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What's it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush's Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn't he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case?

"Russia is launching a new all-out offensive on the European energy market. President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have spent the past several days on individual tours through Europe, securing new natural-gas contracts and partners for Russian-built pipelines, clarifying Russian claims to oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, and searching for clients ready to pay for Russia's nuclear-plant technology. On April 27, Medvedev concluded a two-day trip to Oslo, where he and Norwegian leaders agreed on a plan to delimit their Arctic maritime border. The decision -- combined with recent melting of Arctic ice -- paves the way for the area to be opened for oil and gas exploration. The deal is a long-awaited achievement for Russia. In 2008, Medvedev called the Arctic "Russia's resource base of the 21st century." Some energy experts estimate that up to 25 percent of the planet's oil and gas reserves lie beneath the Arctic's Barents Sea. "

The meetings, to be held in Washington in April and in La Maddalena, Italy, in July, will seek to resolve longstanding issues that have blocked the development of an international climate treaty. The participants, who include Chinese and Indian representatives, will also try to create "concrete initiatives and joint ventures that increase the supply of clean energy while cutting greenhouse gas emissions,"� according to a White House news release. The talks, called the Major Economies Meetings on Energy Security and Climate Change, echo in name and goals an initiative begun in the last two years of the Bush administration.

This earth2tech post comments on a presentation from Rich Sedano at the Ceres conference this week in San Francisco. Rich has been working on electricity regulatory issues, demand response, and institutional design for a long time, and his insights as reported here are very important and frequently overlooked: The way Sedano sees it, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees Wall Street credit rating agencies, and state-level utility regulators have failed to communicate and, by extension, to establish consistent rules and incentives - leaving utilities "waiting for a sign that it's safe to pull the trigger on an investment and hoping they don't miss the opportunity to do the right thing."

With international global warming talks scheduled to get under way in Denmark later this year, stakeholders from across the globe will be paying close attention when a House subcommittee takes up a landmark energy and climate change bill later this month. European nations and others have been clamoring for years for decisive U.S. action on warming, and the House measure - dubbed the American Clean Energy and Security Act by sponsors Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) - represents the first cap-and-trade bill seen as actually having a shot at being signed into law.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced significant progress that will help expedite development of a nationwide "smart" electric power grid. A Smart Grid would replace the current, outdated system and employ real-time, two-way communication technologies to allow users to connect directly with power suppliers. The development of the grid will create jobs and spur the development of innovative products that can be exported. Once implemented, the Smart Grid is expected to save consumers money and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil by improving efficiency and spurring the use of renewable energy sources. Before it can be constructed, however, there needs to be agreement on standards for the devices that will connect the grid. After chairing a meeting of industry leaders at the White House, Locke and Chu announced the first set of standards that are needed for the interoperability and security of the Smart Grid and $10 million in Recovery Act funds provided by the Energy Department to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to support the development of interoperability standards.

If I am travelling down an "irrational" road to renewables, as Richard Phillips implies (Letters, 11 September), then I am not alone. Last year, solar PV generation capacity grew by 70% around the world, wind power by 29% and solar hot water increased by 15%. By 2008, renewables represented more than 50% of total added generation capacity in both the US and Europe, ie more new renewables capacity was installed than new capacity for gas, coal, oil, and nuclear combined; with no emissions, no wastes and no security issues to worry about - and no worries about fuel running out, or increasing in price. It's true the energy available from some renewable sources, like wind, varies over time, but we already have to have backup capacity for other plants (including for nuclear plants), which is also used to deal with the daily energy demand peaks. With variable renewables on the grid, these backup plants have to be used a bit more often, adding a small extra cost and, if they are fossil-fuelled, reducing the amount of emissions saved very slightly. But hydro can also be used as backup, and increasingly, so can other types of non-variable renewable source, including biomass and geothermal energy.

Congressman Ben Ray Luján announced today that he introduced legislation designed to encourage environmental research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The bill would authorize $5 million in funding for LANL's National Environmental Research Park (NERP) as well as $5 million for each of six other NERPs throughout the country. "These parks are unique outdoor laboratories that offer secure settings for long-term research on a broad range of subjects, including wildlife biology, ecology, climate change effects, and maintenance of freshwater ecosystems," said Luján. More from a press release from Luján's office:

Energy plans, like health-care plans, tend to be complex. These days they are particularly complicated because any modern energy plan needs to dovetail with real solutions to climate change, perhaps the single most urgent socio-environmental issue mankind has ever confronted. With regard to timing, energy plans must differentiate between what we can realistically do in the next five to 10 years and what we can hope to achieve by 2030 to 2050. Simply put, most Americans want access to reliable, affordable and increasingly sustainable power. Yes, we're all worried about national security. We're also concerned that the burden and benefit of a new energy plan be shared equitably among the various regions of our country. But consumers are tired of promises for the distant future. We don't want to try to plumb more than a thousand pages of strategy to discern what the goal might be for tomorrow. We want a comprehensible plan for the here and now.

"Obama tried cutting oil subsidies in his very first federal budget proposal, and it didn't fly. He and the Democratic members of Congress tried again earlier this year, hoping that the Tea Party's incessant yelling for spending cuts would translate into Congressional support for one of the most obvious spending cuts in the history of spending cuts. But no such luck. And get this: The true amount we pay in oil subsidies is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $4 billion a year. In fact, the far-right libertarian think tank the Cato Institute once calculated the true cost of subsidizing oil to be in the range of $78-150 billion -- yep, billion -- per year. A lot of these expenditures come from the massive amount of security needed to protect oil, both at its source in volatile regions and along international shipping routes 'round the world. The US gov expends much effort and capital to help safeguard the oil companies' product and operations -- it's in the national interest, after all, that everyone be able to continue purchasing Exxon gasoline. So you'd think that paring a comparatively meager $4 billio"

US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to a new US intelligence report on global trends. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts China, India and Russia will increasingly challenge US influence. It also says the dollar may no longer be the world's major currency, and food and water shortages will fuel conflict.

A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Iraq's state-owned South Gas Co. could give Shell a 25-year monopoly on production and exports of natural gas in much of southern Iraq - the biggest foreign role in Iraq's oil and gas sector in four decades. The planned venture, spelled out in a 16-page document obtained by United Press International, goes well beyond descriptions provided by Iraqi and Shell officials on Sept. 22, when they held a public signing ceremony in Baghdad.

# The United States purchases more oil, natural gas, uranium and electricity from Canada than any other country. # Canada's proven oil reserves total 179 billion barrels, of which 173 billion barrels are in oil sands reserves, making Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in global oil reserves. # 99% of Canada's crude oil exports are to U.S. markets. # Energy flows in both directions between the United States and Canada. Our pipeline and transmission systems are highly integrated and our cross-border trade operates nearly seamlessly.

Once again, the week's most important energy news has gone unreported by media in the U.S. Most of the U.S. news media still doesn't understand that the important energy news is happening outside the United States. Once again this week, cameras rolled as the White House and Congress bickered for partisan advantage, this time over offshore oil drilling. Meanwhile, half a world way, three events - one indicative of the growing risk of a shooting war over energy - were completely ignored.

DAYTON - Calling it one of the most dangerous weapons pointed at America, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama yesterday vowed to break the hold the "tyranny of oil'' has on the United States.

News flash: Terrorists sink an oil tanker, blocking the vital Bosporus Strait. Oil rockets to $160 a barrel and gasoline to $5 a gallon in the United States. What can keep the globe's biggest oil-guzzling economy from running dry?

Beijing has reacted angrily to a Pentagon report on China's military power, which claimed it was altering the military balance in Asia. A foreign ministry spokesman called it a "gross distortion of the facts", and urged an end to "Cold War thinking". In its annual report to Congress, the Pentagon said China was developing "disruptive" technologies for nuclear, space and cyber warfare. It could be used to enforce claims over disputed territories, the report said.

Are the relocalization eco-freaks finally getting a clue??