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That’s what one former oil exec is saying and based on the increased demand we’re seeing in China…this doesn’t seem unlikely.

From CNN Money:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, says Americans could be paying $5 for a gallon of gasoline by 2012.

In an interview with Platt’s Energy Week television, Hofmeister predicted gasoline prices will spike as the global demand for oil increases.

“I’m predicting actually the worst outcome over the next two years which takes us to 2012 with higher gasoline prices,” he said.

Some analysts don’t agree with that timeframe…but the price?

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with Oil Price Information Service says Americans will see gasoline prices hit the $5 a gallon mark in the next decade, but not by 2012.

“That wolf is out there and it’s going to be at the door…I agree with him that we’ll see those numbers at some point this decade but not yet.” Kloza said.

So why did gas get so high in 2008? Speculators were artificially driving up demand. That’s why you saw prices plummet so rapidly. Yes, there was an economic downturn, but that should have pushed prices down before the spike. You simply can’t account for a $2.50 price drop in gas prices like that.

Here’s more analysis from 2008…

In June 2006, oil traded in futures markets at some $60 a barrel and the Senate investigation estimated that some $25 of that was due to pure financial speculation. One analyst estimated in August 2005 that US oil inventory levels suggested WTI crude prices should be around $25 a barrel, and not $60.

That would mean today that at least $50 to $60 or more of today’s $115 a barrel price is due to pure hedge fund and financial institution speculation. However, given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices traded on Nymex and ICE exchanges in New York and London it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation. No one knows officially except the tiny handful of energy trading banks in New York and London and they certainly aren’t talking.

I can verify that 60%, but there’s obviously a huge amount of speculation going on the market. We’ve been taught that this is a good thing, but isn’t this what fuels this Boom/Bust economic spincycle we seem to constantly find ourselves in? Find the hot new thing to invest in, exploit the market to its fullest extent, let greed drive prices up, up, up and then CRASH!…time for another recession! Why can’t we have worthwhile regulations in these markets so people can create wealth, but stable, long term wealth?

The Vermilion 380 blew up today, but it looks like we may have dodged an oily bullet.

Still, could it have been prevented?

Well, as the title suggest, it’s very likely. Because fines are usually in the thousands to tens of thousands. So, to be fined the better part of a million dollars is patently absurd.

The facts from Big Think:

Reviewing the Minerals Management Service database, I see that Apache paid a $435,000 fine on April 23 for the following lapse which apparently unfolded over a period of weeks in January 2009:

The level controller had been removed from the caisson sump, therefore the sump system could not automatically maintain oil at a level sufficient to prevent discharge into the Gulf of Mexico.

Apache also paid a $255,000 fine in April for the following infraction:

On May 2, 2009, the Surface-Controlled Subsurface Safety Valve (SCSSV) at Well JA-001, failed due to a leakage rate greater than the allowable rate of 5 cubic feet/minute. Records indicate that no corrective action to remove, repair, reinstall, or replace was taken prior to the May 19, 2009, notification of inspection.

But wait…what about 2007?

Apache paid another spectacular fine of $446,000 in 2007 for repeatedly neglecting blow out prevention (BOP) equipment. A failed BOP was the ultimate cause of the Deepwater Horizon spill:

Records verified that there was not a low or high pressure test conducted on the following BOP related equipment: HCR choke valve, manual choke valve, HCR kill valve, manual kill valve, kill line check valve, IBOP, TIW valve and choke manifold. These violations were for 2 BOP test periods, 7/19/2006 and 7/26/2006. A mud-pit-level indicator with both visual and audible warning devices had not been installed. There was not a BOP station installed in the work basket of the snubbing unit. The secondary power source (air supply) was isolated with a closed manual block valve located on the inlet piping to the accumulator.

Now, I want to show you how many oil rigs are currently in the gulf from 1942 until recently. Short answer: nearly 4,000. Longer answer: this short video…

(h/t: Deep Sea News)

And Obama calling for a short moratorium to make sure we have the proper safety measures in place is a bad thing?

More as it develops…

It seems to be a question that’s popping up a lot lately, and the simple answer is: they don’t know how to stop it.

Of course they have the authority. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 gives Obama all the authority he needs to take over the spill if need be. But the government just isn’t prepared to respond. And so we have to rely on private companies like BP to clean up their own mess.

Basically, this isn’t a situation like Katrina where we could easily evacuated people or made sure they had clean water to drink and food to eat. Deep water oil spills are special beasts and, unfortunately, only the people who cause them can apparently fix them.

Here’s more from CNN:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who previously threatened a government takeover of the mission, made clear Monday that BP must be involved in trying to stop the leaking oil.

“There are areas where BP and the private sector are the ones who must continue to lead the efforts with government oversight, such as a deployment of private sector technology 5,000 feet below the ocean surface to kill the well,” Salazar said Monday. “BP and the private sector, with the help of federal scientists, are the ones who must get that problem solved and we have the oversight capacity in the administration to make sure that they are doing that.”

In addition, the administration’s point man on the spill response, Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, said Monday that BP’s strategies were endorsed by other top oil company executives and he would advise against any shift from BP’s continued involvement.

“They have the means of production,” Allen said at a White House news conference. “They have the logistics in place. They have the ROVs [remotely operated vehicles] that are down there. We are jointly operating in their command post out of Houston [Texas]. Everybody that has a stake in the fight is there. And I am satisfied with the coordination that’s going on.”

By the way, even Republicans admit that the government is essentially powerless in this fight…

“They can fire BP and take it over,” Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “But the truth is, the federal government probably doesn’t have the capacity to do that.”

And why don’t we “have the capacity to do that?” Oh…could it be that we’ve trusted private enterprises too much with our safety?

Wonder where those ideas came from…

Do know that after these wells are finally capped and the oil has stopped leaking…we should ALL demand that the government now know how to do this themselves. Because the fact that we don’t have the equipment or know how to do this right now is crazy, especially given how much of a threat these leaks pose.

More as it develops…

Previous worst case scenarios estimated the spill to be pumping 2M gallons of oil a day into the gulf, but new numbers paint a much darker picture.

Here’s how the two leaks shake out…

Leak A: 70,000 barrels a day +
Leak B: 25,000 barrels a day =
95,000 barrels a day

One barrel of oil is roughly 42 gallons of oil…so 95,000 x 42 = 3,990,000 gallons of oil…PER DAY!

Now…let’s remember that this has been going on a month now. That means that nearly 120,000,000 gallons of oil has contaminated the Gulf since this all began.

Let me repeat that…120 MILLION GALLONS OF OIL!

You know how much the Exxon Valdez spilled? 11 million.

So this spill is already 10 times worse than the worst oil spill in our nation’s history.

And next week…hurricane season starts.

More as it develops…

First it was the wishy-washiness of the civil rights act repeal and now it’s criticism of the administration being tough on BP?

Watch the video…

Here’s the thing…yes, accidents happen on offshore oil rigs. However, most damage is mitigated by appropriate safety measures being put in place to keep spills to a minimum.

However, recent reports have revealed that BP didn’t spend the appropriate time, money or energy to ensure that an accident couldn’t turn into a catastrophe. And now the Gulf is paying the price with 2M+ gallons being pumped into that ecosystem every single day.

Do know I’m genuinely sorry to see Rand suffer these slings and arrows. I liked how earnest his dad was, but that doesn’t make up for being so green. In other words, Rand really has nobody to blame but himself. He just isn’t ready for the national stage and this week has been evidence of exactly that. Maybe he’ll recover, but I think we all have serious doubts.

More as it develops…

Ironically, the star of Waterworld (which I like…by the way) might be just the guy to help save the water in the Gulf of Mexico.

Check out the nifty gadget he and his brother has been funding the development of (to the tune of $15M) for the past 15 years. Apparently, it can remove between 99 and 97 percent of the oil from the water.

So the demonstration is obviously on a very small scale, but the larger versions can collect 3,000 gallons of oil a day…and there are 31 machines available. So you’re looking at 93K gallons of oil being pulled out of the Gulf by these machines per day, and that’s significant.

And here’s the thing…apparently BP thinks so. Because they’re going to use the devices to help with the cleanup.

More as it develops…

A leaked document tells a sobering tale of 10x the amount we thought was escaping the ocean floor before…

“The following is not public,” reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response document dated April 28. “Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.”

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, “I’m letting the document you have speak for itself.”

In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night.

“There is no official change in the volume released but the USCG is no longer stating that the release rate is 1,000 barrels a day,” continues the document, referred to as report No. 12. “Instead they are saying that they are preparing for a worst-case release and bringing all assets to bear.”

Also, the following graphic shows what we’re looking at in the immediate future…and there’s no doubt that it’ll be devastating to Louisiana and Florida fishermen.

All we can do now is hope that we can get this under control before it destroys the natural habits of our southeastern coastal region for decades.

Hey, if he’s right, shame on them. Well, more than shame on them. They should spend their lives in prison for all of the destruction they’ve caused.

But for some reason…I don’t think folks who have spent their lives defending the environment would deliberately cause one of the worst environmental disasters in our lifetime just to get legislation passed that they felt was inherently compromised.

Call it a hunch.

In any event…the Rush…

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. … Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade, that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Yeah, just noting the timing…sure…

Seems like the right wing is trading in many conspiracy theories these days and none of them have any validity whatsoever. But that doesn’t stop them from making them and trying to convince their followers that they should always question everything except what they say.

By the way, genuine props to Sarah Palin for her post about this tragedy. It was a serious response to what happened and regardless of her “drill baby drill” attitude, I applaud the seriousness with which she addressed this situation.

The equivalent of 5,000 barrels of oil are being dumped into the gulf…every…single…day.

Folks, we’re looking at a disaster bigger than Exxon Valdez. It’s that serious. And that could have devastating effects on our economy.

From Fox News:

The shrimp season begins in early May, as the shrimp move from estuaries out to sea, Long said. U.S. landings of shrimp were valued at $441.8 million in 2008 — an increase of $9.1 million compared to 2007. Louisiana leads the nation in its shrimp supply — with 89 million pounds produced in 2008 — followed by Texas, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. [...]

The Gulf states play host to tourists from around the world, and industry officials acknowledge that the spill could have a massive economic impact.

In states like Florida, where tourism is a $65.5 billion industry, and Alabama, which brings in $6 billion, officials are closely monitoring any changes in hotel bookings and travel plans.

And so it goes…

Almost exactly 5 years ago, Wired.com ran an article chronicling the various reasons why nuclear energy was a decent idea. At the time, I was skeptical upon reading the headline, but once I dug into the article I was swayed and considered this alternative more seriously.

It was definitely a controversial piece, but it was hard to refute the conclusion: nuclear energy is essential to our long term “green” plans…

On a cool spring morning a quarter century ago, a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island exploded into the headlines and stopped the US nuclear power industry in its tracks. What had been billed as the clean, cheap, limitless energy source for a shining future was suddenly too hot to handle.

In the years since, we’ve searched for alternatives, pouring billions of dollars into windmills, solar panels, and biofuels. We’ve designed fantastically efficient lightbulbs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. We’ve built enough gas-fired generators to bankrupt California. But mainly, each year we hack 400 million more tons of coal out of Earth’s crust than we did a quarter century before, light it on fire, and shoot the proceeds into the atmosphere.

The consequences aren’t pretty. Burning coal and other fossil fuels is driving climate change, which is blamed for everything from western forest fires and Florida hurricanes to melting polar ice sheets and flooded Himalayan hamlets. On top of that, coal-burning electric power plants have fouled the air with enough heavy metals and other noxious pollutants to cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the US alone, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study. Believe it or not, a coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear reactor – right into the air, too, not into some carefully guarded storage site. (And, by the way, more than 5,200 Chinese coal miners perished in accidents last year.)

Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can’t afford. There’s only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.

Sure, we had the boogeymamn of Three Mile Island, but that was a blip on the radar of this new energy revolution. Also, when you consider that many other first world nations have embraced this tech (including France…in a big way), it becomes even more compelling.

Maybe that’s why we didn’t see too many objections in the left blogosphere to Obama’s nuclear energy proposals in the State of the Union speech? After all, there are over 100 nuclear reactors in operation right now in the US and they provide almost 20% of the nation’s electricity.

Well, now we hear he’ll be freeing up some tax credits to catch up with the rest of the world…

President Barack Obama next week will announce a loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades, an administration official said Friday.

The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan administration officials hope will draw Republican support. Obama’s direct involvement in announcing the award underscores the political weight the White House is putting behind its effort to use nuclear power and alternative energy sources to lessen American dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

Loan guarantees for other sites are expected to be announced in the coming months, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been made public. The federal guarantees are seen as essential for construction of any new reactor because of the huge expense involved. Critics call the guarantees a form of subsidy and say taxpayers will assume a huge risk, given the industry’s record of cost overruns and loan defaults.

I think criticism is fair when it comes to cost overruns, but as far as the science goes…this is essential. We need to put the demons of the past in proper perspective and focus on the future. Nuclear is safer than many energy technologies and we should pursue it until something can replace it. So, for the next 50 years, this will help us move away from “clean” coal and to a more productive, environmentally responsible solution.

Agreed?

The green energy revolution is in full swing and it’s supported by the White House.

From NY Times:

President Obama announced on Friday the award of $2.3 billion in tax credits for clean energy manufacturing — part of a broader push by his administration to stimulate job growth during the highest period of sustained unemployment in decades. [...]

In a statement, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the tax credits would spur an additional $5 billion of private capital investment in the clean energy manufacturing sector.

The tax credits are worth up to 30 percent of the cost of each project, resulting in a total investment of about $7.7 billion. Funding for the tax credits will come from the $787 billion economic recovery package approved by Congress in early 2009.

And this will mean jobs…

Tax credits were awarded to 183 projects in 43 states, and will create more than 17,000 jobs in clean technology manufacturing, the White House said. The projects must be in service by 2014, but approximately 30 percent of them will be completed by 2010, the administration estimated.

No doubt that this is the way forward and more companies will be jumping on this bandwagon. The question is how fast wil they adopt this tech?

More as it develops…

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, American drivers are trading in inefficient trucks and SUVs for much more efficient passenger cars. Car manufacturers like Nissan are already retooling some models to improve their fuel economy so they can qualify for the credits.

But they rightly points out the potential pitfall in this situation…

It’s called the efficiency paradox: as we get more efficient at using energy — through less wasteful cars and appliances — the overall cost of energy goes down, but we respond by using more of it. In the case of cars, that means driving more. Ultimately our gas bill stays the same, but we spend more time on the road and pump the same amount of greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere. The earth isn’t any better off.

This is one reason why it makes sense to have gas at a fixed cost that doesn’t go below that. Car makers have long be clamoring for this because without it the CAFE standards that the government sets don’t push people to buy the more fuel efficient cars if gas is cheap.

Is raising the fuel prices to a set level next on the Dems’ agenda? If not, should it be?

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 pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
• Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
• You don’t need a voucher, dealers will apply a credit at purchase
• Program runs through Nov 1, 2009 or when the funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
• The program requires the scrapping of your eligible trade-in vehicle, and that the dealer disclose to you an estimate of the scrap value of your trade-in. The scrap value, however minimal, will be in addition to the rebate, and not in place of the rebate.

So what are your thought about the program? Will you take advantage of it?

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 “North America’s largest solar energy services provider.”

Walmart, however, won’t be buying the solar systems from SunEdison. Instead, that panel punter will finance, own, build, and operate them itself, and sell the generated juice to Walmart. The systems will provide the stores with 25 to 35 per cent of their electrical needs, and are projected to produce 90 million kWh of power over the 15-year life of the project.

Walmart is dead serious about solar power, stating in their most recent Solar Power Fact Sheet that “our goal [is] 100 percent renewable energy.”

Obviously this is encouraging because, if it works and Wal-Mart can create a compelling enough business case, it’ll force other retailers to follow suit.

More as it develops…

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 tax revenue, and a Congressional commission put forth one possible solution that is kicking up a lot of opposition.

Instead of paying a tax per gallon at the pump, how about you install an expensive device on your car that tracked how far you drive, and then you get a bill depending on how long you were on the road?

I really tried to come up with some merits for this plan, but frankly this tax per mile plan is just a terrible idea. If there were no other alternatives, then this may work, since we do need money to pay for roads and highways and it makes most sense to tax the actions that cause those roads and highways to wear out. But don’t we already have ways of paying for roads?

We currently pay for our roads mostly through the gasoline tax. Both the federal government and the states charge a certain amount per gallon of gasoline you pump into your car. Essentially what you’re seeing here is a problem where politicians have been reluctant to raise the gas tax to meet the needs of the programs it funds, and are looking for a different way to do so that might not seem as bad to constituents.

Problem is, its much worse than the gas tax.

There is no infrastructure needed to implement the gas tax. It’s added on to every gallon you pump at the gas station. With this plan every car would need to be outfitted with a device (that currently run in the thousands, but could be brought down into the hundreds apparently) that would track your mileage, then you would have to go to some place that you could upload this information every so often (presumably also at gas stations) and you’d get a bill for your mileage tax. So instead of raising an existing tax to fill the budgetary gap, they’d like to raise a new tax and spend billions on the devices needed on our cars, as well as the collection devices needed to get that information to the state.

As if I needed any more reasons, there is the issue of how the gas tax already encourages behavior that not only is good for the country, but also good for the environment… and even good for the roads. Which cars do you think are going to wear the roads down more? Big gas guzzling Hummers, trucks, sports cars and semis, or Smart cars, Priuses and Insights? Gas guzzlers also cause more money to flow to oil producing countries overseas, and send more pollution into the air.

Raising the gas tax to pay for roads makes much more logical sense than making people pay the same per mile if we want to wean ourselves off of foreign oil, get cleaner air and put less stress on the roads. It encourages people to buy lighter, cleaner and more efficient cars, and raising it more would decrease the time it takes to make up the difference in purchasing cost between regular cars and their more efficient brethren. This proposal would literally be a disincentive, counteracting with other government programs designed precisely to encourage purchase of more efficient vehicles.

On the bright side, Obama has come out flatly against the plan, even though his Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has made comments in favor of the idea. Barbara Boxer supports it, which you might expect from one of the most liberal Senators we’ve got, but the only poll I could find on the subject shows that 70% of respondents (North Carolinians) are against the idea. An older poll that I dug up, showed that while most people are against a hike, 55% would support it if it “reduced the U.S. dependence on foreign oil”. An even larger majority, said they’d support it if it “resulted in less consumption or eased the threat of global warming”.

So I come back to my original problem with this proposal. If the public is against the idea, is it a disincentive for behaviors that the government is already trying to promote with other programs, adds unnecessary infrastructure and of course adds a whole new tax to complicated the already labyrinthine code we have here… then what is a single good reason to support this over a higher gas tax?

The federal gas tax has sat at the same 18.4 cents per gallon for 16 years. That it hasn’t gone up in so long is a clear indication of who is to blame for the Highway Trust Fund running out of money. Its time for politicians to suck it up and tell people they need to either cough up a few more cents per gallon, or learn to live with a whole lot more potholes.

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 fantastic piece of science fiction cinema and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and catch it while it’s still in theatres.

But after seeing it I discovered that not only is the energy source they talked about in the movie real, but it’s clean, supposedly economically viable and extremely plentiful on the moon’s surface.

More at True/Slant.

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 miles from the Nebraska/Iowa border, so I’ll try to keep an eye on 2012 developments as the contenders test the waters there as well, on top of other interests like election reform, social issues, polling analysis and any number of things that I come across while skimming the hundreds of tweets and RSS feeds I go through every day. I hope you enjoy it, and now… on with the show!

We’ve been hearing about cellulosic ethanol for several years now, generally with the caveat that were at least a few years, and a few scientific breakthroughs, away from it coming to market and helping wean us from foreign oil. Unlike corn, which breaks down into the sugars necessary to be processed into ethanol relatively easily, cellulose is a hardy material that takes time and energy to break down. Its upside is that there happens to be more cellulose present than any other organic molecule on the planet. This is why millions upon millions of dollars has been poured into cellulosic ethanol research, genetically modifying naturally occurring enzymes to break it down faster and looking for ways to bring the price per gallon down closer to the price of gasoline.

Unlike corn, which takes land out of food production, is inefficient as far as how much energy it takes to produce and is a high maintenance crop, finding raw material for a cellulosic plant is easy. Wood chips from sawmills, the kudzu scourge spreading through the hot and humid Southeast, agricultural waste and even up to 80 percent of what ends up in our landfills could be used to make cellulosic ethanol.  Thankfully, the millions of dollars in research and development have begun to bear fruit.

A gas station near Ottawa is the first in the world to begin selling a cellulosic blend, called CE-10, to the public. Iogen, the company behind the demonstration plant that produced the fuel, plans to build its first full scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Saskatchewan. It has reached an agreement with the local government and Royal Dutch Shell to convert an old Mill site to their purposes, with the government even agreeing to purchase any green energy produced at the site. The running demonstration plant only has the capacity to produce about 3 million liters of ethanol each year, using wheat straw agricultural waste, while the new plant will be able to pump out about 75 million liters. It will make use of a more diverse feed stock, including agricultural waste from other crops, grasses native to nearby areas and even wood chips from area mills.

The march of progress continues, with a number of large companies making big investments into these technologies. Last year GM purchased a large share of Coskata, a big player in the emerging cellulosic ethanol industry, who claims to have developed a process that simplefies the complex and costly process of breaking down cellulose and brings the cost of production down to being competitive with gasoline. There are as many as two dozen companies with plans to build plants similar to Iogen’s, but the economic downturn is effecting their ability to finance these projects. Coskata is hoping to get some stimulus money, in the form of loan guarantees, to help finance its plant, with an estimated production of 50-100 million gallons a year.

As President Obama often says, if we intend to be a leader in the green energy industry of tomorrow, we need to move boldly in that direction today. Now is not the time to let companies who wish to lead us in there falter because of financing problems. Some are talking about a new stimulus bill, which most people reasonably see as a terrible idea, that would focus on these kinds of projects and job creation. The first should have done so, and I have little confidence that a new one would make it through congress without being similarly unfocused and pork laden.

We don’t get too many of these chances, where we can kill three birds with one stone. Job creation, independence from foreign oil and environmental progress can all be had with some smart funding priorities. Lets hope the administration recognizes this in time.

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 coming in like they were, but how can the gap be so vast? Because we’re not talking a couple billion dollars. This took some doing and I had a really hard time believing this was due to simple revenue shortfalls or excess expenditures on infrastructure, health care, welfare and schools.

Read more at True/Slant.