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One estimate has oil shale extraction needing 10 barrels of water per barrel of oil produced. And, with Colorado's proposed oil shale operations at full capacity, by mid-century, the industry could require as much as 14 times more power than currently generated by the state's largest power plant. These estimates are very imprecise, because the technology is unproven. You might wonder, "Why so much water and energy? And what do do about it?" See the illustration and answer below. A recent Los Angeles Times article, "Energy dispute over Rockies riches," reported: Shell has the most mature technology, which it has been experimenting with at its Mahogany test site, near Rifle, Colo. Tucked into a rolling landscape of empty range land, the company has sunk heaters half a mile into oil shale seams and subjected the rock to 700-degree temperatures. Over weeks or even months, a liquid known as kerogen is produced, which can be refined into diesel and jet fuel.

New research from Stanford University ranks wind power as the most promising alternative source of energy. Titled Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security, the report from civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson ranks the world's energy options -- putting wind, concentrated solar and geothermal at the top of the list, and nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration in a tie for dead last. ... From his findings, Jacobson is able to suggest that the U.S. government invest money and create jobs around the development of wind, solar and geothermal: "There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession," Jacobson said. "Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power."

The global economic downturn has hit clean energy investments and their growth is no longer on track for the world to avert the worst impacts of climate change, said clean energy and carbon market analysts New Energy Finance today. The analysts presented findings of their new report, Global Futures 2009, to senior investors, industry executives and policy makers in clean energy and the carbon markets at the second New Energy Finance Summit in London. Summit participation is by invitation only and is limited to 200 people.

The slow-motion train wreck that is the US car market is looking less slow every day. Auto Sales Plunge as Buyers Snub Incentives: Falling U.S. auto sales crashed in February, dimming hopes that the domestic industry might bounce back in the second half of this year. … General Motors reported that its sales slid 53 percent in February compared with the same month a year ago. Chrysler's dropped 44 percent. And Ford's sales tumbled 48 percent, despite its insistence that it needs no federal aid to stay afloat.

The UK energy supply industry will have to invest over GBP230 billion ($334 billion) in new infrastructure by 2025 to ensure security of supply and to meet climate change and renewable targets, consultants Ernst & Young said Tuesday. In a study for UK utility Centrica, Ernst & Young said the level of investment needed was double the value of the UK's total energy supply asset base. "The landscape in which this investment must be raised has altered fundamentally as the credit crunch and economic downturn take hold," the report said.

TVA admits to 'some' fly ash; maybe up to 20%, ex-plant worker says BRIDGEPORT - An unknown amount of toxic coal fly ash apparently washed into the Tennessee River at TVA's Widows Creek steam plant Friday when a gypsum storage pond overflowed, spilling thousands of gallons of waste. The Tennessee Valley Authority acknowledged in a statement Saturday that the pond contained "some" fly ash, although TVA spokesman Gil Francis told reporters Friday that Widows Creek stored fly ash and gypsum in separate ponds.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today set aside the Bush administration's midnight timetable for a vast expansion of offshore drilling. Salazar sharply rebuked the "headlong rush of the worst kind" put in place in Bush's final week in office. Announcing that "the time for reform has arrived," Salazar explained that he "will extend the public comment period by 180 days, get a report on offshore energy resources, hold regional conferences, and expedite rulemaking for offshore renewable energy resources": I intend to do what the Bush Administration refused to do: build a framework for offshore renewable energy development, so that we incorporate the great potential for wind, wave, and ocean current energy into our offshore energy strategy. The Bush Administration was so intent on opening new areas for oil and gas offshore that it torpedoed offshore renewable energy efforts.

The Times reports that China is struggling with mass layoffs of workers and the worst drought in years - China declares an emergency amid worst drought in 50 years. The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water. Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters described the drought as a phenomenon "rarely seen in history" as the Government declared a state of emergency. President Hu Jintao said that all efforts must be made to save the summer grain harvest.

A new study done by Duke University says exposure to the fly ash from the TVA spill could have "severe health implication." Duke University scientists collected water and solid ash samples at sites affected by the TVA spill on Jan. 9. Following preliminary analysis, the solid ash samples were incubated and underwent more detailed analysis. "Our radioactive measurements of solid ash samples from Tennessee suggests the ash has radiation levels above those reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for typical coal ash," said Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Preventing the formation of airborne particulate matter from the ash that was released to the environment seems essential for reducing possible health impacts." More than a billion gallons of sludge coal waste spilled from a pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-burning power plant on Dec. 22.

Inhabitat has a report from Bulgaria on the continuing impasse between Russia and the Ukraine over Russian gas exports - Gazprom Crisis Engulfs Europe. Home heating price increases have certainly been a major concern for recession-strapped households in northern climates, but the possibility of having one's heat completely shut-off in this new era of natural resource 'muscle flexing' and bitter political show-downs is perhaps a whole new energy policy boiling point in Europe and beyond. Russia's decision this week to turn off the flow of gas from its Gazprom pipelines to the Ukraine, which in turn forced many European countries to rely on their (in some cases virtually nonexistent) gas reserves, demonstrates the dire need to identify alternatives to Siberia and the Middle East for our massive oil and gas dependencies. Given that my family and I are currently in Bulgaria for six weeks, we are experiencing the Gazprom gas cut-off crisis first-hand. This issue will not be going away any time soon, despite the band-aid patches that will crop up over the next few weeks and months.

The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way. Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world's first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

The London Evening Standard reports that the economic slowdown seems to have hit European truck slaes particularly hard - Volvo truck sales plunge 99.7%. The depth of the recession was revealed today as truckmaker Volvo admitted demand across the Continent has crashed by 99.7% as it took orders for just 115 new lorries in the last three months. That compares to orders totalling 41,970 in the third quarter of 2007. Global orders for Volvo slumped 55% in the last three months while Scania, of which Volvo has majority control, said its western Europe truck orders collapsed by 69%.

Reuters reports that an executive of French oil company Total expects oil production to peak before the end of the next decade - and wants the company to move into nuclear power in the post-oil age (something Bucky Fuller predicted would be the next step for the oil industry) - Total sees nuclear energy for growth after peak oil. French oil and gas giant Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is targeting nuclear energy to drive growth long after oil and gas output peak, a top executive said on Monday. "In the future, energy demand will be constrained by tight supply," Arnaud Chaperon, Total's senior vice president for electricity and new energies, said in a presentation to a nuclear energy conference in Qatar. "Oil and gas will still play a big role in the energy balance. But in the electrification of the world economy, nuclear will play a major role, together with the development of solar and other renewables ... That is why Total is very interested in developing nuclear and renewables."

The SMH reports that Maldivians are sufficiently worried by rising sea levels that they are thinking about buying a backup homeland - Maldives to buy new homeland as sea levels rise. It probably won't be as idyllic as the original though. THE Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland - possibly in Australia - as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country's first democratically elected president has said. Mohamed Nasheed, who takes power officially today in the capital, Male, said the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls dotted 800 kilometres from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.

I've been getting a lot of calls and e-mails from people asking about the falling prices for oil in recent weeks. The immediate explanation is that world economic activity is decelerating. Demand is falling. OPEC announced cuts in output. But the markets still believe that economic decline will trump the ability of OPEC to prop up the price of oil. Enjoy it while it lasts. Just over the horizon, things are about to become dicey. This week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) will release a new report on the future of world energy. In its World Energy Outlook, the IEA will state categorically that "Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable." There's not much wiggle room in that statement. According to the IEA, despite the recent fall in oil prices, the medium- and long-term outlooks for energy supply are grim. Conventional oil output is destined to decline. Demand will still grow, however, especially in the developing world. And the twain shall only meet by prices rising to clear the market. "It is," as our Arab friends like to say, "written."

If California expands its renewable power generation to be a third of electricity delivered in the state by 2020, it may cost $60 billion, the state's utility regulator said in a report issued on Thursday. It is more costly to make electricity with renewable power -- solar, wind, geothermal and other sources that emit no or low amounts of global-warming greenhouse gases -- than with natural gas, nuclear and coal power plants.

A former top EPA investigator who helped lead an investigation into a giant oil spill in Alaska is blowing the whistle to KING 5 News. The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.

Dan Cass has an article in Crikey noting the greenhouse mafia have been performing very successfully under the Rudd government - Democracy and science vs Big Coal: the final round?. Today's news that the coal industry is lobbying Parliament again raises the grave but tedious question -- when will Australia's coal mafia give in to climate science and/or Australian public opinion? Until Guy Pearce's Quarry Vision (Quarterly Essay 33) is released on March 16, we can only read the tea leaves, but the story is worth watching. The Age has a big story today on this week's Copenhagen climate science congress. This meeting of climate scientists will report that impacts already unfolding are far worse than IPCC predictions. The science says we have to switch out of coal, and fast. On the democracy front, a Climate Institute poll released today shows 83% of swinging voters are concerned about climate change. Despite the spin of both major parties, the public knows that nothing is really being done to fix the problem. Then tonight's Four Corners will show that Big Coal is continuing to defy both climate science and public opinion, lobbying for Kevin Rudd to do nothing on climate change.

The impact of the green revolution into biofuels is impacting more than anyone could have guessed on the availability, and thus the cost, of food. From 2002 until February this year the cost of a basket of food rose by 140% according to a World Bank report (1). The impact is being felt worldwide. We are now facing more pressures about how we work and live given

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today. The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund.