Public interest in the role of federal incentives in shaping today’s energy marketplace and future energy options has risen sharply. That interest has met with frustration in some quarters and half-truths in others because of the difficulty in developing a complete picture of the incentives that influence today’s energy options. The difficulty arises from the many forms of incentives, the variety of ways in which they are funded, managed, and monitored, and changes in the agencies responsible for administering them.

A digest of news and commentary from a UK peak oil perspective

End use of fossil fuels in 20 years, UK warned
First council since Second World War set up to look at food security
EU climate change cuts: Poland leads revolt over Russia fears
Dirty coal power hit by Euro vote

Electric Utilities Unlikely to Spend
Coal Seam Gas Producers - The New Masters Of The Universe?
Energy's Future in Latin America

Marrying energy demand and supply
Back to the Dark Ages: National Grid raises the spectre of blackouts this winter
Europe faces the challenges ahead

Coal's comeback
'Clean coal' policies absent, GAO finds
Al Gore’s call for civil disobedience to block coal plants

The backdrop of a financial crash on Wall Street cast a shadow over this year’s Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA conference in Sacramento in late September. Speakers talked of an ominous parallel between the financial crisis and another graver crisis in the making – the coming rapid decline of worldwide oil production, which has stalled after reaching an all-time high more than three years ago.

A digest of news and commentary from a UK peak oil perspective

Heinberg: Bursting bubbles
Matt Simmons: Oil and gas -- The next meltdown?
Companies scramble for ever-scarcer resources
Personal view of ASPO-USA - day 3
The recurring myth of peak oil
Complex issues in a world of soundbites

Last week, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, Al Gore suggested that young people should engage in civil disobedience to stop the building of new coal power plants “that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.”
I sympathize with Gore’s intent. Coal is the most polluting of the fossil fuels, and if we burn more of it there is little hope of averting catastrophic climate change.
But is carbon capture and storage (CCS) a solution?