to drop, solar cells might change the whole idea of energy by making it cheap and easy for individuals to gather for themselves. That's what techies call a "disruptive technology."

"Automobiles were disruptive to the horse and buggy business," Dan Shugar says. "PCs were disruptive to the typewriter industry. We believe solar electric systems will be disruptive to the energy industry."

Yet price isn't the only hurdle solar faces. There are the small matters of clouds and darkness, which call for better ways of storing energy than the bulky lead-acid batteries in my system. But even if those hurdles are overcome, can solar really make the big energy we need?

With solar now providing less than one percent of the world's energy, that would take "a massive (but not insurmountable) scale-up," NYU's Hoffert and his colleagues said in an article in Science. At present levels of efficiency, it would take about 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) of solar panels-an area bigger than Vermont-to satisfy all of the United States' electricity needs. But the land requirement sounds more daunting than it is: Open country wouldn't have to be covered. All those panels could fit on less than a quarter of the roof and pavement space in cities and suburbs.

Wind, ultimately driven by sun-warmed air, is just another way of collecting solar energy, but it works on cloudy days. One afternoon I stood in a field near Denmark's west coast under a sky so dark and heavy it would have put my own solar panels into a coma. But right above me clean power was being cranked out by the megawatt. A blade longer than an airplane wing turned slowly in a strong south breeze. It was a wind turbine.

The turbine's lazy sweep was misleading. Each time one of the three 130-foot (40-meter) blades swung past, it hissed as it sliced the air. Tip speed can be well over 100 miles (161 kilometers) an hour. This single tower was capable of producing two megawatts, almost half the entire output of the Leipzig solar farm.

In Denmark, turning blades are always on the horizon, in small or large groups, like spokes of wheels rolling toward a strange new world. Denmark's total installed wind power is now more than 3,000 megawatts-about 20 percent of the nation's electrical needs. All over Europe generous incentives designed to reduce carbon emissions and wean economies from oil and coal have led to a wind boom. The continent leads the world in wind power, with almost 35,000 megawatts, equivalent to 35 large coal-fired power plants. North America, even though it has huge potential for wind energy, remains a distant second, with just over 7,000 megawatts. With the exception of hydroelectric power-which has been driving machines for centuries but has little room to grow in developed countries-wind is currently the biggest success story in renewable energy.

"When I started in 1987, I spent a lot of time sitting in farmers' houses until midnight talking to the neighbors, just selling one turbine," says Hans Buus. He's director of project development for a Danish energy company called Elsam. "I would not have been able to imagine the level it is today."

He means not only the number of turbines but also their sheer size. In Germany I saw a fiberglass-and-steel prototype that stands 600 feet (183 meters) tall, has blades 200 feet (61 meters) long, and can generate five megawatts. It's not just a monument to engineering but also an effort to overcome some new obstacles to wind power development.

One is aesthetic. England's Lake District is a spectacular landscape of bracken-clad hills and secluded valleys, mostly protected as a national park. But on a ridge just outside the park, though not outside the magnificence, 27 towers are planned, each as big as the two-megawatt machine in Denmark. Many locals are protesting. "This is a high-quality landscape," says one. "They shouldn't be putting those things in here."

Danes seem to like turbines more than the British, perhaps because many Danish turbines belong to cooperatives of local residents. It's harder to say "not in my backyard" if the thing in your backyard helps pay for your house. But environmental opposition is not the only trouble facing wind development. Across Europe many of the windiest sites are already occupied. So the five-megawatt German machine is designed to help take wind power away from the scenery and out to abundant new sites at sea.

Many coastlines have broad areas of shallow continental shelf where the wind blows more steadily than on land and where, as one wind expert puts it, "the seagulls don't vote." (Real voters, however, sometimes still object to the sight of towers on the horizon.) It costs more to build and maintain turbines offshore than on land, but an underwater foundation for a five-megawatt tower is cheaper per megawatt than a smaller foundation. Hence the German giant.

There are other challenges. Like sailboats, wind turbines can be calmed for days. To keep the grid humming, other sources, such as coal-fired power plants, have to stand ready to take up the slack. But when a strong wind dumps power into the grid, the other generators have to be turned down, and plants that burn fuel are not quickly adjustable. A wind-power bonanza can become a glut. Denmark, for example, is sometimes forced to unload power at uneconomic rates to neighbors like Norway and Germany.

What's needed for wind as well as solar is a way to store a large energy surplus. Technology already exists to turn it into fuels such as hydrogen or ethanol or harness it to compress air or spin flywheels, banking energy that can later churn out electricity. But most systems are still decades from becoming economically feasible.

On the plus side, both wind and solar can provide what's called distributed energy: They can make power on a small scale near the user. You can't have a private coal plant, but you can have your own windmill, with batteries for calm days. The more houses or communities make their own wind power, the smaller and cheaper central power plants and transmission lines can be.

In Europe's big push toward wind power, the turbines keep growing. But in Flagstaff, Arizona, Southwest Windpower makes turbines with blades you can pick up in one hand. The company has sold about 60,000 of the little turbines, most of them for off-grid homes, sailboats, and remote sites like lighthouses and weather stations. At 400 watts apiece they can't power more than a few lights.

But David Galley, Southwest's president, whose father built his first wind turbine out of washing machine parts, is testing a new product he calls an energy appliance. It will stand on a tower as tall as a telephone pole, produce up to two kilowatts in a moderate wind, and come with all the electronics needed to plug it into the house.

Many U.S. utilities are required to pay for power that individuals put back into the grid, so anyone in a relatively breezy place could pop up the energy appliance in the yard, use the power when it's needed, and feed it back into the grid when it's not. Except for the heavy loads of heating and air-conditioning, this setup could reduce a home's annual power bill to near zero. If, as Galley hopes, he can ultimately sell the energy appliance for under $3,000, it would pay for itself with energy savings within a few years.

Somewhere in this mix of the grand and the personal, there may be big numbers in wind too.

Biomass: Farming Your Fuel

In Germany, driving from the giant wind turbine near Hamburg to Berlin, I regularly got an odd whiff: the sort-of-appetizing scent of fast food. It was a puzzle until a tanker truck passed, emblazoned with the word "biodiesel." The scent was of burning vegetable oil. Germany uses about 450 million gallons (1.7 billion liters) of biodiesel a year, about 3 percent of its total diesel consumption.

Biomass energy has ancient roots. The logs in your fire are biomass. But today biomass means ethanol, biogas, and biodiesel-fuels as easy to burn as oil or gas, but made from plants. These technologies are proven. Ethanol produced from corn goes into gasoline blends in the U.S.; ethanol from sugarcane provides 50 percent of automobile fuel in Brazil. In the U.S. and other nations, biodiesel from vegetable oil is burned, pure or mixed with regular diesel, in unmodified engines. "Biofuels are the easiest fuels to slot into the existing fuel system," says Michael Pacheco, the National Bioenergy Center director.

What limits biomass is land. Photosynthesis, the process that captures the sun's energy in plants, is far less efficient per square foot than solar panels, so catching energy in plants gobbles up even more land. Estimates suggest that powering all the world's vehicles with biofuels would mean doubling the amount of land devoted to farming.

At the National Bioenergy Center, scientists are trying to make fuel-farming more efficient. Today's biomass fuels are based on plant starches, oils, and sugars, but the center is testing organisms that can digest woody cellulose, abundant in plants, so that it too could yield liquid fuel. More productive fuel crops could help as well.

One is switchgrass, a plant native to North America's prairies that grows faster and needs less fertilizer than corn, the source of most ethanol fuel made in the U.S. It also thrives on land unfit for other crops and does double duty as a source of animal food, further reducing the pressure on farmland.

"Preliminary results look promising," says Thomas Foust, the center's technology manager. "If you increase automobile efficiency to the level of a hybrid and go with the switchgrass crop mix, you could meet two-thirds of the U.S. transportation fuel demand with no additional land."

But technically possible doesn't mean politically feasible. From corn to sugarcane, all crops have their own lobbyists. "We're looking down a lot of alleys," says Pacheco. "And every alley has its own vested interest group. Frankly, one of the biggest challenges with biomass is that there are so many options."

Nuclear: Still a Contender

Nuclear fission appeared to lead the race as an energy alternative decades ago, as countries began building reactors. Worldwide, about 440 plants now generate 16 percent of the planet's electric power, and some countries have gone heavily nuclear. France, for instance, gets 78 percent of its electricity from fission.

The allure is clear: abundant power, no carbon dioxide emissions, no blots on the landscape except an occasional containment dome and cooling tower. But along with its familiar woes-the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chornobyl, poor economics compared with fossil fuel plants, and the challenge of radioactive waste disposal-nuclear power is far from renewable. The readily available uranium fuel won't last much more than 50 years.

Yet enthusiasm is reviving. China, facing a shortage of electric power, has started to build new reactors at a brisk pace-one or two a year. In the U.S., where some hydrogen-car boosters see nuclear plants as a good source of energy for making hydrogen from water, Vice President Dick Cheney has called for "a fresh look" at nuclear. And Japan, which lacks its own oil, gas, and coal, continues to encourage a fission program. Yumi Akimoto, a Japanese elder statesman of nuclear chemistry, saw the flash of the bomb at Hiroshima as a boy yet describes nuclear fission as "the pillar of the next century."

In the town of Rokkasho at the northernmost tip of Honshu Island, Japan is working to get around the limits of the uranium supply. Inside a new 20-billion-U.S.-dollar complex, workers wear pale blue work suits and an air of patient haste. I looked in on cylindrical centrifuges for enriching uranium and a pool partly filled with rods of spent nuclear fuel, cooling. Spent fuel is rich in plutonium and leftover uranium-valuable nuclear material that the plant is designed to salvage. It will "reprocess" the spent fuel into a mixture of enriched uranium and plutonium called MOX, for mixed oxide fuel. MOX can be burned in some modern reactors and could stretch the fuel supply for decades or more.

Reprocessing plants in other countries also turn spent fuel into MOX. But those plants originally made plutonium for nuclear weapons, so the Japanese like to say that theirs, due to start up in 2007, is the first such plant built entirely for peaceful use. To assure the world that it will stay that way, the Rokkasho complex includes a building for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, who will make certain that none of the plutonium is diverted for weapons.

That doesn't satisfy nuclear energy opponents. Opposition has mounted in Japan after fatal accidents at the country's nuclear plants, including one that killed two workers and exposed others to radiation. Shortly after my visit to Rokkasho, about a hundred protesters marched outside the plant in a blizzard.

A bigger controversy would greet what some nuclear proponents think is a crucial next step: a move to breeder reactors. Breeders can make more fuel than they consume, in the form of plutonium that can be extracted by reprocessing the spent fuel. But experimental breeder reactors have proved to be temperamental, and a full-scale breeder program could be an arms-control nightmare because of all the plutonium it would put in circulation.

Akimoto, for one, believes that society has to get comfortable with fuel reprocessing if it wants to count on nuclear energy. He spoke to me through an interpreter, but to emphasize this point he jumped into English: "If we are going to accept nuclear power, we have to accept the total system. Sometimes we want to get the first crop of fruit but forget how to grow the trees."

Fusion: The Fire Some Time

Fusion is the gaudiest of hopes, the fire of the stars in the human hearth. Produced when two atoms fuse into one, fusion energy could satisfy huge chunks of future demand. The fuel would last millennia. Fusion would produce no long-lived radioactive waste and nothing for terrorists or governments to turn into weapons. It also requires some of the most complex machinery on Earth.

A few scientists have claimed that cold fusion, which promises energy from a simple jar instead of a high-tech crucible, might work. The verdict so far: No such luck. Hot fusion is more likely to succeed, but it will be a decades-long quest costing billions of dollars.

Hot fusion is tough because the fuel-a kind of hydrogen-has to be heated to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) or so before the atoms start fusing. At those temperatures the hydrogen forms a roiling, unruly vapor of electrically charged particles, called plasma. "Plasma is the most common state of matter in the universe," says one physicist, "but it's also the most chaotic and the least easily controlled." Creating and containing plasma is so challenging that no fusion experiment has yet returned more than 65 percent of the energy it took to start the reaction.

Now scientists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are refining the process, learning better ways to control plasma and trying to push up the energy output. They hope that a six-billion-U.S.-dollar test reactor called ITER will get the fusion bonfire blazing-what physicists call "igniting the plasma." The next step would be a demonstration plant to actually generate power, followed by commercial plants in 50 years or so.

"I am 100 percent sure we can ignite the plasma," says Jerome Pamela, the project manager of a fusion machine called the Joint European Torus, or JET, at Britain's Culham Science Center. "The biggest challenge is the transition between the plasma and the outside world." He means finding the right materials for the lining of the ITER plasma chamber, where they will have to withstand a bombardment of neutrons and transfer heat to electric generators.

At Culham I saw an experiment in a tokamak, a device that cages plasma in a magnetic field shaped like a doughnut-the standard design for most fusion efforts, including ITER. The physicists sent a huge electrical charge into the gas-filled container, a scaled-down version of JET. It raised the temperature to about ten million degrees Celsius, not enough to start fusion but enough to create plasma.

The experiment lasted a quarter of a second. A video camera shooting 2,250 frames a second captured it. As it played back, a faint glow blossomed in the chamber, wavered, grew into a haze visible only on its cooling edges, and vanished.

It was-well, disappointing. I had expected the plasma to look like a movie shot of an exploding automobile. This was more like a ghost in an English paneled library.

But this phantom was energy incarnate: the universal but elusive magic that all our varied technologies-solar, wind, biomass, fission, fusion, and many others large or small, mainstream or crazy-seek to wrestle into our service.

Taming that ghost is not just a scientific challenge. The ITER project has been held up by a seemingly simple problem. Since 2003 the participating countries-including much of the developed world-have been deadlocked over where to build the machine. The choice has come down to two sites, one in France and one in Japan.

As all energy experts will tell you, this proves a well-established theory. There's only one force tougher to manage than plasma: politics.

Although some politicians believe the task of developing the new energy technologies should be left to market forces, many experts disagree. That's not just because it's expensive to get new technology started, but also because government can often take risks that private enterprise won't.

"Most of the modern technology that has been driving the U.S. economy did not come spontaneously from market forces," NYU's Martin Hoffert says, ticking off jet planes, satellite communications, integrated circuits, computers. "The Internet was supported for 20 years by the military and for 10 more years by the National Science Foundation before Wall Street found it."

Without a big push from government, he says, we may be condemned to rely on increasingly dirty fossil fuels as cleaner ones like oil and gas run out, with dire consequences for the climate. "If we don't have a proactive energy policy," he says, "we'll just wind up using coal, then shale, then tar sands, and it will be a continually diminishing return, and eventually our civilization will collapse. But it doesn't have to end that way. We have a choice."

It's a matter of self-interest, says Hermann Scheer, the German member of parliament. "I don't appeal to the people to change their conscience," he said in his Berlin office, where a small model of a wind turbine turned lazily in a window. "You can't go around like a priest." Instead, his message is that nurturing new forms of energy is necessary for an environmentally and economically sound future. "There is no alternative."

Already, change is rising from the grass roots. In the U.S., state and local governments are pushing alternative energies by offering subsidies and requiring that utility companies include renewable sources in their plans. And in Europe financial incentives for both wind and solar energy have broad support even though they raise electric bills.

Alternative energy is also catching on in parts of the developing world where it's a necessity, not a choice. Solar power, for example, is making inroads in African communities lacking power lines and generators. "If you want to overcome poverty, what do people need to focus on?" asks Germany's environment minister, Jiirgen Trittin. "They need fresh water and they need energy. For filling the needs of remote villages, renewable energy is highly competitive."

In developed countries there's a sense that alternative energy-once seen as a quaint hippie enthusiasm-is no longer alternative culture. It's edging into the mainstream. The excitement of energy freedom seems contagious.

One afternoon last year, near a village north of Munich, a small group of townspeople and workers inaugurated a solar facility. It would soon surpass the Leipzig field as the largest in the world, with six megawatts of power.

About 15 people gathered on a little manmade hill beside the solar farm and planted four cherry trees on the summit. The mayor of the tidy nearby town brought out souvenir bottles of schnapps. Almost everyone had a swig, including the mayor.

Then he said he would sing to the project's construction supervisor and a landscape artist, both American women. The two women stood together, grinning, with the field of solar panels soaking up energy behind them. The German mayor straightened his dark suit, and the other men leaned on their shovels.

Fifty years ago, I thought, there were still bombed-out ruins in the cities of Europe. The Soviet Union was planning Sputnik. Texas oil was $2.82 U.S. a barrel. At the most, we have 50 years to make the world over again. But people change, adapt, and make crazy new stuff work. I thought about Dan Shugar talking about disruptive technologies. "There's a sense of excitement," he had said. "There's a sense of urgency. There's a sense that we cannot fail."

On the hilltop, the mayor took a deep breath. He sang, in a booming tenor, without missing a note or a word, the entire song "O Sole Mio." Everyone cheered.

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alternative energy sources fossil fuels solar panels wind farms coal oil natural gas global warming

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Energy Sources, Renewable Energy, Oil, Coal - National Geographic

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FREEDOM! I stand in a cluttered room surrounded by the debris of electrical enthusiasm: wire peelings, snippets of copper, yellow connectors, insulated pliers. For me these are the tools of freedom. I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work.

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British Scientists Create Gasoline From Thin Air (And Water)!

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British Scientists Create Gasoline From Thin Air (And Water)!

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With gas prices inching up, as well as, the constant reminder of the harmful environmental impact of fossil fuels, the quest to find another source of fuel has heated up considerably. Over the last few years, we have seen many amazing alternatives ranging from electricity to bio-fuel but none come even close to this latest invention - Fuel manufactured from air and water! That is exactly what engineers and scientists at U.K. based Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS) claim to have created.

In order to manufacture this magical 'green' gasoline, the team begins by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and hydrogen from water. The two gases are then combined in a reactor. Then, with the help of a catalyst, the hydrocarbon mixture is converted into methanol, which is then transformed into usable fuel using a commonly known procedure called the MOBIL methanol-to-gasoline reaction.

Aside from the obvious advantage of using up harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this synthetic fuel is also better for the environment. That's because it uses the exact raw materials that are required to make methanol and, therefore, does not create the harmful byproducts that result when fossil fuels are burned.

This breakthrough technique that took two years and $1.6 million pounds to develop is of course still in its infancy. In the last three months, the engineers at AFS have only been able to create a total of 5 liters (1.32 gallons) of the synthetic gasoline. However, Air Fuel Synthesis CEO Peter Harrison believes that since the method has been proven, making the fuel on a larger scale will not be that difficult. That's because the raw materials are abundantly available, and the refining process involves many of the steps that are already being used in the commercial manufacturing of other products. This means that the equipment for mass production can be just bought and assembled.

In fact, AFS is already planning a commercial refinery that will be ready for larger scale fuel production by 2015. However, the gas produced will not be sold to stations around the country, but instead be reserved for race cars and other vehicles that require special fuel.

Also since the actual cost of producing this amazing gas is not yet known, it is hard to determine whether it will ever be freely available to the general public. But the fact that something this radical has been developed is good news for all of us!

Resources: geekosystem.com, treehugger.com,newsdaily.com

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British Scientists Create Gasoline From Thin Air (And Water)!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With gas prices inching up, as well as, the constant reminder of the harmful environmental impact of fossil fuels, the quest to find another source of fuel has heated up considerably. Over the last few years we have seen many amazing alternatives ranging from electricity to bio-fuel but none come even close to this latest invention - Fuel manufactured from air and water!

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High-Tech Rescue Saves Chile's Miners | Scholastic News | Scholastic.com

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After 33 Chilean miners became trapped underground, experts from around the world used special tools to help rescue them.

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News about Chile Mining Accident (2010). Commentary and archival information about Chile Mining Accident (2010) from The New York Times.

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Obama Administration Moves to Block Drilling in Parts of Alaska

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Obama Administration Moves to Block Drilling in Parts of Alaska

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Obama Administration Moves to Block Drilling in Parts of Alaska

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The Obama administration is moving this week to designate areas of Alaska off limits to oil and natural gas drilling in its latest effort to bolster its environmental legacy.

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In Limbo, a City in China Faces Life After Graft

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In Limbo, a City in China Faces Life After Graft

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The downfall of men like Mr. Xing and Mr. Zhang has been cheered by much of the Chinese public, which is outraged by the runaway, often illicit concentration of wealth that has characterized China's embrace of capitalism.

But in Lüliang and elsewhere, Mr. Xi's prolonged, nationwide crackdown on corruption has also unsettled the party establishment and its allies in business. Even among ordinary residents, there is concern about what it might mean for jobs and growth, because private businessmen have been targeted alongside government and party officials.

"In this part of China, officials are held in the palms of the coal barons," said one shopkeeper, who asked that his name not be used so he could speak freely about a politically sensitive subject. "But these business leaders were capable - they made us prosper."

For much of China's growth era, party officials and businesses have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, with policy concessions and market access granted in exchange for corporate support - sometimes direct payoffs, but also more subtle backing of state projects and priorities. Combined with China's insatiable appetite for coal, that formula helped power Lüliang to its first glimpses of prosperity in generations. But there is a sense now that the rules are changing, with the consequences for the economy uncertain.

"In the past, with corruption, you could pay an official and get something done," said Mao Yushi, a prominent economist in Beijing. "But now the officials won't accept money, but don't approve things either."

Nestled in the mountains of the dusty Loess Plateau, Lüliang is best known for having served as a base for the Red Army during World War II. Its valleys are lined with roads blackened by coal that shakes free of the trucks that roll day and night from the mountains to coking plants and steel works. Every few dozen miles, the mountains open up and small urban areas appear. One is Zhongyang, where Mr. Zhang once held court.

A short, bullish man who had worked in local government for 39 years, Mr. Zhang controlled the permits that businesses needed to run mines or factories. He rose through the ranks to become deputy chief of the Lüliang region. As the corruption investigation widened, he resigned in March and has been in detention since.

Officials like Mr. Zhang controlled the allocation of mines to investors and could close one if they decided it was unsafe. To win them over, coal bosses like Mr. Xing gave them lavish gifts during the Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Chinese newsmagazine Caixin spent three months investigating the culture of corruption in Lüliang and concluded that some of the area's top local businessmen each spent about $150,000 a year bribing officials.

The money did more than just grease the wheels of commerce. It also appeared to undermine the Communist Party's appointment and promotion process. Inner-party voting procedures were rigged, Caixin found, with oligarchs like Mr. Xing channeling money through candidates to pay off the higher-ups who made the decisions. In one case, a government post cost about $650,000.

Residents said Mr. Zhang poured his earnings into several mansions, including a huge mountaintop estate. On a recent visit, the entrance to the estate was bricked off, but the mansion was still an impressive sight: Low-slung, made of gray bricks, it hugged the mountain and featured a private park at the summit, complete with banquet halls designed to resemble the cave dwellings still used by many poorer people in Shanxi.

Mr. Zhang also had a reputation for promoting his friends and relatives. His wife went from a clerical job to a post as a senior government adviser; his family doctor became the head of a county hospital; and his children's private tutor was named a school principal. Another relative became the owner of a local coal mine, residents said.

"What can we ordinary people do?" asked a 45-year-old hardware store owner who asked to be identified only by his surname, Xu, and who could scarcely contain his contempt when asked about Mr. Zhang. "Is there any official who isn't corrupt?"

But if party officials suspected of corruption are deeply unpopular, residents express more sympathy for the entrepreneurs accused of bankrolling them.

Mr. Xing, for example, remains widely respected in Lüliang. Though he has been pilloried on the Chinese Internet over his daughter's extravagant wedding, people here still speak of him with pride as a local rags-to-riches success and a savvy, hands-on tycoon who created real wealth in the region.

Born to impoverished corn farmers in a remote mountain village, Mr. Xing, 47, managed to test into the province's best university. But unlike most graduates in the 1980s, he turned down a government job and moved back to Lüliang to seek his fortune in China's newly emerging private sector.

Tall and lanky with big glasses and a crooked smile, Mr. Xing looks more like a schoolteacher than a mining executive, but he seemed to have a nose for the industry. He managed an iron mine and a coking factory, then got his big break in 2002, when he bought the giant Xingwu coal mine from the state at a price that was widely criticized as too low, perhaps because officials were paid off.

But his defenders note that the mine was losing money, and that Mr. Xing invested in new technology and for several years lived just outside the mine gates to make sure it was being run properly. "My wages doubled after he took over the mine," said a former mine employee who now runs a motorcycle shop nearby. "He was a man of his word."

Whether Mr. Xing paid a fair price or not, his timing was impeccable. He bought into coal just as China was going through its fastest phase of growth, and just as the government ended price controls on coal used to produce energy. The result was a boom in coal use and profitability for coal mines.

Soon, Shanxi coal barons became notorious for conspicuous consumption, sometimes using suitcases of cash to snap up apartments by the dozen in central Beijing. Last year, the Hurun Report's widely watched list of China's richest citizens estimated Mr. Xing's wealth at $520 million.

But the local economy benefited, too. In 2000, Lüliang was one of China's poorest regions. By 2010, its main city had one of the strongest economies in the province. In addition to employing tens of thousands, Mr. Xing's company, Liansheng, renovated parks and built new schools.

"I don't know what he did, but this is the best high school in the area," said Chen Xialu, who was waiting outside the Liulin No. 4 High School. "It was built by Xing Libin and Liansheng, so we are grateful."

The prosperity, though, was fragile. Mr. Xing borrowed heavily to expand. The debt could be serviced as long as coal prices were high, but they began to fall in 2012 as the economy slowed. Mr. Xing sought to diversify, using his close ties with local officials to lease farmland and build apartment blocks, small dams, walnut plantations and a paved, solar lamp-lit road from the city to his home village.

When coal prices collapsed, Mr. Xing's company filed to restructure $5 billion in unpayable loans. The housing blocks are still concrete shells, and farmers say that the walnut plantations are not mature enough yet to harvest and that Liansheng owes them money.

Mr. Xing was detained in March, and his whereabouts is unknown.

"He was capable," said Wang Zhenhua, a 66-year-old native of Mr. Xing's home village, Huaishugao. "He built all this and had great ideas. He was just a bit too corrupt."

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In Limbo, a City in China Faces Life After Graft

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The downfall of men like Mr. Xing and Mr. Zhang has been cheered by much of the Chinese public, which is outraged by the runaway, often illicit concentration of wealth that has characterized China's embrace of capitalism. But in Lüliang and elsewhere, Mr. Xi's prolonged, nationwide crackdown on corruption has also unsettled the party establishment and its allies in business.

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For States That Don’t File Carbon-Cutting Plans, E.P.A. Will Impose ‘Model Rule’

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For States That Don’t File Carbon-Cutting Plans, E.P.A. Will Impose ‘Model Rule’

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WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency will force states to comply with a federal "model rule" to cut their carbon emissions if the states do not submit customized plans under the Obama administration's new climate change regulations, a senior official said Wednesday.

Janet McCabe, the agency's top climate change official, said that the E.P.A. was creating the model rule with the expectation that some states would refuse to submit plans.

The regulations, the heart of President Obama's climate change agenda, are based on the Clean Air Act and require states to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plants. Each state may create its own plan for how to do so, but the requirements have the potential for shutting hundreds of coal-fired power plants.

The proposed rules are already the focus of political fighting. Republicans have attacked them as a "war on coal," and governors of some states that rely heavily on coal mining or coal-fired electricity are suing the E.P.A. over the regulations. Some Republican governors may choose not to submit a plan at all, as a gesture of defiance.

"We certainly hope that every state feels like it's in their best interest to create a plan," Ms. McCabe said. "But we have an obligation under the Clean Air Act, should there be states that don't submit plans, to be sure we're ready."

Republicans and the coal industry were quick to criticize the move.

"Rather than looking to work together to reach common-sense and practical energy guidelines in 2015, the administration is doubling down on its climate crusade at the expense of our economy and our people," said Mike Duncan, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the president of a coal advocacy group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Ms. McCabe said she expected the E.P.A. to release final versions of the climate change regulations by midsummer, when it would also issue the proposed model rule for states.

Under Mr. Obama, the E.P.A. has proposed two key climate change regulations: one to limit emissions from future power plants, which the E.P.A. unveiled last January, and the other to regulate emissions from existing plants, which the E.P.A. announced in June. Obama administration officials initially said they would release final versions of those rules one year after proposing each one. But on Wednesday Ms. McCabe said that given the complexity of the rules and the difficulty in writing them, it made more sense to release them together.

"It's become clear to us that there are crosscutting topics on these rules," she said. "For the overlapping issues, we believe it's essential to consider these in a coordinated fashion - so we will do them all at once."

Also adding to the delay, she said, was the need to review more than four million public comments that have been filed about the regulations - a number far greater than E.P.A. officials anticipated, and which they said indicated the magnitude and potential impact of the regulations.

Generally, proposed environmental regulations draw a few thousand public comments.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: For States That Don't File Carbon-Cutting Plans, E.P.A. Will Impose 'Model Rule'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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For States That Don't File Carbon-Cutting Plans, E.P.A. Will Impose 'Model Rule'

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WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency will force states to comply with a federal "model rule" to cut their carbon emissions if the states do not submit customized plans under the Obama administration's new climate change regulations, a senior official said Wednesday. Janet McCabe, the agency's top climate change official, said that the E.P.A.