Biofuels

-Green fuels cause more harm than fossil fuels, according to report
-Chemists create biofuel from plant waste
-Seeking a More 'Poplar' Biofuel

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Looming electricity shortages
-China's macro control
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

The predicament of industrial society unfolds to a large extent from its mishandling of energy issues. Because of that, the laws of thermodynamics -- and no, to borrow a phrase, they're not merely suggestions -- have to be taken into account in any attempt to make sense of the economics of the approaching deindustrial age.

Even for staunch proponents of U.S. biofuel policy, it is hard to argue that the current subsidy on grain ethanol serves the purpose it was designed to serve. With ethanol mandates now in place in the form of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), there is a mechanism – with penalties for non-compliance - to ensure that gasoline blenders use the mandated amount of ethanol. Maintaining a subsidy on top of a mandate would be like paying people to obey the speed limit.

The mood amongst oil company executives meeting in London this week for the Petroleum Week conference was largely bullish, with global oil demand expected to recover this year as the world economy crawls out of recession. But the production side of the equation is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive...

-Controversy mounts in EU over fall-out from biofuel
-British Airways to fly jets on green fuel made from London's rubbish by 2014
-BA’s biofuels plans mean a lot of garbage: the problem of “peak waste”

-America's Food-To-Fuel Problem
-EU biofuels significantly harming food production in developing countries
-Burn Up the Biosphere and Call It Renewable Energy
-Palm oil deal 'a threat to the rainforest'

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China's Growth
-India
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs

Millions of job losses are pushing the U.S. Senate to consider a Jobs and Energy bill, even though Cap and Trade appears to be on life support. What are Five Key Measures that must be in a new Bill to avoid being a "half-ass..d" effort? (term from Sen. Lindsey Graham descrbing limited climate bill)

Micro-algae have considerable potential for the production of biofuel, but at present the process of producing fuel from algae would appear to be currently uneconomic. If fuel from micro-algae is to be economic the entire algal biomass should be utilised and anaerobic digestion could play an important part in the exploitation of algae to produce algal energy.

-What’s Missing from the New Clean Energy Agenda?
-Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record
-America Is Not Yet Lost
-Seven States of Energy Debt

In a busy week for energy policy, UK energy watchdog Ofgem finally acknowledged what has been obvious for years: that liberalized markets cannot deliver energy security in the era of carbon reduction and resource depletion.

-How long before the lights go out?
-Peak Oil Theory: implications for Australia’s strategic outlook and the ADF
-The Iraqi Oil Conundrum
-A New Clean Economy — With Old Sources of Energy
-Business as Usual: Hooked on Foreign Oil
-Stop the Green Tech Coup, Military Industry on the Offensive

-Shell stakes green future on sugar biofuel in $2bn Brazil venture
-Obama Set to Outline Biofuels Strategy
-Biofuel requirements for cars may help destroy the rainforest, watchdog says
-Biofuels: the Biggest Supply Response to the 2000s Oil Shock

Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, is not your typical economist. He gets peak oil...And now, in his bestselling book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, he argues that oil prices, temporarily dampened by the deepest post-war recession on record, will soon be vaulted to new highs as the economy begins to recover, which in turn will thrust the world into yet another recession right on the heels of this one.