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"Business calls for urgent action on "oil crunch" threat to UK economy Taskforce warns Britain is unprepared for significant risk to companies and consumers Poorest to be hit hardest by price rises for travel, food, heating and consumer goods New policies must be priority for whoever wins the General Election Recommended packages include legislation, new technologies and behaviour-change incentives Fundamental change in demand patterns triggered by emerging economy countries London, 10 February, 2010: A group of leading business people today call for urgent action to prepare the UK for Peak Oil. The second report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) finds that oil shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility will destabilise economic, political and social activity potentially by 2015. Peak Oil refers to the point where the highest practicable rate of global oil production has been achieved and from which future levels of production will either plateau, or begin to diminish. This means an end to the era of cheap oil."

Hope it is not time for the ' global war on climate change'.

Powering the Green Economy The Feed-in Tariff Handbook By Miguel Mendonça, David Jacobs and Benjamin Sovacool 'This insightful book explains how to implement the most effective policy to get onto a path towards renewable energy.' Dr David Suzuki, scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster

The single most important reason that our economy remains sluggish is high gas prices and the high cost of imported oil. We import the same amount of oil into this country as we did in 1997 - but it now costs us nearly $300 billion a year more, a...

website includes a few things but importaint to my research is the hydrolic frackling paragraph also has some stuff about net energy use and how it has affected the economy in the past

With energy costs equivalent to 10% of the economy, and with lots of subsidies and taxes, the price consumers pay for energy is a grateful subject for spin doctors.

An ancient organism from the pit of a collapsed volcano may hold the key to tomorrow's hydrogen economy. Scientists from across the world have formed a team to unlock the process refined by a billions-year old archaea. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will expedite the research by sequencing the hydrogen-producing organism for comparative genomics.

Starbucks seems to be a place that carries a whiff of excess. In its own way, it has a lot in common with SUVs, hot tubs and television screens wide enough to fill a wall. That is, it represents the bit-by-bit extravagances that helped get us into the tight economic jam we find ourselves in today.

If the hydrogen economy is ever going to become reality, we will need a way to store the stuff without having to compress it to dangerously high pressures. The gas could then be fed to fuel cells to power the phones, laptops and automobiles of the future. Just such a technique may now be coming together in a Dutch lab, in the shape of a material in which billions of carbon buckyballs are sandwiched between sheets of graphene - another form of carbon.

During a recent speech, Obama spoke of the key role renewable energy will play in his economic recovery plan. He emphasized the need to "transform our economy…and save our planet from the ravages of climate change" by developing renewable energy. In March, the U.S. Interior Department secretary Ken Salazar, recently issued an order to create a special task force to encourage the development of renewable energy projects on federal lands.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.

This is a guest article by Dr. David Fleming. Fleming is the Founder Director of the Lean Economy Connection, and an independent writer in the fields of energy, environment, economics, society and culture. The article is based on Fleming's recent 56-page booklet, The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy, which expands and references the arguments presented. The booklet is available to download here: The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy

Honda's natural gas Civic GX, which debuted in 2006 in California but is now becoming available in other parts of the country, just may be the cleanest mainstream car on the road. At least the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) thinks so. The nonprofit group . . . put the Civic GX at the top of its 2007 environmentally friendly car list, edging out Toyota's hybrid Prius. The natural gas-fueled Civic scored slightly better than the Prius on fuel economy and reduced emissions in ACEEE's battery of tests. It also scored better in terms of the pollution generated in the manufacturing processes.

The research shows that the U.S. economy has the potential to reduce annual non-transportation energy consumption by roughly 23 percent by 2020, eliminating more than $1.2 trillion in waste - well beyond the $520 billion upfront investment (not including program costs) that would be required. The reduction in energy use would also result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually - the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the roads.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy issued a report yesterday touting the role that semiconductor-based technologies have played in making the U.S. economy more efficient. At the same time, the International Energy Agency issued its own report calling on governments around the world to be more aggressive with efficiency standards for ICT and consumer electronics, which are expected to demand twice as much power by 2022 and three times as much by 2030 - creating a need for another 280 gigawatts of power generation (i.e. like adding another Japan to the world, or more than 230 nuclear reactors). "This will jeopardize efforts to increase energy security and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases," according to an IEA news brief.