Increasing energy prices - why they will rise and rise and what we can do about it

Natural gas and electricity prices will get higher. British Gas increased electricity and gas bills by an average of 15% this January and is now signalling further large price increases. It claims that its profits have been hit by a 92% increase in the wholesale price of gas in the past twelve months and therefore [...]

How much stock of energy should we hold?

If you run a business you know that the stock that you hold (known in the US as inventory) is critical to the success of your business. The more stock that you hold the more capital you have tied up; in some businesses stock decays with time (such as food) or becomes less valuable by [...]

Damage we suffer from fossil fuel burning both seen and unseen

 
Environmentalists today associate burning fossil fuel with carbon dioxide emissions, which in turn are associated with climate change and global warming. This is a relatively new association, although the theory of global warming has been around for over a hundred years.
 
Before the greenhouse effect took root in the popular imagination the main effect of [...]

Oil prices rise as the economy falls

The price of oil still rising but the economy of the world is slowing down. This at first sight seems like a paradox. If the world’s economy slows down you would expect less energy to be used and therefore the price of oil should fall. Today oil stands at around $120 a barrel – it [...]

Biofuels - we drive and the world starves

 
Sometimes you can only see a picture clearly if you step back from it, so you can see the whole canvas. So it is with energy. Without any doubt we are heading for an energy crisis. The oil will probably peak – that is to say reach its maximum production in ten years time. Oil [...]

Wind turbines or peat lands Scotland makes a wise choice

The Scottish Parliament has always been a supporter of renewable energy; its record is exemplary – far better than Westminster’s on renewable energy, so when it announces a decision to reject an application to build 181 wind turbines to generate electricity on the Isle of Lewis some eyebrows were raised.
 
I am sure that the application [...]

Windfall profits but not from wind farms; the blighted emissions trading scheme

I have written in this web log about what I perceive to be the failings in the Emissions Trading Scheme, much beloved of the United Kingdom Government as the means of curbing carbon dioxide emissions. The scheme in effect licenses large emitter to produce so many emissions each year; if they produce less they can [...]

Peak Coal - when will coal run out?

The concept of “peak oil” is well known; there is a stage when we have less oil in our world’s reserves than we have used. It does not take much imagination to understand that this is not good. M King Hubbert was a geologist working for Shell in the 1950s.
He proposed that the rate [...]

The great persuader and climate change policies

Someone who consults for JP Morgan Chase and Co and also for the Zurich Insurance Group is trying to persuade countries like China to drastically cut their carbon emissions. You may ask what JP Morgan Chase & Co and the Zurich Insurance Group have done themselves to cut carbon emissions; the answer is not very [...]

Biomass, wood smoke, particulates and cancers

When we breathe in we inhale not only air but dust, and very small particles of stuff that we humans have put in the atmosphere. We know that these can be harmful – coal dust and asbestos dust spring immediately to mind.
Because we are putting relatively speaking so much into the atmosphere scientists are [...]