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The Utah Legislature will soon begin its 2009 session, and we may expect bills promoting two favorite pieces of home-grown pork, the Lake Powell pipeline and Transition Power's nuclear nightmare on the Green River. But before legislators cast more of our recession-stretched cash before these two swine, they should read the latest study of Colorado River issues, James Powell's Dead Pool , from which the following is taken. For eight years under George W. Bush, the Bureau of Reclamation has refused to acknowledge the effects that global warming is having and will yet have on the Colorado, in spite of record temperatures and the recent 500-year drought that nearly brought Lake Powell to its knees. Instead, the bureau continues to use only data from the last century, the first half of which was one of the wettest periods in the known history of the Colorado. According to Bush's BOR, in 2050 Lake Powell, which reflects the health of the river as a whole, will stand at 3,660 feet, just 40 feet below full pool.

ndiana, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] The Joint Coordinated System Plan (JCSP'08), the first step of a transmission and generation system expansion analysis of the majority of the Eastern Interconnection, estimates the electricity sector will need more than US $80 billion in new transmission infrastructure to obtain 20% of the region's electricity from wind energy generation. "This is information we believe that our leaders need to consider as they begin work under a new administration and start defining our energy future." -- John Bear, President and CEO, Midwest ISO This initial analysis, which was performed with participation from major transmission owners and operators in the Eastern U.S., looked at two scenarios to examine transmission and generation possibilities between 2008 and 2024. The first, a Reference Scenario, assumes "business as usual" with respect to wind development, with approximately 5% of the region's energy coming from wind. The second was a 20% Wind Energy Scenario and was based on the U.S. Department of Energy's Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study.

The Financial Times has leaked the results of the International Energy Agency's long-awaited study of the depletion profiles of the world's 400 largest oilfields, indicating that, "Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent." This is a stunning figure. Considering regular crude oil only, this means that 6.825 million barrels a day of new production capacity must come on line each year just to keep up with the aggregate natural decline rate in existing oilfields. That's a new Saudi Arabia every 18 months.

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska's North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company's drilling permit. In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a "hard look" at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope.

Charles Hall, the father of the energy return on investment (EROI) concept, once told me that our current society would probably not be able to function if the EROI for the entire society slipped below five. What does that mean? First, a quick review. It takes energy to get energy. EROI is a measurement of how efficient a process, an enterprise or a society is in obtaining energy. EROI is usually expressed in a ratio, say, 20 to 1. That would mean that the process being studied produced 20 units of energy for every one unit expended. As it turns out, that's about what conventional crude oil returns.

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.

Drawing parallels with the current financial meltdown, Matthew Simmons, the CEO of Simmons & Company International, expresses his alarm about gasoline stocks being the lowest in several decades and refinery production down following recent hurricanes. He warns that if there were a run on the "energy bank" by everyone topping off their gasoline tanks, the U.S. would be out of fuel in three days, and grocery shelves largely emptied in a week. In an interview plus excerpts from his presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA) conference on September 22, 2008, Matt highlights the risks and vulnerabilities in the finished oil products system, and answers audience questions.

U.S. public lands estimated to hold 31 billion barrels of oil and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With average national gas prices hovering around $4 per gallon, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management today released a study that shows vast untapped oil and natural gas resources exist on public lands in the United States. "America has abundant energy resources," said Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management C. Stephen Allred. "However, for a variety of reasons, many of these resources are not available for development. At a time when energy prices have reached record levels and Americans are feeling the impact, we must find ways to develop those key energy resources that are available to us right here at home, on our public lands."

The following is an article I prepared for the Peak Oil Review, which is produced by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. The United States was blessed with abundant reserves of crude petroleum, high quality and easily taken from the ground. Up until 1973, we were the world's biggest producer of crude oil, and even today remain the third biggest, ranking behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia.

In 2000 a Saudi oil geologist named Sadad I. Al Husseini made a startling discovery. Husseini, then head of exploration and production for the state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, had long been skeptical of the oil industry's upbeat forecasts for future production. Since the mid-1990s he had been studying data from the 250 or so major oil fields that produce most of the world's oil. He looked at how much crude remained in each one and how rapidly it was being depleted, then added all the new fields that oil companies hoped to bring on line in coming decades. When he tallied the numbers, Husseini says he realized that many oil experts "were either misreading the global reserves and oil-production data or obfuscating it."

Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most other developed nations, which some say is precisely why the current runup is so painful. Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the U.S. is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world. Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest, according to a recent study from AIRINC, a research firm that tracks cost of living data. The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe.

"Contrary to conventional wisdom among Russian energy leadership, Russia can meet the power needs not only of its own country but those of Europe without driving up its carbon footprint, a new study from the US-based German Marshall Fund asserts. Charles Digges, 23/03-2010 The report comes on the heels of an announcement by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week that Russia would remain committed to developing clean and green energy technologies, and called for the country's long languishing Climate Doctrine to be implemented. "

Renewable energy could play a much larger role in supplying the world's energy needs than previously estimated - but it won't come cheap, according to a new study.\n\nThe research, presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week (11 March) says that renewable energy could supply 40 per cent of the world's energy needs by 2050.\n\nThe new estimate is considerably higher than previous projections, which put renewables' share at only 12 per cent by 2030, said Peter Lund, an author of the research from the Laboratory of Advanced Energy Systems at Finland's Helsinki University of Technology.

The first-ever report exclusively focused on the global human impact of climate change indicates that more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change at a total economic cost of $125 billion per year. Earlier today, former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum, announced the results of a report on the human impact of climate change. The study, Human Impact Report: Climate Change - The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, emphasizes the present impacts of a changing climate, pulling the debate away from a focus on "future generations."

As with most presidential campaign promises, Barack Obama's pledge of government openness isn't lasting long. A top gauleiter at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appears to be indulging in the same type of cover-ups that Democrats on the 2008 campaign trail so ardently accused the Bush Administration of conducting. Al McGartland, director of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, has chastised the authors of an EPA study that knocked gaping holes of logic in the agency's decision to label life-sustaining carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

For years, residents of the tiny lakeside community near Kingston, Tennessee, watched as the local power plant mixed tons of leftover coal ash with water and pumped the heavy mud into a massive pond just up the road. "We never gave it a second thought," says resident Diane Anderson. To read more of Kelly Hearn's reporting on the TVA spill, check out "Toxic Coal in Tennessee," "Tennessee's Dirty Data" and "The Dredge Report." Share this article * * * * Add to Mixx! * * * Related * Also By * Radioactive Revival in New Mexico Environment Shelley Smithson: Navajos say "No!" as the return of uranium mining threatens to despoil their lands and health. * The Most Important Number on Earth Environment OntheEarthProduction : Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky and Terry Tempest Williams discuss the urgent need reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million. » More * Tennessee Spill: Regulation Hazards Environment Kelly Hearn: The recent coal ash spill in Tennessee reveals the toxic fallacy that states should regulate industrial waste. * Letters Subscribe Our Readers & Kelly Hearn * Tennessee Spill: The Dredge Report Environment Kelly Hearn: The TVA's efforts to clean up after its massive coal ash spill may create even more health hazards. But on December 22 the pond collapsed, triggering a billion-gallon mudslide that knocked houses off foundations and roiled into the Emory River. State officials and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally funded utility responsible for the spill, scrambled to allay fears, saying that the ash wasn't toxic and that the drinking water was safe. But residents also heard about the litany of harmful substances in the ash, like arsenic and lead, and about studies linking it to cancer.

The federal government said late Monday it had received a report it commissioned on the best way to break up and sell Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. - but refused to release the report's recommendations, citing "commercial confidentiality considerations." Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt announced last spring that the government was prepared to break up AECL, a Crown corporation, into two parts. One part would include the business responsible for selling and building CANDU reactors, the large powerful machines that provide electricity at plants in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The government signalled its intention to a seek a private sector partner to buy all or part of the CANDU business.

The federal government said late Monday it had received a report it commissioned on the best way to break up and sell Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. - but refused to release the report's recommendations, citing "commercial confidentiality considerations." Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt announced last spring that the government was prepared to break up AECL, a Crown corporation, into two parts. One part would include the business responsible for selling and building CANDU reactors, the large powerful machines that provide electricity at plants in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The government signalled its intention to a seek a private sector partner to buy all or part of the CANDU business.

"One more piece of information supporting how important your personal dietary choices are in dealing with climate change: New research published in the journal Global Environmental Change shows that by reducing the amount of meat and dairy eaten and changing farming practices, by 2055 we could reduce emissions of methane and nitrous oxide--two greenhouse gases far more potent than carbon dioxide--from agricultural sources by more than 80%. Summing up the research, study lead author Alexander Popp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says, "Meat and milk really matter. Reduced consumption could decrease the future emissions of nitrous oxide and methane from agriculture to levels below those of 1995." "

Natural gas will provide an increasing share of America's energy needs over the next several decades, doubling its share of the energy market to 40 percent, from 20 percent, according to a report to be released Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The increase, the report concluded, will come largely at the expense of coal and will be driven both by abundant supplies of natural gas - made more available by shale drilling - and by measures to restrict the carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change. In the long term, however, the future may be dimmer for natural gas if stricter regulations are put in place to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 - a goal set by President Obama. Although lower in carbon than coal, natural gas is still too carbon-intensive to be used under such a target absent some method of carbon capture, the authors of the report concluded.

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.