TIMES crunches the numbers and comes up with some encouraging data…
The initial data released by Department of Transportation, however, shows that so far cash for clunkers has been a green success. The clunkers averaged 15.8 m.p.g., compared with 25.4 m.p.g. for the new vehicles purchased, for an average fuel-economy increase of 61%.
On the whole, [...]

A new website for the controversial, popular program is up and it includes some things you need to know if you’d like to take advantage.

Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date

Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify

Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large [...]

Looks like the world’s largest retailer is getting serious about green.
From The Register:
The five latest stores in Walmart’s pilot program, which now totals 20 stores, Sam’s Clubs, and distribution centers in Hawaii and California, will all be located in sunny Puerto Rico. Their solar installations will be provided by SunEdison, described by Walmart as being [...]

In one of those “every silver lining has a cloud” kind of situations, state and federal government road maintenance funds are dwindling as people drive less and use less gasoline per mile as they buy more fuel efficient cars. The federal government had to put $8 billion into the Highway Trust Fund because plummeting gas [...]

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.
See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a [...]

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

After I read Matt Taibbi’s piece about Goldman Sachs gaming the oil/gas marketplace and wrote my own response, I started to think about the massive $24.3 billion budget deficit in California, and I wondered, “How could they get that far in the hole?”
Sure, the global economy has tanked the past couple years and revenues aren’t [...]

Most people don’t realize that the insane gas prices last year had nothing to do with increased demand and had everything to do with market speculation and hoarding encouraged by the top investment banks.
Now True/Slant’s own Matt Taibbi uncovers the truth behind the scam.
Read the rest at True/Slant.

Congressional Republicans have been telling voters that the cap and trade energy policy that’s set for a vote on Friday will cost each household about $3,100.
CBO puts the lie to those numbers and shows that they’re nearly 20 times the actual costs…in 2020.
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Climate change legislation pending in Congress would cost U.S. [...]

Solar Energy: “We’re trying to lay a foundation for a new economy…We are investing not in digging more oil wells but in building more wind farms, investing in solar energy….We are going to have an economy that [is] not based on a bubble.” (Media Teleconference, 6/8/09)
This Tuesday, Joe Biden will be traveling to a solar [...]

Found this on Political Wire and it’s typical of the nonsense we heard from her during the campaign…
Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don’t have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the [...]

Although the tech isn’t exactly new, the following video shows a father/son team in France who seem to have put together one of the most commercially viable options I’ve seen to date.

Following up on my ethanol post and considering how destructive fuel is in general, shouldn’t the US be investing heavily in fueless tech like [...]

I’ve said it before on this blog, but it bears repeating…the ethanol industry is not good for this country.
But instead of paying attention to the facts, there’s a new lobbying push headed by General Wesley Clark to up the mandated 10% in our fuel supply to 15%.
Why? Because the industry is going bankrupt and [...]

This is an extreme example, but I can’t help but think car companies can easily hit the 35 MPG mileage standards Obama is about to lay out if the following is possible for a street ready car.
From Green Car:
Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn recently confirmed the company is working on a car that will get 235 [...]

This is a pretty big stake in the ground, because they’ll be using California’s standards…the toughest in the nation.
No doubt you’ll be hearing that this is bad for business, but that’s what they said about seat belts, airbags and every other time CAFE standards were raised. And I think we’re all fairly aware that the [...]

While attending the Offshore Technology Conference earlier this week (on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), one truth became very apparent: opening up the outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration would create a lot of jobs.
Right now, our government is spending hundreds of billions in an effort to revitalize the economy, but President [...]

On my final day at the Offshore Technology Conference, I attended a panel on climate change. Now, you might expect an oil and gas industry convention would prefer not to discuss the effects of CO2 emissions. But the panel included three scientists who all gave mini-lectures intended to convince the audience that global warming is [...]

Today at the Offshore Technology Conference (which I am at on sponsorship by the American Petroleum Institute), I attended a panel discussion titled: The Case for Access to Oil and Gas Resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. As the title and graphic to my post probably reveal, the panel was less reasonable than the [...]

From today through mid-week, I’m in Houston attending the Offshore Technology Conference. I’m here on the sponsorship of the American Petroleum Institute which has brought in a cadre of bloggers, presumably to help generate coverage and discussion of petroleum issues. Since I believe energy and climate change policy will be some of the most important [...]